As a musician, engineer, and acoustic product developer, I consider the answer to the last question & Mr.Heinz's answer will be limited by our current recording method and workflow of audio processing, which is heavily based on our understanding of sound capturing and reproduction basic rules. We might need to make some groundbreaking changes to our understandings, create something brand new for measuring and capturing, then we can make a big step forward in the physics of speakers for example efficiency.
No two speakers actually measure alike *if* the measurement procedures and/or gear are comprehensive enough. Even two speakers from the same maker with consecutive serial numbers can measure a bit differently if the procedures and test equipment are up to snuff -- this is especially true of the "entry-level" stuff found on sale at big box stores.
@@limitlesssky3050 -- Well, "completely different" is an overstatement IMO. The differences between various examples of the same make and model speaker tend to be very minor and are seldom audible.
Because they don't fucking measure the same. Sure, on axis anechoic response might be very similar, but I bet you'll see very clear differences in THD and compression measurements at higher SPLs.
Yeah the video description is misleading. It should say measure similar, instead of measure the same. Whereas in the video near the start Jesco actually says - why do two different speakers that measure similarly not sound the same.
If they sound different it's because you are not measuring right or measuring the right thing. This kind of approach is misleading and at the beginning of your video you compare a big speaker with a lot of punch with a little speaker and say they measure the same... Of course they wouldn't measure the same in some variable.
Exactly. Frequency response characteristic is not the only variable that can be measured. If two speakers sound different, you'd see it right away on distortion characteristic, which you can get from the same measurement you use to determine the frequency response.
Good stuff! Please consider doing more interviews, lots of interesting audio people in Berlin to talk to! Many good videos on your channel, thank you very much and keep up the good work!
Even if 2 speakers measure the same anaechoicly, they will sound very different even in the same room... not to mention even 2 different pieces of hedd type 07(for example) will measure a little different.
I think the title is a bit dishonest/clickbait-y since it clearly refers to that single 1m measurement and not a full measurement suite a la Klippel. But nevertheless an interesting discussion, thank you.
I have met Klaus several times at AES ans NAMM conventions. I imported the first consumer ADAM monitor into the USA in 2000. But, his current line of speakers are unlistanable as they are very harsh.
Maybe it would be a good idea to put these kind of interviews on spotify too. I, for example, have to drive around a bit during the day and it would be awesome to be able to listen to these kind of hour long interviews without having to consume all my mobile data on a youtube video
Hey i m in to new room the avilable space is A :: 15x21x10 WxLxH B::: 16x21x10 C:::: 17x21x10 Which one is good And there is no window etc only one door Room is for theater and stereo Bus most of time for stereo i have tannoy arden legacy speaker
That was realy extreme interessting in many ways. Klaus Heinz is a scientist, who has learned to be suspicious about what measurement data can tell us and what it is good for as well as the limitations. I worked on auditive perception of the human ear and cortical recognition of speech, regarding the effects of latency and phase shifts of the acoustic signal. The outcome for me was to admit, that we do not know yet the measurable parameters to objectify the complexity of the signal and which of these parameters are crucial for language recognition. It seems to be a very similar problem like searching for valid parameters to measure the quality of the acoustic reproduction of a speaker system. It was very impressive to me to listen to Klaus as a scientist telling that all these measurements do NOT give the answer, the answer can not be objactive up to now. Thank you very much! Best regards from Robert
Just ordered a set of HEDD studio monitors and sub, based on the philosophies Klaus has described what makes a good speaker and how he builds them. From playing around with DIY, it is clear to me he really knows his stuff and the company is driven to deliver the best sound for the money and all the other stuff second.
Its hard to Quantify and Justify how great is youre Hearing if youre above 30S , theres no way you can Buy a great Eardrum and Cochlea, So for an AudioFool he will buy the expensive Speakers and Amp then Pretend "Saying I can still hear them.
I'm just wondering if in the future or even now there is such a thing as a music streaming deck that outputs all the different instrumental sounds in an individual way like the drums go to one driver only the vocals go into another driver only and so on. wouldn't that be best for sound quality and separation and put less stress on each driver... Wouldn't that be a better way for a speaker to reproduce sound. When we listen to a live band the music doesn't come from an one point source right .. Mr Heinz talks about the progress in speaker development in material's which might be true . But wouldn't it make more sense if progress come more like technology and the way audio is delivered to your speakers... For sure speakers have developed a lot in the lost 20 years or so , But the method of delivery in sound seems like it was the biggest leap in sound quality ... There was tape in the past then CDs come along and changed the game and so on.... Just an idea ... Great video
The good old bass driver at the bottom, mid woofer in the middle, tweeter at the top is still the closest we will get to a artist/band playing music live. The tweeter mostly voices at the top to mimic the mouth. The mid woofer in the middle to mimic the guitar, drum etc at the artists stomach. And the bass woofer at the bottom to mimic the sub/subs on the floor of a live gig.
Jesco - thank you for facillitating this wonderful discussion that has filled in many gaps in my understanding of loudspeaker phenomena. One point I still don't quite grasp: regarding how ours ears hear, Mr. Heinz mentions a couple times "...by squaring the signal, phase information is lost" and goes on to say "...and yet something else happens that makes us sensitive to phase response." So my questions are, what's the meaning of the statement that our ear squares the signal, and what's the mechanism, which he says is mathematical, by which that happens?
I seriously LOVED his very last comment - "All of you out there... do something about it.". But you know, he is right. There needs to be a complete reinvention of the "Speaker"... which has been my belief for quite some time now / 20+ years... and I am (we all are) still waiting.
Jesco, it would really be great if you could provide some examples of music tracks/recordings where a phase shift provides a clearly audible effect? A realistic phase shift could for instance come from a Linkwitz Riley 4th order crossover at 100-2000 Hz.
I enjoyed the discussion. The only question which I had after listening to the discussion is, If the microphone cannot represent acoustic energy in a room, then how do we expect loudspeakers to recreate it? That said, a recording studio uses a mic to record music later to be played back through speakers.
Studios are very specialized treated rooms that usually dampen out room acoustic energy on purpose. So the fact that it's not transmitted by a microphone is what they want. Agree though with what you are saying that a microphone then doesn't really represent true sound. Always felt this way myself.
It's not. Typical way of measuring frequency response is from an impulse response. And impulse response is "dynamics". If you measured an impulse response of your audio chain at only one frequency, you'd get a visual representation of what could be called its dynamics.
@@tomkocur i have an idea that dynamics is impulse response or waterfall graph, and spl combined. because db measurement is just loudness at a single point in time or an avg. by spl i mean the measurement that reveals the effect of large cone area which effect are more impact.
It took me back! I had a pair of Heil AMT 1's and Magnapans. As far as the critiques on exactness. I sure Jessi wasn't talking about two speakers being exactly within +/- .05 db in 20 to 20K. I've listened to some killer monitors in my life. From the Mastering Lab to Abbey Road to audiophile systems to my studio's JBL 6328'S and Auretones. With my experience speakers with close to the same specs when compared large to small the large speakers do sound different. For better or for worse.. Do a comparison between throw high pass and low pass filters on them.
Bigger loudspeakers have inherent differences such as distortion performance and acoustical differences due to size of the drivers and cabinet. So not that unexpected
I think the issue with measuring speakers by measuring frequencies is the fact that we need to average a series of results into one number. You can imagine a speaker that produces the signal perfectly at every point in time, which will produce the perfect measurement. But another speaker that is wrong all the time and doesn't quite keep up with the music can still produce a perfect measurement if the error just happens to be perfectly distributed across the different measurements. I've often thought that the true difference in speakers is in the dynamics - in how they produce the transients. Because there is NO WAY that a speaker cone that is moving through air is going to be physically able to keep up all the time perfectly with a signal complex as music. Any speaker can keep up with a test tone, because it only needs to produce one frequency - the trick is being able to produce high and low frequencies and everything in between incredibly fast. Imagine making a knot in your shoelace slowly with unlimited time - anyone can do it - but if you need to make that knot in half a second, you'd have to be really skilled. In nature sound comes from a variety of resonating sources and instruments and voices, each of which produces the sound on their. A speaker is alone in trying recreate that cacophony of sounds that gets then represented as just a single voltage.
Speaker measurements are wayyyyyyyyy more complex than just a single frequency response, everything from dynamic capability to large signal performance (more than 1 watt) or multi tone performance can be measured. Measuring a speaker can be way more complex, all reviewers don’t do those measurements, some manufacturers do. It is really amazing what you can measure and simulate, more than most audiophiles know, search for klippel if you want to know more
Jesco! This is such a GREAT video. And thank you for the shout out. 👍🏻
Lovely to have an opportunity to listen to an eloquent expert.
I´m loving this pratical series!! Keep it up Jesco!
Thanks for asking the question about the 6” driver vs the 12” driver!
The Klaus. The Heinz. The Legend.
Great discussion. Thank you!
As a musician, engineer, and acoustic product developer, I consider the answer to the last question & Mr.Heinz's answer will be limited by our current recording method and workflow of audio processing, which is heavily based on our understanding of sound capturing and reproduction basic rules. We might need to make some groundbreaking changes to our understandings, create something brand new for measuring and capturing, then we can make a big step forward in the physics of speakers for example efficiency.
wow thank you for this content and this rich conversation/interview! Much love from morocco
No two speakers actually measure alike *if* the measurement procedures and/or gear are comprehensive enough. Even two speakers from the same maker with consecutive serial numbers can measure a bit differently if the procedures and test equipment are up to snuff -- this is especially true of the "entry-level" stuff found on sale at big box stores.
True, they are mechanical things after all. Even if they measure alike on certain specs, they are probably complete different on other things.
@@limitlesssky3050 -- Well, "completely different" is an overstatement IMO. The differences between various examples of the same make and model speaker tend to be very minor and are seldom audible.
Indeed, one and a half minute in he explains a phenomenon that can be observed in compression measurements.
dolby atmos will be funny for the speaker industry. a linearized atmos setup would be nice
Because they don't fucking measure the same. Sure, on axis anechoic response might be very similar, but I bet you'll see very clear differences in THD and compression measurements at higher SPLs.
damn!
ooii
No 2 speakers measure the SAME... they might have similar measurements but never the same...
Yeah the video description is misleading. It should say measure similar, instead of measure the same.
Whereas in the video near the start Jesco actually says - why do two different speakers that measure similarly not sound the same.
If they sound different it's because you are not measuring right or measuring the right thing.
This kind of approach is misleading and at the beginning of your video you compare a big speaker with a lot of punch with a little speaker and say they measure the same... Of course they wouldn't measure the same in some variable.
Exactly. Frequency response characteristic is not the only variable that can be measured.
If two speakers sound different, you'd see it right away on distortion characteristic, which you can get from the same measurement you use to determine the frequency response.
Great speaker designer, a true polymath of electronics, acoustics and engineering
Nice clickbait, but there's really no such thing as two (different) speakers that measure the same.
Good stuff! Please consider doing more interviews, lots of interesting audio people in Berlin to talk to! Many good videos on your channel, thank you very much and keep up the good work!
Couldn't agree more!
Even if 2 speakers measure the same anaechoicly, they will sound very different even in the same room... not to mention even 2 different pieces of hedd type 07(for example) will measure a little different.
I think the title is a bit dishonest/clickbait-y since it clearly refers to that single 1m measurement and not a full measurement suite a la Klippel. But nevertheless an interesting discussion, thank you.
I have met Klaus several times at AES ans NAMM conventions. I imported the first consumer ADAM monitor into the USA in 2000. But, his current line of speakers are unlistanable as they are very harsh.
Nice to get some background story.
Cheers,, 🍻🍻😎👍👍
Maybe it would be a good idea to put these kind of interviews on spotify too. I, for example, have to drive around a bit during the day and it would be awesome to be able to listen to these kind of hour long interviews without having to consume all my mobile data on a youtube video
Hey
i m in to new room the avilable space is
A :: 15x21x10 WxLxH
B::: 16x21x10
C:::: 17x21x10
Which one is good
And there is no window etc only one door
Room is for theater and stereo
Bus most of time for stereo
i have tannoy arden legacy speaker
Hi! Thank you for the great video. I'm in love with those monitor stands, but I can't find them. What brand and model are they?
That was realy extreme interessting in many ways. Klaus Heinz is a scientist, who has learned to be suspicious about what measurement data can tell us and what it is good for as well as the limitations. I worked on auditive perception of the human ear and cortical recognition of speech, regarding the effects of latency and phase shifts of the acoustic signal. The outcome for me was to admit, that we do not know yet the measurable parameters to objectify the complexity of the signal and which of these parameters are crucial for language recognition. It seems to be a very similar problem like searching for valid parameters to measure the quality of the acoustic reproduction of a speaker system. It was very impressive to me to listen to Klaus as a scientist telling that all these measurements do NOT give the answer, the answer can not be objactive up to now. Thank you very much!
Best regards from
Robert
Just ordered a set of HEDD studio monitors and sub, based on the philosophies Klaus has described what makes a good speaker and how he builds them. From playing around with DIY, it is clear to me he really knows his stuff and the company is driven to deliver the best sound for the money and all the other stuff second.
Its hard to Quantify and Justify how great is youre Hearing if youre above 30S , theres no way you can Buy a great Eardrum and Cochlea, So for an AudioFool he will buy the expensive Speakers and Amp then Pretend "Saying I can still hear them.
I'm just wondering if in the future or even now there is such a thing as a music streaming deck that outputs all the different instrumental sounds in an individual way like the drums go to one driver only the vocals go into another driver only and so on. wouldn't that be best for sound quality and separation and put less stress on each driver... Wouldn't that be a better way for a speaker to reproduce sound. When we listen to a live band the music doesn't come from an one point source right .. Mr Heinz talks about the progress in speaker development in material's which might be true . But wouldn't it make more sense if progress come more like technology and the way audio is delivered to your speakers... For sure speakers have developed a lot in the lost 20 years or so , But the method of delivery in sound seems like it was the biggest leap in sound quality ... There was tape in the past then CDs come along and changed the game and so on.... Just an idea ... Great video
that's what we do, using the frequency ranges, though, of course.
The good old bass driver at the bottom, mid woofer in the middle, tweeter at the top is still the closest we will get to a artist/band playing music live.
The tweeter mostly voices at the top to mimic the mouth. The mid woofer in the middle to mimic the guitar, drum etc at the artists stomach. And the bass woofer at the bottom to mimic the sub/subs on the floor of a live gig.
Jesco - thank you for facillitating this wonderful discussion that has filled in many gaps in my understanding of loudspeaker phenomena. One point I still don't quite grasp: regarding how ours ears hear, Mr. Heinz mentions a couple times "...by squaring the signal, phase information is lost" and goes on to say "...and yet something else happens that makes us sensitive to phase response." So my questions are, what's the meaning of the statement that our ear squares the signal, and what's the mechanism, which he says is mathematical, by which that happens?
Fascinating discussion and not a single flowery audiophool description of sound in the entire video, well done Jesco, really enjoyed this one.
🙏
Very interesting. Thank you
Just bought the HEDD headphones. Incredible sound resolution and retrieval. A true reveal of sound with authority.
Someone from Audio Science Review should put this video in their forums. Maybe they can learn a thing or two from this video.
I seriously LOVED his very last comment - "All of you out there... do something about it.". But you know, he is right. There needs to be a complete reinvention of the "Speaker"... which has been my belief for quite some time now / 20+ years... and I am (we all are) still waiting.
Jesco, it would really be great if you could provide some examples of music tracks/recordings where a phase shift provides a clearly audible effect? A realistic phase shift could for instance come from a Linkwitz Riley 4th order crossover at 100-2000 Hz.
Clear picture...
Whilst criticising the limits of a static microphone one must always remember that many great concerts were captured with a static single microphone.
Please set up a gofundme to have this superior gentleman wreck the folks at ASR in a debate. I’ll be the first to donate 😉
Fascinating guest. Nice set-up with his experience playing organ and piano. Many thanks. to him for giving his time
Thank-you so much for this interview and to Mr. Darko for bringing it to my attention via his community posting. I am enlightened.
I enjoyed the discussion. The only question which I had after listening to the discussion is, If the microphone cannot represent acoustic energy in a room, then how do we expect loudspeakers to recreate it? That said, a recording studio uses a mic to record music later to be played back through speakers.
Studios are very specialized treated rooms that usually dampen out room acoustic energy on purpose. So the fact that it's not transmitted by a microphone is what they want. Agree though with what you are saying that a microphone then doesn't really represent true sound. Always felt this way myself.
Really enjoyable to listen to a master engineer discuss his trade!
i love that you took this question - ive been thinking about this for years
sooo good!! Thank you!! for this video!!
Excellent
the question why meassuring dynamics is so dificult was not answered?
It's not. Typical way of measuring frequency response is from an impulse response. And impulse response is "dynamics". If you measured an impulse response of your audio chain at only one frequency, you'd get a visual representation of what could be called its dynamics.
@@tomkocur what would that visual representation be?
@@Jaburu impulse response graph (x = time, y = amplitude).
@@tomkocur the "speed" should certainly be visable as a "pre-ringing" before the spike. but you wont see how it behaves when volume changes (dynamics)
@@tomkocur i have an idea that dynamics is impulse response or waterfall graph, and spl combined. because db measurement is just loudness at a single point in time or an avg.
by spl i mean the measurement that reveals the effect of large cone area which effect are more impact.
I really think it needs to be "voodoo and black magic." Just saying "voodoo" feels incomplete.
It took me back! I had a pair of Heil AMT 1's and Magnapans. As far as the critiques on exactness. I sure Jessi wasn't talking about two speakers being exactly within +/- .05 db in 20 to 20K. I've listened to some killer monitors in my life. From the Mastering Lab to Abbey Road to audiophile systems to my studio's JBL 6328'S and Auretones. With my experience speakers with close to the same specs when compared large to small the large speakers do sound different. For better or for worse.. Do a comparison between throw high pass and low pass filters on them.
Bigger loudspeakers have inherent differences such as distortion performance and acoustical differences due to size of the drivers and cabinet. So not that unexpected
I think the issue with measuring speakers by measuring frequencies is the fact that we need to average a series of results into one number. You can imagine a speaker that produces the signal perfectly at every point in time, which will produce the perfect measurement. But another speaker that is wrong all the time and doesn't quite keep up with the music can still produce a perfect measurement if the error just happens to be perfectly distributed across the different measurements.
I've often thought that the true difference in speakers is in the dynamics - in how they produce the transients. Because there is NO WAY that a speaker cone that is moving through air is going to be physically able to keep up all the time perfectly with a signal complex as music. Any speaker can keep up with a test tone, because it only needs to produce one frequency - the trick is being able to produce high and low frequencies and everything in between incredibly fast. Imagine making a knot in your shoelace slowly with unlimited time - anyone can do it - but if you need to make that knot in half a second, you'd have to be really skilled. In nature sound comes from a variety of resonating sources and instruments and voices, each of which produces the sound on their. A speaker is alone in trying recreate that cacophony of sounds that gets then represented as just a single voltage.
Speaker measurements are wayyyyyyyyy more complex than just a single frequency response, everything from dynamic capability to large signal performance (more than 1 watt) or multi tone performance can be measured. Measuring a speaker can be way more complex, all reviewers don’t do those measurements, some manufacturers do. It is really amazing what you can measure and simulate, more than most audiophiles know, search for klippel if you want to know more
@@skandiaart thanks mate! Really interesting- I need to dig into this more
If youre hearing is not getting better you say it Loud that my speakers and Amplifier is a bit Expensive.(AudioFooL)