Historical loudspeaker measurements were non-standardized and largely kept from the public

Evidence

Loudspeaker measurements have existed for a very long time. Most of them were not very revealing of loudspeaker performance for a variety of reasons, and a significant problem was that they were not standardized, so comparisons among products from different origins was challenging. The main problem was that few useful measurements made it into the public record. They stayed in the engineering lab, if they existed at all. Published frequency response curves were often artistic interpretations, with no information about how they were measured. Mostly, they were numerical specifications with overly generous tolerances, and again little or no information about their origins. Marketing departments didn’t want to be technically specific, so customers have been uninformed. They have had to rely on their own subjective evaluations if they were possible, or unreliable subjective reviews which in the internet age exist in abundance. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 218

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader history of audio measurement standardization and subjective review culture; relates to themes in the reader’s psychoacoustics reading on how specifications mislead consumers.