Interpreting mid-tier loudspeaker measurements is harder than spotting extremes

Evidence

Recognizing true excellence or true inferiority in spinorama style measurements does not require any special training. Interpreting the relative merits of the vast middle ground of loudspeakers that don’t do everything well is more difficult. Flaws come in many versions. The decisions come down to trading off problems and virtues, the audibility of which are likely to be dependent on program material, possibly the listening room and its arrangement, and perhaps the ability of individual listeners to hear or ignore certain kinds of defects. The subjective evaluations reported here were arrived at in an elaborate positional substitution listening room, where the contribution of the room to bass response was constant. This is not normally the case. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 247