First I want to thank Eric and those who participated in the listening session for passing on their comments and perceptions.
This has really taught me a lot about how people perceive what they hear and the variables that form opinions.
Marbles especially gave me great insight, not only about himself but the market in general.
Some of his comments really stood out to me. I commented on them to him in a PM and he encouraged me to post what I though, so here are my thoughts.
First Mables stated:
The bass crept up and colored the midrange and highs though. Maybe it was the whole sound was too warm and colored and it was the bass creep that muddied the midrange a little.
I found his choice of the word colored to really stand out to me.
He used it here too:
The colored toneality of the modded units midrange and highs are errors of commision and I can't put up with these as easily.
Coloring is caused by two main factors.
One is a smearing effect caused by low quality caps (low dissipation factor) or iron core inductors (smearing effect). This is present only in the stock model.
Secondly coloring is caused by an uneven response curve (not accurate = colored). The stock version had this in spades. The modded version is very un-colored or accurate.
As seen from the measurements of the stock version one can conclude that the response is very "colored".
And this was the best I could get the response to look after repeated measurements to find a measuring height that caused the fewest cancellations.
Note also that the lower vocal region is down in output which will give a "perceived" clearness to the upper vocals that are more prominently reproduced.
Un-colored (accurate) response can be seen in the Modded version.
I think Rob really summed up his preferences with this statement:
I'm sure my listening was biased towards the stock 626's because my reference speakers have a similar sounding midrange and highs.
This reminds me of an earlier experience I have had.
I am a big advocate for clean drinking water. I currently have a Culligan water conditioning system for my whole house and carbon based filters on all of my sinks.
The difference compared to what typically comes from the tap is night and day.
I once took a carbon based filter over to a friends house (an older guy) and hooked it up to his sink so he could A/B test the difference in the cleaner, clearer, chlorine free, better tasting filtered water verses what came from his tap.
He first tasted the filtered water then the tap water. To my surprise he said he preferred the taste of the tap water.
Clearer, cleaner did not appeal to him.
The tap water was the taste he was used to and he liked.
Go figure. I was dumbfounded. I had no answer for him. Our perceptions of the same thing were very different.
Cleaner, clearer, natural, accuracy is not for everyone. Some will still prefer the muddy waters.
This is the next quote from Rob I wanted to touch on:
When the modded speakers came in with a sound I was not familiar with in the midrange on either my 9.0's or my VMPS speakers, that sounded overly warm with a hint of muddiness on the (midrange) vocals of Somebody Somewhere (track 2 of JW - The Hunter) I knew that either the XO was not steep enough or the parts in the XO were coloring it.
The crossover quality is much higher with the modded version (much less coloring), and the crossover is stepper now than it was (see below), plus the signal smearing iron core inductor is now no longer in the midrange circuit (much clearer).
What you heard is the woofer output level that matched the midrange output level (maybe for the first time).
This is the way it is supposed to be, and I often voice speakers with that same recording.
Brian, Nice spin and scare tactic.
Whatever Danny did to the 626, he deprived its owner of all factory service in or out of warranty. Since the parts are custom, if anything ever goes wrong Danny will be unable to fix it. High price for what is essentially a sideways move.
The woofer is now properly loaded and the power handling has increased two fold. It is now less likely to reach its mechanical limits.
The tweeter and mid are also easily as protected if not more protected than they ever were.
The adjustable pots on the stock version would allow someone to dial in a lower resistance setting that would allow the drivers to see considerably more input power than what my modded version would ever allow.
And even with the total tally from listeners including some that preferred the stock version it is still a 2 to 1 favor of the modded version. Not what I would call a sideways movement.
A question from Eric:
There is a very disturbing problem in the stock speaker that I need to point out. When you shift your head from left to right you get a very different spectral shift in balance. This issue becomes very apparent when you compare that speaker to the modified version. The modified version in comparion maintains it's overall spectral balance and doe not change it's overall character spectrally as you move off axis. (I'm wondering how the hell these speakers are so different in this aspect. Perhaps Danny can explain?).
Sure Eric,
The stock design allows the drivers to be out of phase with one another due to the wide driver overlap.
So at one given listening spot you may get twice the output that you should from drivers being in phase (working together to create a peak) while at a slightly higher or lower frequency the drivers are acoustically 180 degrees out of phase with one another and causing a dip in the response.
A slight movement of your head may put you in a position where what was a peak is now a dip and what was a dip is now a peak.
This is what causes the image to shift around with slight movements and what causes the collapse of the sound stage.
I recall listening to the stock version and getting up to change CD's and noticing how parts of the music cut out and disappear only to reappear with the next step.
Off axis measurements that I made confirmed this taking place. On one such measurement I recorded about a 14db swing from a 2" microphone movement.
Speaking of measurements, I think Brian publicly stated on the MAD board that he was going to also post measurements of this speaker. Have I missed something? I have yet to see them. It will be interesting to see if his off axis vertical and horizontal measurements match my own wouldn't it?
Brian?
Eric, thanks for all our comments. They were very in depth, insightful, and well thought out. You truely are a good listener. You heard the same things that I did.
