Listening & Measurement Workshops
Room 1627

Loudspeaker auditioning is always a hot topic, but few have ever been able to participate in a real-time, level-matched comparison of two speaker systems driven by the same power amplifier. Level matching is critical to a proper listening test where different speakers are being compared. Unfortunately, simple level matching schemes employing L-pads introduce impedance-dependent colorations because they kill the amplifier damping factor. A line-level matching scheme will be used in these listening tests that does not introduce those degradations. This listening comparison will demonstrate how hard it is to determine what sounds "right", and will illustrate how one speaker can make the other sound "wrong". This workshop will include a short presentation on audition music with discussion on what to listen for and what kind of music works. Peter Smith, a longtime speaker designer, will present this workshop. Peter recently wrote an article describing his "NeoNoir" loudspeaker in AudioXpress.