SDC (not MWAF) 2022 fallout thread....

[Wolf]

I will be posting my judge's scores here when I get them for comparison sake. I also would like to thank PE, their staff involved, the people who attended, and the 3 judges for making this year's event what it was. I and many others had fun I'm sure.

What I thought of the new venue and arrangement....

I was disappointed that I could not hear all of the entrant's projects, nor reliably vote without hearing all of them. Considering the votes did not count save for tie-breaking, I felt like it was a wash.

I feel one more thing that could be done for improvement in the judge room, is to flip the arrangement 180°. This would mean that there could be a curtain drawn between, and have focus on audio only in that room. The judges could take a trip and do the physical attributes in the staging room after the class finishes. Ths would mean blind listening and total separation of eyes vs ears, as well as any bias should there be any. Of course, no synopsis or reveal of entrant at time of audio should be given. This will help the pace of the event as well to stay on track.

Feel free to post your thoughts,
Wolf

[a4eaudio]

Nothing that can be done about this with the separate judging room, but there was one particular set of speakers I wanted to hear and they happened to play in the jam room at the same time I was playing my speakers in the judges room.

I'm sure it will get posted soon enough, but I'd like to see the winners list. I was late coming back from break and missed some.

[Wolf]

I came in at the beginning as the first was announced, but I don't remember all of them.

Unlimited:
1 Charlie Laub
2 Julian
3 Jack

Under 300:
1 PaulK
2 JohnH
3 MichaelH

Dayton:
1 Tom Zarbo
2 JohnH
3 KeithE

Over 300:
1 Dan Neubecker
2 AdamM
3 Bill Schwefel

Fan fave:
​​​​​​NickS

[Shawn_K]

I Had a good time and think the new venue was an improvement. I agree with Wolf that there needs to be a way to separate audio visual bias's from audio performance.

The 3rd place winner in the under $300 category was Michael Hadjinian the speaker name was Bella Sonus Model 1. The speaker looked kinda like a Sonus Faber and sounded better then expected with the goldwood drivers it had.

Shawn

[ugly woofer]

I will be posting my judge's scores here when I get them for comparison sake. I also would like to thank PE, their staff involved, the people who attended, and the 3 judges for making this year's event what it was. I and many others had fun I'm sure.

What I thought of the new venue and arrangement....

I was disappointed that I could not hear all of the entrant's projects, nor reliably vote without hearing all of them. Considering the votes did not count save for tie-breaking, I felt like it was a wash.

I feel one more thing that could be done for improvement in the judge room, is to flip the arrangement 180°. This would mean that there could be a curtain drawn between, and have focus on audio only in that room. The judges could take a trip and do the physical attributes in the staging room after the class finishes. Ths would mean blind listening and total separation of eyes vs ears, as well as any bias should there be any. Of course, no synopsis or reveal of entrant at time of audio should be given. This will help the pace of the event as well to stay on track.

Feel free to post your thoughts,
Wolf

Why not take it one step further and have the builder unknown. Eliminate the "I like Joe's speakers, he's a good designer, so these speakers must be good" bias. It really wouldn't be any harder to implement. I would even be happy to help and forgo being in the competition.

[Paul K.]

The primary issue I had was the poor acoustics in the Jam Room. I do prefer the setup we've had in the past with everything happening in one large room, judging, spectating and peer voting simultaneously, although I do appreciate the judges not having to deal with "crowd" noise. OTOH, I was happy to demo my speakers in the Jam Room with music different than what the judges used.
Paul

[Wolf]

Why not take it one step further and have the builder unknown. Eliminate the "I like Joe's speakers, he's a good designer, so these speakers must be good" bias. It really wouldn't be any harder to implement. I would even be happy to help and forgo being in the competition.

That is what I meant. Entrant behind curtain only.

[ugly woofer]

Paul the whole point is to just judge the sound completely unbiased. The description can come afterward as it has no affect on the sound.

[jhollander]

IMO It's just not meaningful to try to improve a few minutes of subjective listening. I also want to hear the contestant speeches to the judges. How else would we know about how the devil went down to Georgia and built a giant speaker at Lockheed Martin?

[Paul K.]

Nick, I know you know there are 6 criterion the judges use, with two of them being Craftsmanship and Originality/Design, both of which are identified as visual. While the sound/performance of a speaker is definitely its most important attribute, this judging criteria and process is how PE (and perhaps the judges over the years) believe is the best and most fair way to run this event, viewing and listening simultaneously after the builder has an opportunity to describe his creation.
Paul

[Wolf]

No description in the demo room, as the judges would only know the speaker project entry number, ex SP04. Physical aesthetics and build quality come after the class' audio portion has ended.

Of course, this would mean no judges allowed in the staging room until finished. No speaking by entrants in the demo room, or nullify the unbiased process.

Wolf

[4thtry]

I was #3 in the >$300 category (Diffractorama, aka Doctor Diffraction). I have picture of the person receiving the $50 PE bucks award for #3 in the Dayton Category, but I do not know his name. Based on all the pics that I took of all speakers at the show, my best guess is that this was Michael P, SP33 "Mavericks" Dayton Audio. But it could also be Ryan L, SP34, Dayton Audio. These were both tall black towers. As soon as I crop the photo down to about 100k, I'll post the pic.

PS: Ben, you are correct. Adam was 2nd place in >300 and John was 2nd in Dayton.

[4thtry]

Here is my pic of the 3rd place Dayton winner.

EDIT: Whoops. This was the 3rd place <300 winner

[Wolf]

The pictured won the 3rd place under 300, Bill. That is the person ShawnK added.

The 33/34 builds were very different, except that they were black with similar drivers.
The Mavericks were a 4way MtmWW design,, and the RyanL is MTMWW.

MichaelP was maybe mid 50s, thin, ball cap.
Ryan L had a mask on the whole time, 20-30 age group I bet.

Wolf

[4thtry]

Correction made. Keith E. was the 3rd place Dayton winner.

[Wolf]

FWIW, i only listened to 6 of the winning entries this past weekend in the Jam Room.
Wolf

[Billet]

The Parts Express Speaker Design Competition inspired me to upgrade my B11's into the B12's. I'm thoroughly enjoying listening to them today and I am very grateful for that.

The actual show and contest made for an enjoyable weekend. Thanks Parts Express!

[Wolf]

Can I ask what you did to make the next revision?

[4thtry]

The chief positive about the new format is that it gave builders time to hang out in the loudspeaker holding room area and discuss builds with other builders in detail without being disturbed by the jamming or testing room playback sessions. Charlie Laub, for instance, described the operation of his baffle-less speaker in detail and I learned alot about this type of design as people asked questions.

The chief negative for me was that I was unable to compare the sound of the house tracks on my speaker verses all the other speakers in my category (>$300). At previous events I could always get a faily good idea of how my speaker sounded compared to the other speakers in my category. But at this event, no one was playing the house track. And the room acoustics were very bad as well. This made any type of comparison impossible. As a result, I spent very little time in the jam room.

[Shawn_K]

I think one of the issues with the Speaker design competition in general is that it always seems so rushed. To many speakers to evaluate in a short amount of time, especially on Saturday when there are three categories. I would guess the judge's ears are tired before the end of the day. I appreciate all the effort and expense PE has done to put these competition events on. I think the event needs to start earlier on Saturday morning and go later into the evening with half hour to full hour breaks between the categories,