My thoughts on MWAF

[Paul K.]

I can't believe I'm the first to post anything here about the actual DIY speaker competition!? Maybe there is a thread and I just can't find it? Anyway, I did have a really great time and heard lots of good-sounding speakers. Congratulations to all of the winners and especially Dan Neubecker for his two first-place designs. Everyone was betting he would win with the Echelons in the Over-$200 category, and deservedly so. I would have liked there to have been fewer speakers; I'm sure the judges were more tired than I trying to listen objectively by the end of the day on Saturday. I won't comment about some of the music used for the judging, however. :rolleyes:

So, a really big THANK YOU to all of the PE folks. They worked very, very hard to make this a wonderful event and were way more tired than any of the attendees when it was all over.
Paul

[greywarden]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Hey I wanna see pics!

[NickJ]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Hey I wanna see pics!

+1

Think of the poor disenfranchised forum members who couldn't make it. Info and speaker photos STAT!

[marvin]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

I was not there but heard from a very reliable source that Paul took first place in the all Dayton category!

Congratulations Paul, Dan, everyone!!

Look forward to more reports and pics.

[Paul K.]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Yeah, I did but didn't want to toot my own horn. Dan was definitely the big winner. Besides his big Echelons being so good in sound and looks, his little 2-way that he won with sounded good and were equally gorgeous, plus it had a rather ingenious adjustable port for customizing the system tuning to suit personal and room needs.
Paul

I was not there but heard from a very reliable source that Paul took first place in the all Dayton category!

Congratulations Paul, Dan, everyone!!

Look forward to more reports and pics.

[bwaslo]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Ditto on the music selections... they should have let us vote on those too!

[craigk]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

PaulK, you might be nice eough to not say somethig about the music, but i will represent the thoughts of everyone that i talked to. the music used was a very poor choice. for the under 200, and i understand the reason the songs were picked, but all three of the songs sound the same and did not place any dynamic demands on the speakers. i know it was 200 dollar class, but still. one other thing on the while am getting started on this little rant, 82 db of sound was a joke, sorry. that is not enough volume to even hear what a speaker sounds like, and i had both hearing aides turned all the way up and i was still hoping someone up front would stand up and start using sign language so i would be able to enjoy the words at least. the other two classes were also a really poor choice of music also. one of my favorite things that happened, and i will not mention names even though i would really like to, was one some ones speakers were being evaluated and a song from Yes started to play, priceless moment. other than that, everyone played really well together and i enjoyed the event. maybe next year we can open up the rest of the room for a little more space and a little less heat. Wolf was standing to close and it was like standing beside a furnace . need to mention a few things, Wolf made the BG neo 3's sing like o have not heard, very nice (bass was o.k. to), 6th planet with the LCY tweet design very good, pelegrn's 2 ways ( smaller ones esp.) very nice, and brkitup most surprisingly good sound from something that i really had doubts about. great show and thanks to all the people for a good time. lets do it next year.

craig kinnison

[Paul K.]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Everyone that knows me knows I listen to and prefer instrumental classical music. As far as the music used for judging, I don't understand why so much of it is vocal, other than the fact the so much popular music is vocal. I do appreciate that [B]good[/B] vocal recordings can be very useful for evaluating speaker performance, but I sure wish all 3 tracks used for a category weren't vocals. That said, in the Unlimited category the first track was instrumental classical, and in the Dayton Driver category, the last track was instrumental jazz. Otherwise, too many vocal tracks for my tastes and my ability to judge, but I'm just one person and can't speak for others.
Paul

[Wolf]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Wolf was standing to close and it was like standing beside a furnace . need to mention a few things, Wolf made the BG neo 3's sing like o have not heard, very nice (bass was o.k. to),
craig kinnison

I do tend to run a little warm- guilty as charged. Must be my iron intake. ;)

I thank you for the compliment!

BTW- which person were you? I'm trying to learn all of the posters as I meet them. I still don't know who Sidi is.

(My wife has the camera for the baby-shower this afternoon, so I may not be able to post the walkaround until later. It took quite a few shots to just get around the room.)

Later,
Wolf

[Wolf]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Ditto on the music selections... they should have let us vote on those too!

Agreed.

BTW- I liked your Danley-mumbo-jumbos this year. Hadn't heard or seen anything like that before.
Later,
Wolf

[markk]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Not being there, I am curious if the speakers were all auditioned at the same spl level? That is, set for a particular dB spl on a test tone so that all speakers were the same loudness for the tracks. And were the two ways and three ways, and small and large driver units adjusted to the same spl?

Having run some of these DIYs, it's a big problem. Ideally, you'd like to crank up the spl's, but many of the two ways, especially smaller ones, aren't designed and can't handle high spl. The problem is, you can't just speakers at different loudness levels since the impression of an acoustic space is, to steal a phrase from Toole, "a forte phenomena."

(PS. Agree on the vocals. Even though everyone loves their favorite vocalist, these are not really very revealing. Especially these close mic'd studio mixes. (Yes, I like to listen to a lot of this, but it's just not that good test music...) At least do choral...

[Paul K.]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Yep, using pink noise, I assume, the same SPL level was set, although the second track for the Unlimited Class, I think, was way louder than the first track and had a very annoying "thump, thump" drum beat, that was just too much for some speakers to reproduce without distress. IIRC, the SPL level was set at 85 dB at the Judge's table.
Paul

Not being there, I am curious if the speakers were all auditioned at the same spl level? That is, set for a particular dB spl on a test tone so that all speakers were the same loudness for the tracks. And were the two ways and three ways, and small and large driver units adjusted to the same spl?

Having run some of these DIYs, it's a big problem. Ideally, you'd like to crank up the spl's, but many of the two ways, especially smaller ones, aren't designed and can't handle high spl. The problem is, you can't just speakers at different loudness levels since the impression of an acoustic space is, to steal a phrase from Toole, "a forte phenomena."

(PS. Agree on the vocals. Even though everyone loves their favorite vocalist, these are not really very revealing. Especially these close mic'd studio mixes. (Yes, I like to listen to a lot of this, but it's just not that good test music...) At least do choral...

[archeion]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

I agree, the music choices could definitely have been improved. Congrats to the winners. I was impressed with the overall level of quality.

[brkitup]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Cherell and I had a lot of fun, and we're always impressed by how nice and helpful everyone is. While it's impossible to make everyone happy with the music selections, my wife and I agree that an almost fool-proof method to make most people happy would be to select a classical, vocal with instrumentation, and jazz track for each of the categories. The "Roundabout" track was rough, with way too much distortion in the track itself and one of the worst sounding snare drums I've ever heard (sorry to all the Yes fans). The second track in the Unlimited category was a speaker destroyer, and the Dayton category's first two tracks both contained female vocals with instruments. The James Taylor track was great, as well as the jazz track that was played during the Dayton category. I think Wolf made a comment about the track at the show, and most seemed to be in agreement that we should have heard similar music much earlier.

However, I do think the judges picked great winners in each category. They had a really tough job, as many of the speakers in the Over 200 class were so close in performance that I could happily live with any of them. It's amazing that the competition has gotten so tight that Bogdan didn't even place in the top three with his great little monitors, and I believe Mr. Bagby's Satori driver speakers were shut out too, although his Continuum system won first place and rightly so. Those little BBC-inspired monitors are pure magic.

[Jeff B.]

Re: My thoughts on MWAF

Cherell and I had a lot of fun, and we're always impressed by how nice and helpful everyone is. While it's impossible to make everyone happy with the music selections, my wife and I agree that an almost fool-proof method to make most people happy would be to select a classical, vocal with instrumentation, and jazz track for each of the categories. The "Roundabout" track was rough, with way too much distortion in the track itself and one of the worst sounding snare drums I've ever heard (sorry to all the Yes fans). The second track in the Unlimited category was a speaker destroyer, and the Dayton category's first two tracks both contained female vocals with instruments. The James Taylor track was great, as well as the jazz track that was played during the Dayton category. I think Wolf made a comment about the track at the show, and most seemed to be in agreement that we should have heard similar music much earlier.

However, I do think the judges picked great winners in each category. They had a really tough job, as many of the speakers in the Over 200 class were so close in performance that I could happily live with any of them. It's amazing that the competition has gotten so tight that Bogdan didn't even place in the top three with his great little monitors, and I believe Mr. Bagby's Satori driver speakers were shut out too, although his Continuum system won first place and rightly so. Those little BBC-inspired monitors are pure magic.

Thanks for the nice comments, Eric. I will post some of my thoughts on the day later, when I have little more time. It was wonderful to see your wife show a speaker and I think she got a great reception from the crowd too. I'm sure you guys were enjoying that.

I saw your woofer's dust cap at the end of the day before we were loading up. I don't know when that happened to it, but I know it wasn't that way after lunch when I looked at your speakers. I was sorry to see that that happened to you.

Jeff