Danny Richie, GR Research, doesn't recommend a speaker he can't sell an "upgrade" kit for

[DMill]

This is when I lost interest..

We all know about cables. It’s the t-shirt that bothers me more. To be serious it upsets me more when I see a friend who doesn’t know better get fleeced on cables at Best Buy, than supposed ‘audiophiles’ who should know better with cable risers.

 

[beagleman]

Answer is in my KEF LS50 Meta review:

Wanting to see the effect of the dips in 1 to 3 kHz, I developed a single filter at 1189 Hz. Getting it to fill that gap requires a Q of something like 7. At that level, turning it on and off showed basically non-existent difference as predicted by psychoacoustics. We just don't have that kind of dissemination in frequency in that range. I suppose if you wanted to be anal about it, you could fill the holes. It wouldn't make things worse and maybe the combination would make more of a difference. For me, it wasn't worth the time. I was happy with the speaker as is.

This is what is broken in GR Research methodology (and others that just listen to a speaker without EQ development/testing). He needs to make electronic corrections first and prove to himself that such changes make a difference and only then attempt to fix it with passive filters.

Amir, I have found with me, on music anyways, hardly any of those type of EQ changes are easily heard, but I can often hear them when playing Pink Noise, if I A/B back and forth.

Basically agreeing with you though!

 

[beagleman]

We all know about cables. It’s the t-shirt that bothers me more. To be serious it upsets me more when I see a friend who doesn’t know better get fleeced on cables at Best Buy, than supposed ‘audiophiles’ who should know better with cable risers.

I wanna just scream..."Dress like an adult!" He wants to come off like some Speaker Engineer but dresses like me cutting the lawn.

And get that hair cut, you are not 30 anymore......lmao~

 

[formula 977]

With electronic EQ, you can instantly turn them on and off. Have a dip? Fill it with EQ and then perform AB tests. This is what I do in every speaker review. Should the effect be positive, then and only then, you engage in building all new crossover.

As it is, Danny does not perform any listening tests, before or after.

Thanks Amir, now I know what you mean.
(When it comes to clock cleaning I think Danny could still probably take you

 

[captainbeefheart]

Was this an homage to Frank?... or am I free associating again from my psychodelic history?

"what kind of a gu-ru are you anyway? Is that real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?"

You win the prize, yes it was a Frank homage


Oh I forgot, I got told by an authority on crossover networks (another parts swapper that just puts expensive parts with no electrical understanding) told me that the metalized film capacitors sound awful because they are compromised by the self healing, he said it amounts to noise from all the arcing internally.

First of all the healing process is caused from possibly and arc, say there is a failed spot and shorted, this arc or fault current clears that area and effectively fixing itself. The only issue from this is if the process happens too many times and reduces the surface area, the reduced surface area reduces the reactance/capacitance. There is no way you are hearing these arcs from constant faults, the clearing process happens very fast and only from a fault. It's as if these people that have a very vague understanding of the how these parts are made and how they function make up this stuff to just sell their stuff. Nothing changes, the dielectric is the same and metal is the same just impregnated onto the plastic during the extra step in production to make them. They end up having much more surface area and less distance between plates making them smaller than rolling the plastic with metal film. It's the same concept just constructed differently so distortion and dielectric properties are the same between them. I have not read any papers on the self healing capacitors having any sort of higher noise floor from this internal "arcing". Personally I like the idea that IF there was a problem my capacitor will self heal and continue functioning, the size of the clearing are very small and don't effect the amount of capacitance normally, on a huge scale I'd say the worst thing that could happen is you lose surface area from too many clearings and capacitance/reactance would diminish. This is better than having the capacitor fail dead short which would happen with a film and foil type. These snake oil people make up problems where there are none and completely disregard this great advancement in technology we have for parts, they only make a price correlation to performance in that if it's more expensive it has to be better. They don't think that with all the high tech competition and the fact we need better parts as tech improves, the tech purchases these superior parts in higher quantity and the competition brings the price down, you get amazing performance at an amazing price. It's the opposite with boutique parts, they need to charge more money because they are only filling a niche market which is audio, and let me tell you passing audio signals is a far more relaxed application compared to being pulsed 150,000 times a second or more with high currents all day long in commercial electronic equipment. So ya that Wima MKP is going to be a far more advanced capacitor in terms of performance compared to that $500 copper foil and paper beeswax capacitor, the latter would melt all the wax out from losses and internal heat and end up failing while the Wima just plugs along living another 10,000 hours of use. Go ahead and pay the $500 for exotic materials, I'll take high tech performance hands down, especially since it's WAY cheaper. That's the kicker, you get better for less.

 

[DMill]

Thanks Amir, now I know what you mean.
(When it comes to clock cleaning I think Danny could still probably take you

I have a grandfather clock in need of repair. @Amir consider this an invite.

 

[formula 977]

I have a grandfather clock in need of repair. @Amir consider this an invite.

This has gone on for far to long and seems like a reasonable way to settle the argument. Looks are deceiving, though.
Amir may know tae kwon do so it's chubby martial arts vs a fit and fast puncher.

 

[puppet]

Look out!!! .... audio "deathmatch" is just around the corner. Tickets and popcorn TBD.

 

[ryanosaur]

Great. ASR is p!ssed at AH. AVS is p!ssid at ASR. Danny is p!ssed at everybody.

 

[raest]

I suppose if you wanted to be anal about it, you could fill the holes.

this little nugget of non-audio wisdom eluded me in the review... not sure if intentional

 

[dfuller]

Can you or anyone explain that last paragraph?

Sure - we can pretty easily measure things that we don't hear. Our ears work in "critical bands", and they get wider as frequency gets higher - consequently, any sort of change must be broader as well. So any sort of correction you do has to be confirmed as audible to be worth doing.

 

[formula 977]

this little nugget of non-audio wisdom eluded me in the review... not sure if intentional

If it was I have a new hero.

 

[formula 977]

Sure - we can pretty easily measure things that we don't hear. Our ears work in "critical bands", and they get wider as frequency gets higher - consequently, any sort of change must be broader as well. So any sort of correction you do has to be confirmed as audible to be worth doing.

This is a matter of resolution and what needs to be payed attention to. As already said, 1/3 or 1/6 smoothing can tell us “predicted by psyhoacoustics” all we need to know. If we need higher resolution to determine the existence of things like resonances that are inherent to a product and can't be changed in any case and have a speculative impact on what is heard it's still something good to know for the sake of argument.

 

[richard12511]

Interesting to compare his measurement:
View attachment 209737
To mine:
View attachment 209738

I actually see those as pretty similar. His (to me) just looks like a much lower resolution version of yours. The dips are in the same place.

That said, I have a hard time supporting Danny. I do think his speakers are well engineered, but he unfortunately peddles a lot of snake oil for the sake of profit. His main goal seems to be selling you crossover upgrades, even sometimes at the expense(imo) of the actual speaker sound(Revel M126Be).

 

[captainbeefheart]

I get a hoot out of the fact he has "research" in the business name as if he is searching for dark matter or something important.

To me it appears Danny boys research has concluded, the more the part costs the better it's going reduce "smear" and improve the "speed" of the speakers. Extremely common and not real technical terms often heard from snake oil salesman that can't show anything in regular measurements so they use terms like "smear" and "speed" whatever those are supposed to mean.

All my posts get removed from Danny boys youtube channel but I summed it quite simply for him.

One of the great findings in the universe is Fourier Theorem, any signal shape you can imagine no matter how complex is nothing more than the sum of sine waves of different frequencies. So when they say we don't know how to measure everything and that the same measurements doesn't mean they will sound the same just laugh. We can measure and plot and FFT analysis down -140db pretty easily these days. Yes that's 10 million times smaller, most people can't even notice 1% THD of a wavefrom viewed on an oscilloscope so we can clearly measure extremely small changes in the signal/waveform comparing input to output. We can easily measure amplitude, phase shift etc... How else is the signal changing that we aren't measuring? They think there is magical properties. I heard Paul McTurd say ridiculous things like we have no means to measure the "timbre" of things and when we can then we will unlock many secrets, it's called a Fourier analysis Paul, look it up. He also said audible changes can be from non electrical changes, hmmm okay think about that one for a while and try not to implode.

 

[delta76]

This loser has such a predictable trend, his "tiers" of performance always goes in order of how much they cost, the more money the part costs the better they are.

He can be called by many terms but probably not "loser". people who listen to him and believe him are. He is more of a con artist or an engineering fraud

 

[ta240]

What irks me, he sorta does know the subject well and actually knows what he is doing, BUT, he then adds a bunch of BS and Cheese to the topic, like he is some guy just wanting to help us all out.

It is the smooth talking car salesman approach.

He has knowledge for sure, but then makes up a lot of crap.....

"some guy just wanting to help us out" is the ultimate salesman technique. He is the 'expert' that is also your friend and just happens to be selling things too. Reminds me of PSAudio and, unfortunately, a couple other youtube channels that seem to be starting to spiral into 'reviewing' multiple products for certain companies, where they all are really impressive.

Danny may have the ultimate angle on it though. He will go against the norm and say that a product sucks; which makes him seem even more honest. Then he quickly follows it with "but I can help you with that... for a price". For the people that own those speakers, they will likely hear all the issues he talks about after watching his video.

It is a weird world now where people actively seek out the salesman that pretends to be your new best friend but is really all about the sale. I see him regularly quoted as an expert online.

 

[captainbeefheart]

He can be called by many terms but probably not "loser". people who listen to him and believe him are. He is more of a con artist or an engineering fraud

The two terms you call him is right on the money, the reason I consider him a loser is because he gave up the original quest for real knowledge. The knowledge the rest of us took years to study and acquire through lots of math and reading. We only publish things that are fact, something anyone can peer review and measure to be fact also. At some point he either said I'll fake it to win or he really thinks all the science before him is wrong and that he has found something nobody else has which puts him up there with the geniuses of our times. Reading through the comments and from all his posturing and absolutism about his physics and theory he isn't denying the "expert" title he has been given. If he was honest he might say something along the lines of "I'm not a engineer, I didn't learn all the stuff I was supposed to but I have put a lot of time into experimenting and here is what I have found. No, he just keeps riding the wave that he is some expert in the field and that he is bringing out the "truth" to people that these speaker manufacturers are ripping off the people purchasing the speakers when it's Danny boy that is in fact ripping the people off with a smile.

When you sit there and change a part and measure the same exact thing but then say "we can't measure everything we hear and this sounds so much better but can't measure the 'better' aspect of it" then I feel the term loser is fair. He lost at real understanding, and he's a loser for taking advantage of people the way he does. Some say if it's not intentional, as in he believes his own BS and isn't malicious in his business but I disagree, he hasn't made one choice to go further his understanding of things. There have been many times I posted on his videos and instead of looking up the facts and then engage me in a constructive way to either show his point showing the physics is wrong and why or being humble and admit he made a mistake he just deletes these posts and moves right along like he knows best and nobody is going to educate him on the matter.

One of the worst cases was in a video where he showed the shunt cap in the woofer low pass filter, he was showing how he thinks alternating current works. He showed that on one cycle the current flows into the capacitor from the source but then said the other half of the cycle the capacitor unleashes it's energy into the woofer so that the capacitor is directly in the signal path you must have a high quality cap there for "fast" discharge into the woofer. I tried to explain it nicely that the shunt capacitor is a completely separate load in parallel with the woofer and when the current alternates the other direction it doesn't change the loop of the current. I said it's easily checked because the series inductor will contain the sum of both the woofer and the capacitor currents. I drew the two loops and explained it quite clearly, I even said I could show him an LTSpice simulation to show the different current loops but he didn't want to hear any of that. Instead he mocked me and then deleted the post like it never even happened. So he is willingly being ignorant to make sales, if I prove his "theory" wrong then he can't sell them "upgraded" woofer capacitors by saying they are directly in the signal path. This is why I went a little further than saying he is a con artist which is most certainly is, but I think he is a loser for being so ignorant to the truth. It takes more of a man, more of a winner to admit you're wrong and move on for the betterment of yourself. He bites his nose off to spite his face yet real electrical engineers and people that truly understand these things know he is full of it but sadly we are a very small % of his audience and so the rest of the consumers eat up his information and are starving for more. It's a disservice to mankind, and to push us back instead of pushing us forward in advancements is the work of a loser.

Sorry if that's harsh, I know it is and I don't use words with intent to hurt others lightly, I don't care if it hurts his feelings, maybe one day he will wake up and change his position to neutral and just want to really learn how things work but I doubt it. He like carrying the honor of an "expert" in the field too much and won't let it go.

 

[redstang]

...
It's literally like he has almost everything backwards in his mind.

I had a long back and forth with him on his youtube channel when his short series on "proof" that cables make a difference came out. There were several engineers trying in good faith to discuss actual scientific principles with him that he was either ignoring, distorting or misrepresenting. I was trying to just get him to simply address some simple facts brought up by others, but he just practiced avoidance. I wanted him to at least admit something like "yes, I understand that principle but I don't think that applies here because of a, b, c..." or "yes, I can see that and how what I am saying contradicts that, but I think there's something new we still don't understand there because I have tested these scenarios in this manner and this is the result..." - or just anything that resembled an actual acknowledgement of basic known EE principles.

Instead, he literally starting calling everyone "flat earthers" that didn't just simply believe what he was telling you and that they were ignoring the "science" of his in-person, sighted, listening tests. In his mind, his experimentation of just trying different components in speaker crossovers, speaker cables, interconnects and power cables and then "hearing" improvements is 100% legit science, and anyone that argues EE principles that state what he is saying is impossible are ignorant. I think when he upgrades parts in a crossover and it sounds better to him it IS possible it sounds better, but he doesn't really know why and starts making up his own explanations (which is literally what makes up all the mumbo jumbo in any audiophile marketing you read).

 

[captainbeefheart]

I had a long back and forth with him on his youtube channel when his short series on "proof" that cables make a difference came out. There were several engineers trying in good faith to discuss actual scientific principles with him that he was either ignoring, distorting or misrepresenting. I was trying to just get him to simply address some simple facts brought up by others, but he just practiced avoidance. I wanted him to at least admit something like "yes, I understand that principle but I don't think that applies here because of a, b, c..." or "yes, I can see that and how what I am saying contradicts that, but I think there's something new we still don't understand there because I have tested these scenarios in this manner and this is the result..." - or just anything that resembled an actual acknowledgement of basic known EE principles.

Instead, he literally starting calling everyone "flat earthers" that didn't just simply believe what he was telling you and that they were ignoring the "science" of his in-person, sighted, listening tests. In his mind, his experimentation of just trying different components in speaker crossovers, speaker cables, interconnects and power cables and then "hearing" improvements is 100% legit science, and anyone that argues EE principles that state what he is saying is impossible are ignorant. I think when he upgrades parts in a crossover and it sounds better to him it IS possible it sounds better, but he doesn't really know why and starts making up his own explanations (which is literally what makes up all the mumbo jumbo in any audiophile marketing you read).

That's exactly my experience with him also, and is my only beef with him. He doesn't engage in a normal engineering manner where common terms are used and concepts are discussed in a logical way. He quickly spins the conversation to his only argument which is "I/we hear massive improvements are you calling me a liar?". Then stating we can't measure everything that a signal is which is BS.

For example when he uses terms like "smear" the engineer in me needs to define this term, I feel "smear" would be some form of distortion, where the signal isn't being faithfully reproduced and causing a distorted sound. I don't know why he can't just use the term distortion, as that is the definition of something that isn't what it should be, it's distorted. Or he likes to use terms like "faster/quicker" with how the speaker is behaving. Well frequencies are easily defined in time so they (pitch) can't be changing, so I take this as a transient response issue of being "faster", you know slew rate. So again why doesn't he use the normal terms, because clearly we can measure rise times and step response of systems quite easily, if there are improvements in step response then show us with measurements.

There just seems to be a disconnect of terms and common concepts. When he claims something is better with some adjective like "faster" and I propose a test for him to possibly show it he dismisses it as no that's not what is going on and that's it's something we can't measure. It's a wishywashy world these guys live in but I feel that's by design, so they don't have to be held to the same standards the rest of us are held to in our EE day jobs. We know if we talked this way or conducted our work this way we would be fired and replaced faster than his crossover mods empty your wallet.

I have asked him to do a blind test on his youtube channel, I even told him I would spend my own money to fly to him and set the whole thing up. All he has to do is sit and listen and fill out his responses on paper. The point is to see if he can truly pick out by ear different types of capacitors in the balance/crossover networks. Even just between two types, one has Electrolytics and the other has his boutique fancy copper foil and paper types. I'll do detailed measurements of the networks before the blind test to see if there are electrical differences then move onto him reliably picking out which caps are used in the listening tests. He won't do it and I know why, he doesn't want to look like a fool in front of the whole internet because it will probably crumble his business if he can't reliably pick out a by ear the difference between a $.50 cap and a $200 cap. This tells me there is some malicious intent on his behalf because if he truly believed he could do this then he would be happy to sit through the experiment to prove to all of us the huge sonic differences are easily heard.