Ampeg follows the industry standard. Aguilar follows the industry standard. And they don't make PA cabinets.
Nowhere in the AES/IEC documents do they specify that standard measurement protocols apply to PA speakers, or hi-fi speakers, or auto-sound speakers or boom-box speakers. They apply to all speakers, period.
IMO there are two paths to choose from: follow the standards that exist and be part of the solution, or set your own criteria, and be part of the problem.
I think part of the issue here is that the measurement and calculation method is not stated. Within this industry, I would expect (or maybe wish) that a specification covered by the AES/IEC standards would be quoted without citing the standard. The assumption being that if the method is not stated, it adheres to the accepted standard. If an alternate measurement or calculation is used, such as averaging sensitivity over the LF and MF domains, this should be stated with the associated specifications since it deviates from the assumed standard. Of course, if I produced bass amplification equipment, I would not sell anything before having generated many detailed response measurements. Then, I would definitively state which standards I followed in testing. This is no different than when I test the instrumentation I design (day job) for saltwater corrosion resistance per ASTM test specifications. The results I come up with are stated along with the standard I followed to perform the testing. One of these is an acoustic sensor, so I follow acoustic standards for oceanographic sensors here.
Caveat: The assumption that quoted specs on bass guitar equipment adhere to AES/IEC standards is not a good one in many cases.
Bill and agedhorse, I appreciate both of you being present in this forum equally. Without the ability to discuss technical matters with experts like yourselves, I wouldn't visit this forum nearly as often. I hope that discussions like this are carried out in the interest of professional discourse and debate, rather than personal vendettas.
agedhorse is providing specifications and measurement methods here, which is well beyond what most of the industry provides. Whether or not the methods are as prescribed by the AES/IEC standard, he *is* stating what the methods are. This method is employed because it is believed to be a better representation of real-world performance to a bass player. The intent here doesn't seem to be circumvention of an industry-set standard to inflate specifications.
However, since neither AES/IEC standards or the altered measurement methods used by agedhorse are understood by the average bass player, it is no longer an even playing field. Perhaps unintentionally, this is deceptive to the typical consumer in the bass industry, since the assumption is that these specs adhere to a standard and can be compared. There are many reasons for standard measurement practices to exist and be followed, even if they may not tell the complete story in your particular application. The bottom line is that they provide an objective, fixed method of comparing a wide range of equipment.
Where the musical instrument industry (and bass industry specifically) have failed is in educating customers about what *actually* works well in a bass amplification application. This doesn't mean every bass player has to understand the engineering principles behind the measurement and design. It just means that bass player should probably understand that response down to 30Hz and ultra-flat broadband response isn't usually what he/she actually likes or requires. Further, it's rarely what he/she is actually getting from equipment that claims to possess these attributes. Rather than deceiving ourselves and others into thinking that this is required, the industry would be better served by objectively communicating what actually works for bass within the greater context of professional audio equipment and the associated standards.
Within that context, the best approach is to follow AES/IEC standards of measurement, state that these have been followed, and educate your customers on why your specifications might not be comparable to others that were not generated using the standard. Otherwise, you may as well not generate any specifications, since there is no basis of comparison if you are the only one using your method. This defeats the purpose of specifications entirely, since it is impossible to use them for comparison.
If every manufacturer would just post a half-space frequency response plot generated by following AES/IEC standards, one could compute one's own sensitivity numbers for any particular frequency band desired. Even this would only tell part of the story until one started factoring in phase response, group delay, dispersion, displacement-limited response, etc. But even a frequency response plot would be a drastic improvement on what's out there today.
All of that aside, the last thing I want to see is either billfitzmaurice or agedhorse leaving the forum because the discourse here gets ugly.
That'd get more of those nice distortion/breakup modes everyone's always on about too.
