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After the thrill is gone

I think we all understand there is no “perfect” speaker. Strengths, weaknesses, compromises all driven by the designer’s objectives and decisions. 
 

Whenever we make a new (to us) speaker purchase there is a honeymoon period with the perfect-to-us speaker. But as time wears on, we either become accustomed to the faults and don’t really hear or hear past them, or become amplified and perhaps more annoying or create minor buyers remorse or wanderlust.

I am guessing the latter would be more prevalent when transitioning to a very different design topology, eg cones vs horns vs planars etc.

While I’ve experimented with horns, single drivers, subwoofer augmentation …  I’ve always returned to full range dynamic multi-driver designs. About to do so with planars but on a scale I’ve not done before, and heading toward end game system in retirement.
So I just wonder what your experiences have been once the initial thrill is gone? (Especially if you moved from boxes to planars)

inscrutable

Showing 1 response by mijostyn

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mijostyn
8,570 posts
 

@inscrutable , If the thrill is gone you bought the wrong speaker. I have done that at least 20 times. I start hearing the problems and then run into ones I can't fix. If I can't live with those problems the speaker goes. 

I have been through every type of speaker you can imagine. The two most frustrating where the Magnepan Tympani IIIs and the Apogee Divas. Both speakers were at once compelling and fatally flawed. To put it in perspective I have not owned a boxed speaker since the late 70s. The last ones were Allison 1s. As I became more convinced that the single biggest problem with sound was the room you were trying to make it in I became more enamored with the acoustic advantages of line source dipoles and have not owned anything but since those Allisons.  I now own Sound Labs 645-8s and the thrill will never be gone. Every time I turn them on I am in wonder. I honestly do not believe there is a better speaker for me or for anyone for that matter. It is not that they are perfect, they are not but, the problems they do have are easily overcome and the end result is you are no longer listening to the room or the loudspeaker. It is almost if they do not exist. 

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