Are my standards too high?


Dear Gang,

I have heard a number of box speakers and only the cream of the crop are just about tolerable. In other words there is nothing out there that can truly impress me regardless of price. 

The KEF LS50 is a state of the art world class loudspeaker. It has won multiple awards and is used by John himself. A few years ago I decided to go and listen to a pair to see what the fuss was about. They were not setup perfectly but there was no bass. All i could hear was typical uneven ported bass response. The highs were a bit bright and off axis response was uneven. Horrible. I then got a chance to hear the kef Ref ones which were supposed to be the finest speaker that could be made by mankind. They failed to impress me. No bass at all. Then i heard the blades and finally i heard proper bass below 40hz. But the blades were not perfect either. And given their cost they should have been perfect. They didnt sound very refined. Imaging was a bit average. 

Gang, I have come to the realization that either most speakers out there are a hoax (overpriced and overrated) OR my standards are simply so high that the worlds finest 'peaker engineers cannot produce anything that can satisfy my perfect standards. 

The only answer to this riddle is to train audiophiles to understand that the speakers currently on the market are substandard goods.We need to also attract better quality minds to the world of speaker design and weed out the people that dont know what theyre doing. There are obviously some people who are better at doing things than others. Am I right? If we can get rid of the worst speaker designers out there and replace them with superior designers, then we will end up with much better speakers on the market for us to enjoy. Its a win win
kenjit

Showing 2 responses by knotscott

Rather than taking pot shots at other people's work, try building your own.  You have access to the same materials and physics that all  speaker designers do. 

It's not hard to build a speaker that works.  It's not even that hard to build a speaker that sounds pretty good....especially in today's world with computer and internet assistance.  It gets increasingly more difficult to build a really, really good speaker that's profitable and attainable to audio consumers. 
Champagne taste and beer budget Is a bummer but manageable.

...as long as your budget allows for the better beers, you’ll be doin’ just fine! ;-)