Are we being cheated?

Isn't this a FUN hobby!

Suggest you give Enearemabuds a try.

DeKay

Put me in the mental illness category. 

File for a divorce.

Model train enthusiasts are crazier. Well, maybe not, how the hell would I know?

Boy, I'm sure glad I have a pair of speakers I'm perfectly happy with. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with those nasty speaker companies...

Is that gold leaf on your soapbox or is it solid gold?

high end speakers are basically THE SAME……….real differences are negligible……… and the differences that are not negligible are in fact fabricated by the speaker companies.

 

I stop reading after the 3rd contradiction.  

I hereby maintain that all high end speakers are basically THE SAME.

Yes, they all produce speakers intended to sell them to a certain market.

The real differences are negligible and the differences that are not negligible are in fact fabricated by the speaker companies to make us believe that we are hearing an improvement and to ultimately increase their profit. Some differences we hear are psychological and non existent. Audiophiles are blinded by the lack of unbiased testing methods and rely on invalid comparisons. It is a common trick to shape the response in one way or another when designing the crossover. The differences we hear are then interpreted to be better or worse. The bbc dip is one example. Different parts of the response can be boosted or cut to enhance detail and depth of image. These are not improvements that justify upgrading your loudspekers. These are simple tweaks that could be done using dsp by the end user. There has NEVER been any evidence that any speaker is actually better than another. There is no consensus on the definition of a better speaker. We are being sold multiple variations of the same basic thing. No speaker company has ever produced a speaker product line where each speaker differs from the next by only one variable. Its always multiple variables being varied in order to obscure the differences.

The other term for all of the above is "voicing the speaker".

Most of it is not a ’trick’, but an attempt to make the speaker sound the way the designer believes is best, at the given price range. for their intended market. Sure, an argument could be made, that they exaggerate some aspect with the intended outcome to make the speaker more sellable. But it is still up to the buyer to choose.

All speaker design is a compromise. Some designers may voice their speakers to maximise certain aspects, and minimize others, but that is because those are the aspects they think sound the best. Some may design for minimum phase and quasi transient perfect response, because those are the aspects they believe result in the best sound quality, another designer, with different design priorities may design for completely other aspects.

The end results may be equally good, just different. Then it is up to the listener to choose which trade offs they are willing to live with.

All speaker design is a compromise, and it is juggling these compromises that result in different sounding speakers.

If Magico are confident in the superiority of their cabinets they need to make two versions of the same speaker where one differs from the other only in cabinet material.

I can’t speak for Magico, but I once had the chance of hearing a comparable high end speaker (name withheld, but their factory is in the Southern California area) prototype in standard box material (birch ply used for tweaking the crossover), and the finished product in their CLD cabinet material, and there was a definite difference. It was not hard to hear. Not sure why there is even a controversy on this in your mind. Cabinet resonances, damping, internal standing waves, rigidness, ALL make a difference in the end product.

I hereby maintain that the differences we hear are due to invalid tests, invalid comparisons, poor room acoustics, comparing multiple variables simultaneously, non blind tests, and mental illness i.e psychological and fabricated or imagined.

In order to hear the difference between one speaker and another, we must pick the variable we wish to compare and fix all the other variables in both speakers and then use blind testing or any other reliable test method. Since audiophiles do not do this, their conclusions are spurious.

We are being cheated by the speaker companies but we are also cheating ourselves. The lack of consensus and divergence of opinions within the audiophile community about what we hear is proof of this.

Yes, the entire audio hobby is based on subjective impressions, the weakness of our listening rooms, bla, bla, bla.

None of this has anything to do with the fact, that we are still able to get reasonably accurate sounding systems in our homes on a pretty consistent basis. Despite all the problems you see, real or nonexistent.

Might be time for you to get another hobby.

kenjit, I have done exactly what you outlined above.  I started off by testing multiple cabinet materials by building the same cabinet from MDF, baltic birch, 3D printed carbon fiber reinforced ABS, fiberglass over a nomex honeycomb core and carbon fiber over a nomex honeycomb core.  I have since tested and added laminated bamboo to this.  

I used the same drivers, crossovers, ports, binding posts, wire and quantity of polyfill.  The only deviation was a nominal volume difference driven by the thinkness of the internal brace.  All variances in cabinet wall thickness were external.  For example, I used 3/4" MDF but only 1/4" thick fiberglass or carbon fiber panels.  This means that the external dimension of the MDF cabinet was 1" bigger in all directions while the internal dimensions were the same.  

Frequency response using white, pink and brown noise showed no obvious difference in performance.  There are small deviations but nothing that seemed to denote a significant difference in sound profile.  

So I listened to each of them and there was an obvious difference in performance.  The way I did my listening tests was to choose a song that has a ton of detail in it, specifically Don't Talk by 10,000 Maniacs off of the MTV unplugged live.  Several of the cabinet materials did require an adjustment in volume to make sure volume was the same.  I also added in a competitive benchmark speaker that I have owned for several years that is generally pretty highly regarded.  

The net result was that each material behaves differently. 

The CF cabinet with the simulation based crossover was perfect.  Flawless.  I heard details that I was unaware of because I had never heard that song on a speaker that performed that well before.  Significantly outperformed benchmark.   

In fiberglass, I couldn't hear the strings in the song and Natalie merchants voice sounded recessed.  They didn't sound bad, but definitely didn't sound good.  Polite or forgiving would be how most audiophiles would describe them.  With a warm amp, they would sound horrible, maybe with a brighter amp they would have been okay.  These underperformed benchmark without a tweak to the crossover outlined below..  

Baltic Birch lost more detail.  Portions of the piano were now missing in addition to the string, her voice very recessed in the soundstage and these sounded bad.  Underperformed benchmark even after tweaking the crossover. 

MDF was different.  There was a hair less detail in terms of the instruments.  Strings and portions of the piano were missing.  However, Natalie Merchants voice sounded less recessed.   Underperformed benchmark even after tweaking the crossover.

3D printed carbon fiber reinforced ABS was atrocious despite being 3x as expensive at fiberglass.  My wife said it sound like I had taped a sock over the tweeter.  

Ultimately, to get the fiberglass cabinet to sound good I need to make a single value adjustment to the resistor in the crossover.  This eliminated the loss of detail and the slightly recessive sound of her voice but also made the speaker the tiniest bit bright but it was still less bright than my benchmark product.  A great speaker.  

For the Baltic Birch and and MDF cabinets I need to adjust two values of resistor and one of the capacitors and the speaker was relatively bright.  No worse than a lot of commercial speakers but not what I would define as exceptional.  I would only pair them with a warm amp as these were brighter than my benchmark and less appealing to me.  The test drivers aren't optimal for that material.  

Nothing could save the 3D printed cabinet.  They were just awful.  If I brought those products to market I would deserve to be beaten with a rubber hose.  

I have since tested laminated "soild" bamboo and found that it performs closer to Fiberglass than MDF or Baltic Birch.  A small tweak to the resistor and one of the capacitors was enough for them to outperform my benchmark.  With a higher mass tweeter, it was a single value adjustment to the resistor and they sound amazing.  Ultimately though, these fall short of the composite cabinets in terms of absolute detail and the size and depth of the soundstage.  

This testing helped me feel confident that as the cost of cabinet materials increased, the quality of my products increased. 

In the end, there are a bunch of variables that will make a speaker sound better or worse.  The cabinet material is one, very important variable.  Whether it be cast phenolic resin, extruded aluminum, carbon fiber, fiberglass, MDF, baltic birch or solid wood, there are pros and cons to each material and each manufacturer is going to do their best to minimize the downsides of each material.  

I personally can't make a wood (MDF/Baltic Birch/Solid Wood) based speaker sound as good as a composite.  Others with bigger budgets, better technology, etc... may be able to but I will say based on my own testing and experience I am heavily biased in favor of cabinets made from advanced materials.  

Someday I hope to be able to experiment with other materials like stone, concrete, aluminum, titanium, 3D printed Ultem, etc... but costs for me to work with them are just too high at this time.  

It actually is true. They all play music. So what? so the are all the same? who cares? not me. If they can stay in business, not my problem. If this guy thinks he is being cheated? Also not my problem.
I think I got a great deal, being able to buy the speakers I own for only $14,000. If he thinks I got ripped off? not my problem.

I cant believe I took the time to read the entire original post. His conclusions are ridiculous. 

I read this post and feel cheated out of 90 seconds of my time.

Yeah, I've notice that they are all pretty much the same--you need two of them for stereo, they all come in colors that are in the visible spectrum for humans, they all have mass (though some claim that certain parts are virtually mass-less).

audiophiles need to be given the opportunity to decide for themselves whether theres a difference and if so how important it is.