Can a Quality Full Range Speaker be the Limiting Component in a system?


Can a quality full range speaker be the limiting component in a system?

Can it be surpassed by the quality / performance of the upstream chain? Therefore, becoming the bottleneck for overall system performance?

No? Why?

Yes? How so?

Examples for both scenarios, if you have them.

For the sake of argument, assume that the speaker's performance has been fully optimized. In other words, the room, cabling, isolation, setup/positioning etc are not factors. In other words, assume it's the best it can be.

Thank You!

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Note: this is not about any specific speaker I own or have demo'd/heard. 
david_ten

Showing 2 responses by folkfreak

In my experience the answer is "unlikely". Assuming the speaker is not fatally flawed in some way my experience is that upgrading the source makes the speaker sound better. I currently have a mid six figures system in which the speaker is less than 10% of the system cost yet every time I upgrade a piece of the system the speaker sounds better. No doubt a more expensive speaker could sound better but it would need re-optimizing the entire system around it. System synergy is the key and I would suspect that unless and until the room changes (bigger for example) a well matched speaker still has a lot more to give
@inna I’m actually referring to prices as new and yes they are $50k speakers in a $500k+ system. Magico Q3s actually. My point is that decent speakers at this price level are capable of really great performance if matched well, and I’d rather invest in better sources to get more information for the speaker to work with (call me Linn school) .

In addition larger speakers would overpower my room, I could go to M3s for example (and probably at some stage will) but anything bigger would cause me so many problems

So back to the OPs question if your speaker is showing you the impact of changes elsewhere in the system, and if you can work within the frequency limitations of the speaker (for example mine may not have everything in the bottom octave but the acoustic design of the room helps here) then don’t go chasing a speaker change which will likely throw the rest of the system out of kilter