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‘modern’, ‘mainstream’ speakers—too many models converging towards too similar a sound

Over the last year I’ve auditioned a good number of speaker makes and models.  Through this process, I developed a kind of shorthand for myself to describe a particular kind of sound profile that I kept encountering, one that I came to call modern/mainstream.

Here’s the kind of speaker I’m talking about: typically a floorstander, fairly tall, narrowish baffle, deeper than it’s wide, tweeter on top, midrange, two or three 7” woofers.  It’s a design you’re going to encounter again, and again, and again.  Dynaudio, Quad, Paradigm, Monitor Audio, Sonus Faber, and many, many others.  (Not picking on those five—just for illustrative purposes).  It’s also a design that tends to come from large companies, some of them conglomerates, and one which consequently finds its way into more stores and more people’s consciousness because of the larger distribution and publicity networks involved.

And the sound.  Highly competent across the board, tending to the more detailed rather than the more forgiving, treble range quite prominent, decent but not incredible bass extension, more than acceptable imaging and soundstaging, perhaps the vaguest hint of a mechanical or electronic veil.  And above all, kind of unexceptional and unexciting.  They can range all over in price, and they don’t really sound that dissimilar one from another.  They are converging towards that single ‘modern’, ‘mainstream’ sound profile that’s becoming a norm.  It’s a safe design, with an acoustic presentation that many people these days seem to prefer or at least accept (or have been conditioned to believe is ‘correct’).  Being fairly narrow, it integrates well into many domestic environments, and the styling usually ensures a decent measure of SAF.

While there are still many individualists out there in the audio world, and the speaker design world in particular, this is a general trend that I lament, because I see it expanding and being more entrenched.


twoleftears

Showing 1 response by teo_audio

teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
None of these diffraction elimination techniques can be accomplished on a narrow baffle because the round-over or absorption or whatever has to be a sufficiently large fraction of a wavelength in order to be effective. Therefore if we are serious about eliminating diffraction, the cabinet width is going to be fairly substantial.

And....digital room and digital speaker correction does not fix this.

Does not fix this.

Does not fix this.

It merely makes a smeary fuzzy mess that seems right or better.

For a while.

Then you finally hear it..... and toss the thing down the road to the next person who thinks it will be their savior.

IMO and IME, digital crossovers, room correction and speaker correction, are only charming to those who somehow can’t hear these pervasive and all encompassing distortions that are added into the mix. 

There is a reason that the biggest names in loudspeaker design don’t do digital. I’m not comfortable saying these things but they are indeed true. Citing examples won’t work, as those are exceptions, not the rule, and I’m not sure about the aural capacities and directions of their proponents. First time I heard a digital speaker, I walked way unimpressed. The last time I head a digital speaker, I walked away unimpressed. Ground level faults that brick wall the designs. Ground level faults being inescapable - as they are as - the inclusion of digital.

All things being equal, which they never are..all things being equal...the analog crossover (active or passive) will exceed the sonic quality aspects of a digital crossover.
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