The problems is that excellent speakers can sound real bad if the rest of your equipment is not up to par, and an average quality speakers will produce more satisfying sound instead. The reason for this is that, high quality speakers are extremely reviling and will easily pick up on your system problems - whether it is your source, amplifier, cables and specially your preamplifier. If you thing that there are a lot of good preamplifiers out there, which will easily enhance the performance of your system, think again - most likely you don’t have good sounding equipment and eventually you’ll be unsatisfied with the sound and look somewhere else - unless you cannot hear very well, so it really doesn’t matter so much to you.
Sound quality has become my choice of drug, and yes I’m an addict when it comes to that. Good sounding system is not good enough for me. It’s got to be better than that - magical, and extremely emotional so you can feel the rush into your entire body and brain and you cannot stop listening for hours, until 3:00AM the next day. That’s what I call a good drug. |
A loudspeaker/cabinet is the voice--the personality, for better or for worse--of your system. It behaves more like a musical instrument than anything else in the system. The room is also a huge factor, for the same reason. All the electronics matter a lot, but not as much in my experience. YMMV.
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In a sence the A
loudspeaker quality is very important,for by far the Loudspeaker
has much more THD % then any other part of your audio system
by a large margin at least 3-5% under excursions ,
this is why I Always rebuild the Xover with reference quality parts
it gives the drivers much more precision and accuracy , if not
it will cost you well over $10k+ just to get top quality throughout.
having sold Audio for over 30 years many well know companies
go cheap inside the speaker.
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Ya just gotta get some Maggies and go from there, as I always say...no listening fatigue as from electrostatics or boxes or (yikes!) horns, which belong on the top of poles at high school stadiums. (uh-oh--sorry to the Klipsch owners. I am sure yours are fine.)
Seriously, as mentioned many times, your ROOM is more important than any single item. Always demo new things there, please.
Cheers,
Richard |
“ If you send a really high quality signal to a pair of speakers and get synergy right, they will reward you in spades and punch well above their apparent weight class.” So true, for every weight class. You just don’t know what you’re missing until you go heavyweight. Being stuck in a situation where the room and placement is what it is doesn’t mean upgrading isn’t worth it, it just isn’t AS worth it.
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Im with erik on both his points
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Speakers and how they interact with the room is the most important, having enough power is second. If the differences between electronics are comparable to differences between speakers, you've got some very distorted electronics. They do make a difference, but it shouldn't be a huge one unless they're intentionally designed to have a very particular character. |
"folks will start to realize that that eccentric person called kenjit was right all along."
Don't hold your breath, you do know what happens to one who refers to themselves in the third person, don't you? |
It wont be long before custom tuning is the norm and folks will start to realize that that eccentric person called kenjit was right all along. Kenjit is stuck in the halcyon dreams of the 1980s. DSP alone cannot fix a bad room. Floyd Toole, among many experts, agree on this. A room with good acoustics lends itself very well to EQ though. Best, Erik |
Overheard at an audio showroom, with a finely tuned system of all Linn front end Klimax/Exakt/Katalyst streamer, DACs, amplification and Linn speakers: “I hate Linn electronics but these Linn speakers sound amazing!...” |
I think Erik is exactly correct - if the speaker/room combination does not work, the speaker is not going to sound its best.
Room correction is far from the norm even today, and effective tuning remains the province of very expensive equipment. Can it work? Yes - I heard a Linn demonstration that was nothing short of remarkable. But we're a long way from being able to reasonably tune (however it's done) speakers to where the room is irrelevant.
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Erik is not correct. Speakers are factory tuned so that they will suit a wide variety of users preferences but its impossible to satisfy everybody.
Change is happening and we are seeing more dsp based monitors that do enable custom tuning by the user with EQ.
It wont be long before custom tuning is the norm and folks will start to realize that that eccentric person called kenjit was right all along.
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I do believe that being happy with any speaker is the room. Too often listeners hear a great experience at a dealer, come home, don’t have it, and then are sold power cables, amps, etc, to try and reach the nirvana which was always the room to begin with.
A good room is transformative, and can make a lot of speakers sound really great. A mediocre or poor sounding room requires you to chase synergy forever.
In general, given the same speaker type, I'll take a mediocre speaker and a great room than the opposite.
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IMO a major reason for the divergence of viewpoints which tends to exist on this question is that for a given level of sonic quality the cost of a speaker tends to be dramatically affected by two things: (1) The maximum volume the speaker can cleanly produce, and (2) The deep bass extension it can provide. And different listeners tend to have very different requirements and preferences in those regards. For example, over the years I’ve seen many members here comment that the peaks of the music they listen to are never louder than perhaps 90 db or so at their listening position, and in many cases a good deal less than that. On the other hand, though, quite a few classical symphonic recordings in my collection, that have been well engineered with little or no dynamic compression, can produce peak SPLs at my 12 foot listening distance in the area of 100 to 105 db, **while being listened to at average levels in the mid-70s.** Which means that each speaker must be able to cleanly produce levels approaching 110 db at the usual 1 meter measuring distance. Many speakers, certainly including most small speakers, simply cannot handle that kind of dynamic range while also providing quality sonics. And of course different listeners will tend to have differing preferences regarding deep bass extension, and regarding the use of subwoofers to supplement it. So, yes, many listeners will be happy with speakers that represent a relatively small percentage of total system cost. While others would find those speakers incapable of handling the dynamic peaks of some of their recordings, at their preferred listening volumes, and/or incapable of providing the deep bass extension they prefer. And for a given level of sonic quality, in the latter case preferred speakers will tend to represent a much greater percentage of system cost than in the former case. Regards, --Al |
All speakers are capable of the changes the OP discusses. He has done nothing exceptional. To actually move up, he must seek a superior transducer. millercarbon stated, "Where you put the speakers matters more than which speakers, so why anyone obsesses and fixates on the speakers themselves is beyond me. Yet they do."
As stated, that comment disregards fundamental performance differences between speaker models, speaker brands and genres of speakers. I disagree entirely. :(
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I think the bad advice is to over-buy a speaker you can't drive
adequately from the get-go. For instance, I've seen a lot of balking at
the suggestion one spend $2k on power for a $500 pair of Elac Uni-Fi's. But there's nothing worse than a pair of under-driven speakers.
And those little suckers positively sing with a decent amount of current
behind them, as Elac demonstrates at show after show.
I don't think I was ever really happy with my system until I finally settled on speakers I knew I loved (Thiel) and dedicated building around them. There was some trial and error (amp & cable combos), but when I finally nailed it - well I haven't bought anything new (except cartridges) for 15 years. I also have no doubt had I kept my old Maggies or B&W's I'd have arrived at a totally different solution. I find it interesting that a lot of people in the Thiel owner forum arrived at similar amplification choices (BAT)! Not a coincidence.
The other key component, probably more than anything you "plug in" is the room. We see so many people with tile floors, bare walls, speakers right up against the wall flanking a TV with a turntable about 10" from one of the speakers. Youtube is full of people showing off their systems like this. One I saw the guy literally had the entire rear wall mirrored. Even on YT/tablet you could hear how awful it was!
I've just moved to a new place for the second time in a year. I was about to downsize my speakers in the townhouse. Now, I've got to decide where I'm setting up, and spend my budget to get the room right before I buy anything new.
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I've had a pair of Linn Helix 2 speakers, with the ku-stone stands, since about 2005 (the speakers themselves date to the mid 1990s). They've been good enough that I haven't wanted to change them out, until I moved to a townhouse that they just can't load well enough. So I'm finally replacing them with a pair of Monitor Audio Gold 300s.
I think you hit on the critical aspect - the need to build a system that works well together. I remember the days when the reductio ad absurdum folks suggested (tongue in cheek, one hopes!) that the best way to build a system was with a Linn LP-12 and an AM radio and then to upgrade from there. That's obviously absurd.
But I do generally agree with the concept that the better your source(s), the higher the ceiling for the sound of a system. We used to do a demo where we'd play PSB 300 speakers ($300/pair in the mid-1990s; stand mounts) with a Naim CDS-82-250 and then dare people to guess how much they cost - most guessed around 3k, thinking they were the ProAc Response 2. The challenge I now have is upgrading my source - it's an Exposure 3010S2 CD player, which is terrific, but it's going to be very difficult/expensive to upgrade it in a meaningful way that still synergizes with the rest of my system.
At the other extreme, I don't think it makes sense to put, say, a $8k speaker with a NAD or Denon or Marantz or whatever receiver - I think you're going to leave a LOT of that speaker's performance in the box, so to speak.
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You're arbitrarily picking speakers but could just as well be saying the same about the turntable, cartridge, or amp. All those one guy or another thinks is so important. The reality is no one is any more important than any other. The really killer good sound always comes from raising everything up to around the same level. Buying new speakers while using the plastic patch cords and rubber power cords that came in the box is a waste. Upgrading to a better power cord or speaker cable while using the crap fuse that came in the box is a waste. Buying anything before cleaning all the connections and cleaning up the spiders nest of cables behind the rack. shows you just don't understand what's going on.
I could go on and on. Where you put the speakers matters more than which speakers, so why anyone obsesses and fixates on the speakers themselves is beyond me. Yet they do.
Only thing you said that concerns me is "
tuned to work in synergy with these speakers" because if by that you mean fixing or hiding speaker weaknesses by picking components with a different set of weaknesses then you can wind up with a system that works great only until you really do want to change the speakers, and then you are in a pickle. But if you did what you should do and select everything based on its own excellence and then you are surprised "the speakers sound better" well then congratulations, that's the way its done.
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I go through speakers really, really fast. I would completely agree that speakers will make the biggest change in sound in a system. I also agree that system synergy, and also very important, speakers being the right size for your listening room, have a huge impact on overall sound quality.
I am just now learning though that you can’t judge a speaker based on drivers used. The Totem Arro’s that I am currently enjoying the heck out of, slayed 3 other, larger, more expensive speakers with better built, higher quality drivers in them. The Arros couple to my room perfectly and have a magic or aura to their sound.
I have around $4500 in my entire set-up including room treatments and I have $400 in the Arros. They displaced 3 other pairs of speakers that were in the $1000-$1200 range used.
Speakers make a huge difference in sound, its just that you may not prefer the more expensive speakers or the higher quality drivers soundwise. |
