I gotta say, times have changed, and I no longer consider myself an audiophile, at least by the standards here. When I was a young man, it was all about low distortion amps, at least 100W/ch. Everyone knew that the speakers introduced more distortion than any good amp would. Next problem, would be the room. Third problem would be the limitations and issues with vinyl records. Now days, it seems like everything is subjective. Throw some old technology in, like glowing tube amps, crazy speaker designs, all sorts of things that create innacuracies, cost tons, and are full of hype. Yeah, if you spend $10k on a pair of speakers and amps, you are going to tell yourself they are great, otherwise you are a dope, right?
When it comes to high fidelity speakers, the straightforward engineering and design was done in the three decades from ‘50 to ‘80. Good bass, square inches of driver. Efficiency, horns. Good highs, domes. Get some of those high end vintage studio monitors from the last decade of that period from Altec Lansing, et al, and you won’t lose money when the marketing hype runs out on those ridiculously expensive systems. (Full disclosure, I just sold a pair that I got in the mid-seventies, for several times what I paid for them then, and they can still be re-serviced to this day.) Unless of course, you just want to brag about how much you spent to get the exact ‘tone’ (distortion?) you were looking for.
Now, I wait for the experts to cry foul and my ignorance and naïveté. Have to admit to both, and am going deaf, so this is now all lost on me.
When it comes to high fidelity speakers, the straightforward engineering and design was done in the three decades from ‘50 to ‘80. Good bass, square inches of driver. Efficiency, horns. Good highs, domes. Get some of those high end vintage studio monitors from the last decade of that period from Altec Lansing, et al, and you won’t lose money when the marketing hype runs out on those ridiculously expensive systems. (Full disclosure, I just sold a pair that I got in the mid-seventies, for several times what I paid for them then, and they can still be re-serviced to this day.) Unless of course, you just want to brag about how much you spent to get the exact ‘tone’ (distortion?) you were looking for.
Now, I wait for the experts to cry foul and my ignorance and naïveté. Have to admit to both, and am going deaf, so this is now all lost on me.