What would your "perfect speaker" sound like.
What would your perfect speaker sound like. Not interested in the brand, or the a speaker you heard at a friends house or audio show This is a thought experiment. Simply conjur up the most divine sound in you mind and tell us what you are conjuring.
Please be brief,
Natural… not accentuated in treble or bass. Coherent top to bottom… I have owned a number of planar / dynamic speakers… while listening to them they don’t sound uncoherent… until you hear a coherent one. I would rather some bass truncation over incoherence with split technologies or subs with different character. Musical with natural timbre. After over ten years with season tickets to the symphony in “the audiophile seats, row 7 center”… I know what natural and musical sounds like. |
There is no such thing as a perfect speaker at ANY price bracket. When you have a few different speaker designs and realize their pros and cons, you would get a feel for 'perfection' constrained by the limitations of an engineering design space (that any engineer is subject to). Instead of looking for a perfect speaker, focus on building a perfect room. The latter is much more achievable than a perfect speaker. |
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I have owned this particular pair of Lascalas for over 20 years, and after my extensive damping of the " entire " design, everything stock , and the non popular AL crossovers ( built for a short time, but my favorite of them all ), I get out of them, whatever I feed them. Given my room, listening chair distance, and " my desired " sound characteristics, they work well, and produce a very enjoyable, intimate, truthful, ear opening, powerful, emotionally engaging, listening experience, all the while knowing, I am listening to recordings. Gummies help, too. Enjoy ! MrD. |
@jasonbourne71 ....*L* It'd be unlikely you'd want to hold it for very long, but I get your drift... ;) Mho, I think a direct neural input will beat yours to the marketplace, but we'd could place our bets as to which one will surface....🤷♂️ The big rabbit from the hat trick will be to stay alive long enough to find out the answer....😏 "Gentlemen, place your bets....bitcoin not accepted, no...." |
ONE INPUT TO RULE THEM ALL... Alas, I'll pass.....it'd probably play hell with my TAVR valve, the pacemaker/defib onboard already... ....and whatever else I get Borg'd with....😖 Resistance isn't futile when inevitability beckons.... ( Is it just me? Why does DJT's smugshot remind me of the AntiChrist? ) 😎 |
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Perfect speaker would be no speaker. Music delivered by Star Trek like transporter. @asvjerry, it’s not just you. |
I am flabbergasted by the facts that some believe that speakers choice matter more than the room... For me the room matter as much...If not more... 😊 I prefer less performant speakers in a dedicated acoustic room than more performant speakers in a bad room ( most non dedicated room ) ... Acoustician regard the specs of speakers as the quantitative aspects of a room only data they will use to create great sound... Any speakers can sound if not extraordinary, optimal in any great room dedicated to them... My favorite speakers is the only one paradoxically i never really listened to at his optimal possibilities then i never really heard them , and incredibly i owned them for 45 years and this was because i did not know about the importance of acoustic for so long...😁 Then my mythical Tannoy dual gold Mallorcan, had sounded way less good in my living room for 45 five years than my less well designed and inferior Mission Cyrus 781 in a dedicated acoustic room...is this not extraordinary ? The room dont change the specs for sure but maximalize all there is that is good in a speaker on a high level...Or the room kill the best specs of any speakers and translate them in the worst ... My 12 pounds of salt... Give me the room first... 😁 And pick a good speakers for me... I will live with them... Why do you think i can be happy with a good but cheap pair of speakers ( 100 bucks) now with only a dedicated acoustic corner ? Am i deaf? Or did i did what we must do to install them in the right way ? This M-audio MV40 speakers i disliked them when i bought them 12 years ago...I was used to the Tannoy sound which was way over them even in a bad room..I sold the Tannoy which was an error because i needed smaller one on my desk and because i learned nothing about acoustic at the times... The M-audio were used only for computer sake..l. I never considered them able to deliver music...I bought Mission to replace the Tannoy... Till i lost my Mission speakers/dedicated room , because i sold my house 1 year ago... In my new basement i created a dedicated acoustic corner shaped for these little M-Audio... What a surprize at the end of this process ... i now can listen music and i have even a soundstage and a good imaging and good timbre with the right dac with good but very low cost speakers ... i created more diffusive surface for them... I used two foldable screens for that... I dont have deep bass for sure with a 4 inches driver, but i have acceptable bass .... Really the acoustic matter way more than the price of the speakers... What was the use to have been lucky enough to own the Tannoy dual gold, a shining pair of speakers, if you have never been able to set them right as i was unable to do it for 45 years ? You can laught at me.... But it is pure truth learned the hard way ...
Imperfect speakers in the perfect room for them matter way more than the perfect speakers in the most imperfect room.... Pick the speakers for me i will make them shine... Acoustic rule... Not speakers design alone and by itself... |
#Mahgister...... you are right. Case in point, go to any show where they set up their equipment [speakers included] in a hotel room like Axpona. Some of the most expensive speakers will sound crappy beyond belief because the space is too small or untreated. I never have the heart to say much of anything, especially when they smile and act like it is golden. |
@campoly ....*G* Good.... ;) ...we will now tiptoe away from that, noting the deletion... 😏 .....and I've enough voices in my head....sans the 'mute' function at some junction....😜 @barts Hey, yeah....I Know that my drivers are Perfect, even if DIY’d.... And the others, aggregated to illume The Path to them, ditto....even if only 99.9%.. ....and, as they come to take me away, in that lovely tight canvas coat on the handtruck I’ll try not to foam @ the mouth too much....🤪 ....getting harder to escape, tho’...;) |
As one who has correctly treated my room, I can also point out the importance of the room. BUT, the speaker is also extremely important. Sorry, but no matter how good one's room is, if a speaker is lacking detail, transient response, accurate timbre, is inherently colored, NO AMOUNT of room treatment is going to correct for that. I have heard plenty of very high end speakers, in average sounding rooms, sound better than lesser speakers in well treated rooms. For example, I have heard Von Schweikerrt VR 55 mkII ($65K). in a typical living room sort of setting, sound substantially better than a pair of $14K Sonus Faber (not sure the model) in a professionally treated room. The Von Schweikert's had better attack and decay, had better transient response, had a bigger, deeper, more detailed soundstage, were more neutral, timbre was better. Those things are inherent in the speakers themselves, and no amount of room treatment will get a lesser speaker, to do what it is not capable of doing. |
I want my speaker sounds like the original music. I am getting close. Romanza andaluza, Op. 22, No. (Itzhak Perlman) My audio system live recording ============= Prelude To A Kiss -- Ella Fitzgerald ============= If the original music (cleanest) sounds veiled and fuzzy, your ears are unnatural hearing mode. To make your ears to normal natural sound mode, listen to the original music for 1-2 minutes ("equalize your ears to make ears to pop to make it faster) until the orig music sounds clean. General public (non-audiophiles) ears are always in natural hearing mode. So, they hear all hi-fi audio sound veiled and fuzzy. Therefore, wives don't like hi-fi audio sounds. All audio systems (except my WT system) in the world sound unnatural. Alex/Wavetouch |
I Own M-Studio Mv40 speakers self powered...They compared in specs to the 80 hertz limit Of the LS3 5AS... Instead of investing 10,000 bucks as advised by Mijostyn whose pocket seems without limit...😁 😊 I put a bunch of straws in the Port hole behind , increasing then the volume of the resonators chamber increasing my bass extension and depth then i helped the Tweeter directional focalization to my ears by putting a plastic ring around the tweeters ... No cost.... Complete transformation of a good cheap speakers in superlative small one......( i arrange an acoustic corner too for them ) I go more down in the bass , and the bass i have have way more extension... My cheap speakers beat all headphones i ever own...Save my beloved K340... If you want to purchase a bigger soundfield for more person in a bigger room invest 10,000 bucks in some good bigger speaker able to go near 30 hertz... With this money which is more than 10,000 bucks for 2 dac, 2 subs, a DSP you will spare all that useless cables and intermediate stage with one bigger pair of speakers... It is my advice... If i listen Organ music with 30 hertz notes myself i quit my little speakers and go on my headphone... For jazz they are perfect... Cost : 100 bucks...
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Speaking of the ’perfect speaker’ apparently has a tendency to negate it as a speaker - for a good reason, it seems. And yet what’s the point of that when what we’re left with is always a setup of speakers for re-production? What’s perfect anyway - "perfect" within the limits of tech, design, acoustics and our abilities into implementation? Convenience, even?! Why not dream on within that realm and those conditions and make perfect a little less so, and yet pushing against those boundaries (not least convenience and dogma), just to make it a bit more attainable and something we actually want to aspire to. Within those limitations there’s ample room to strive pretty high, but maybe the real, implicit reason for making perfect unattainable is so many of us don’t have to deal with the mere effort of getting there - or, that is, certainly closer to "perfect." @sounds_real_audio wrote:
It certainly and very typically takes much more bass capacity, properly implemented, to get to that place where bass just happens in the room; wholly effortlessly, smoothly, mostly unrestricted in frequency range, and at any desired SPL. That one has to experience to understand, and yet getting there is inconvenient because the practical measures necessitated would challenge interior decoration and spousal approval. @inna wrote:
Exactly. |
An interesting exercise, and confusing when the adjectives start flying with no description of the meaning of the words. First, a speaker should do no harm. In other words, it shouldn't change the sound (especially instruments), in any way, that was captured on the recording. 1) A flat frequency response is the first requirement (and easier said than done for most speaker designers). 2) Near zero relative phase response (how the drivers relate to one another in terms of phase). This will permit a proper leading-edge dynamic. It will allow a speaker to disappear as a source of the sound. 3) With those two goals intact, the speaker must be able to faithfully track the dynamics of the recording – both micro and macro dynamics (don't underestimate the importance of faithfully resolving micro dynamics). 4) Details: the elimination of anything that veils the sound on the recording. And the ability to represent all of the ambience (reverb) the recording has on offer. If all done well, the speaker will enlist your attention and draw you into the music's beauty and intent. |
