What would your "perfect speaker" sound like.

@mahgister wrote:

Good drivers and very good crossovers are not enough...

They are not even necessary if you understand acoustics, you can do with what you have for the price you had pay for ...

A good driver needn’t be hellishly expensive, that would be my main takeaway. A bad driver is mostly just that, a bad driver, and one that’s oftentimes difficult if not impossible to work around and improve upon. However, look at what the late Peter Snell did with his speakers in the early 80’s with rather cheap, yet quality drivers (Philips, Audax, Becker and others) and how he paired and measured those speakers to very tight tolerances. Implementation is paramount. Crossover components needn’t be expensive either (to a degree), but needless to say their design is vital - be that passively or actively. Of course acoustics matter, but quite frequently I find acoustic measures (not least absorption) can lead to overdamping, which is hardly ideal either - worse even, I find, than a listening room a bit too lively. Balance is key, and preference is obviously a factor. Active config. takes better advantage of both amp and driver potential - another way to more effectively harness a potential within a price range.

I will let you the "perfect speakers" at astronomical cost ...

I will keep my imperfect modified one...

The speakers to which we add creativity and acoustic knowledge is the best ... Especially mine: incredible soundfield and timbre at 150 bucks ...

High end is a mindset not a price tag, to use the extraordinary post of mikelavigne ..

One thing to keep in mind is that your attitude, which I appreciate, can as well be applied with a budget of $1,500, $15k or more, not to mention a physical framework of the speakers that’s much larger. As you imply astronomical budgets can be put to very little use, and for some reason people spending that much money on equipment typically get more leeway with regard to being considered serious in their venture, but spending more money (than very little), not least on the basis of much larger speakers, shouldn’t automatically be considered a slippery slope. Even "magical" acoustics won't transform small drivers into mean air shifters with the ease, scale and dynamics that offers. 

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:

Doesn’t any one want more bass.....apparently not in their dream speaker.

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:

Assuming that big orchestra is one instrument, perfect speakers should sound very close to that instrument at any sound level. And if to accomplish that they have to be of enormous size, so be it.

Exactly.