Any with poor treble.
Basically all of them have crossover issues, sibilance issues, beaming issues, dispersion issues, distortion issues.
Some of them are quite unbearable. Some are more tolerable.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a speaker you can turn right up and continue enjoying clean pristine treble?
Is there even such a thing?
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@uncledemp ,
"Humans mean-mouthing humans over stereos, really? It’s a stereo. You’d insult and fight with someone over a stereo?"
Maybe not me and you, but for some dealers, manufacturers and designers, their very livelihood may depend upon the success of their products.
Perhaps it’s might be more helpful to the designers if we could be more specific about any perceived problems we encounter in our experience with various loudspeakers?
It can’t be easy of course.
I heard some very highly regarded 2 way floorstanders a few years back and was very close to buying them there and then.
What stopped me was the way they reproduced John Lennon’s vocals on Across the Universe. They were simply plain wrong. I’d never heard Lennon’s voice sound like that in the mid/lower register before.
It seemed to be an issue with the way the tweeter was crossing over to the woofer and switching to a tube amp didn’t make the issue go away.
The tweeter happened to be the Seas Excel, a renowned and not inexpensive design.
So I could only assume that the designer, perhaps in his wish for optimal dispersion had crossed it over at just a little too low a point for its comfort.
It was a shame as that design was otherwise a highly revealing one and unusually clean through rest of its operating range. |
I generally find that it’s the more ambitious designs that usually draw more attention to their faults than some less ambitious one.
For example the speaker on the iPad if within its operating range, is perfectly well balanced and inoffensive.
On the other hand I’ve yet to find an audiophile loudspeaker that comes anywhere near to being as well balanced.
The Kerr K320s I heard a few years back did most things well. The ribbon tweeter did not draw attention to itself and neither did the box.
It wasn’t perfect, and alas the price has shot up quite dramatically.
I remember hearing some Vivid Audio speakers and whilst their advanced metal drivers had tremendous dynamics (I cant remember hearing any better) they did have an unpleasant sharpness to the treble that could get borderline painful.
Hopefully more recent Vivid designs have tackled that issue.
I once read that PSB M4U headphones are said to sound like a good pair of loudspeakers (they certainly didn’t in my experience but that’s another story) but what about the other way around?.
Which loudspeakers sound the most like a good/great pair of headphones?
No overhang, great dynamics, and seamless treble, quicksilver transients etc.
Is it not fair to say that, apart from the chest thumping bass that some speakers are able to deliver, that headphones generally do everything better?
I have hardly finished writing this and I can imagine the answer already, electrostatics!
OK apart from electrostatics, which loudspeakers sound most like headphones?
Do any of them?
Or does that question need a separate thread all of its own?
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@ kenjit, "I remember hearing some Vivid Audio speakers and whilst their advanced metal drivers had tremendous dynamics (I cant remember hearing any better) they did have an unpleasant sharpness to the treble that could get borderline painful." which model? -------- I didn’t want to mention the exact model because I couldn’t remember for sure. However I did remember posting a summary on here not long afterwards on here. Here it is - from 26.09.2018 Best Loudspeakers for Rich Timbre? After weeks of waiting I finally got to visit The UK Audio Show 2018 (Woodland Grange, UK) at the weekend. They had some impressive speakers there including the curvy, strokeable Vivid Kaya 90 - amazing dynamics, scale, imagery and dare I say it, the merest hint of metallic tinged timbre? https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/best-loudspeakers-for-rich-timbre?page=5 |
@whitestix , an interesting post. The original LS50 has been one of the great success stories of the past decade.
It will also be interesting to see which well known brands do not make an eventual appearance here. [Unless I've missed it, Tekton and Ohm Walsh's seem to have escaped so far, as have designs which feature ribbon tweeters?].
Maybe that was the OPs intention to draw up a domestic shortlist? He's making a list, he's checking it twice.
Anyway I think it's fair to assume that most of us were prepared to experiment with placing and ancillaries before condemning any particular speaker and moving on.
Why wouldn't we, considering the usual financial hit that normally comes with that?
I've owned 3 different Tannoy models and all have been good at their price points, the MX3, the R3 and the Berkeley's.
The only one I would have trouble living with today would be the budget floorstanding MX3s with their obvious treble sting (comparitively speaking + they weren't a horror show - very few are).
In hindsight maybe it wasn't that their treble was especially more harsh than the other two. Maybe it was the fact that they were doing quite a lot less elsewhere that drew more attention to what the soft dome tweeter was doing.
Ideally we audiophiles want a speaker that does a lot of things really well as otherwise we're likely to become increasingly frustrated with what we perceive is not being done well.
This brings the danger of upgrading to something that does this one particular thing better - only for us to later realise it also does quite a few things worse!
I suspect more than a few of us have been on this particular roundabout to find we end up back close to where we began.
Especially if we were fortunate enough to begin our initial audio journey with a mid or high performance design. |
@bgm1911,
"while you may be correct, I cannot spend 19K on speakers that don’t sound right during an audition, and then HOPE I can make them sound better in my home."
Nor I hope should anyone else ever have to either.
At 19k I would certainly expect a loudspeaker to be close to the state of the art in every measure. With a low end of +/- 3db at 34Hz (from their own spec sheet) it's a bit disappointing for such an expensive design to begin rolling off the bass so early.
You did well to ignore what you'd read and go with what you heard. Sometimes these reviewers 'forget' to mention that a big name speaker might simply have no real low end. |
@adg101,
Over the years I’ve not seen ProAcs getting much flak from users.
@inna,
"Listening at moderate levels might help a little."
It does.
Every single speaker I’ve ever owned began to throw out unacceptable levels of bass and treble distortion on the rare occasions I wanted to turn the volume dial a bit further than usual.
But then I have never owned speakers like the really big Tannoys, JBLs or Klipch’s.
Apparently some fancy clubs in London used to employ Tannoy Westminster’s to get the party swinging.
Or at least they did back when we were all still free. |
@mahgister,
"It is the ROOM.....
No speaker can exceed his room, any controlled room can exceed any part of the audio system in potential S.Q."
I'm inclined to agree. My modest music centre did sound pretty good in our old house. My current system is supposedly vastly superior but not as satisfying.
Some of that will be down to me being a lot younger back then and in the early days of discovering the world of rock music courtesy mainly of 2 books (The Illustrated "New Musical Express" Encyclopaedia of Rock and Paul Gambaccini's Critic's Choice: Top 200 Albums).
Even so, some of that must have been down to the room. Perhaps my previous room was a little bit more lively, and that fitted better in with my tastes?
Unfortunately most of us are constrained in the choice of what (size of speakers) we can put into our room nevermind which room we can put them in.
Therefore it's mostly a question of making the best of what we have.
Anyway, point taken, every loudspeaker must be considered in conjunction with the environment it is to be used in.
As someone once said, it is usually a question of placing one box inside another one.
It's bound to have some effect.
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I once heard some B&W 601s at a show with some friends. They were on chrome pedestal stands being driven by some Arcam gear.
We were all surprised that such small speakers could sound so large.
I later auditioned some 602s and whilst I didn’t end up buying them, there was no denying that they were very well rounded speakers. [ I’ve also heard some B&W Zeppelin Bluetooth speakers which were nothing to write home about, but that’s another story.]
Therefore it’s a bit strange to read that later and far more ambitious models are failing to satisfy.
Surely, in a head to head, the 800 series would be better than the 600 series? Especially given the reputation of their much vaunted tweeter tech in their larger speakers.
Could it be that as asking the price goes up our expectations go up accordingly?
If so, then would it ever be possible to be satisfied?
Therefore might it not be better to forget about price and judge purely on sound quality?
For example I heard the Kerr K320s at another show and whilst I loved them, I found the much larger (and more expensive) K1000s left me cold. They just sounded more washed out despite their power handling and dynamics.
They reminded me of the Naim S 600 with their BMR driver. Impressive in scale but not in tone.
This thread seems to be suggesting that every listener has a correspondingly different set of needs when it comes to loudspeakers.
One which often defies price. |
