Your advice to speakers designers

Ha, the first thing that came to my mind was almost the opposite of the
OP’s view. My first impulse is to say build better looking speakers!!!!!

Aesthetics are important to me, speakers are a form of furniture - I will be placing them in a room whose aesthetics I care about and I’ll be staring at the speakers for long periods of time listening.

I know quite a number of audiophiles don’t care so much about aesthetics and frankly, their listening rooms show it; like I’m looking at a frat-guy’s place with every bit of equipment and wire spilled all over in view and little care for the looks of the room. (Though there are also some absolutely beautiful set ups in the virtual systems pictures as well).

Overall I think the aesthetics of speaker design has upped it’s game over the years. That said, some of the design aesthetics are still what an engineer with no design experience would think of as "cool."

This being an audiophile site it goes without saying that we want great sound. So obviously I’m not inclined to say "give me worse sound." But few things to me are more wonderful than a gorgeous lookingspeaker that sounds beautiful.

If aesthetics are important then the sound will never be great.

That’s simply not the case.

First, I’ve had numerous speakers I think were aesthetically beautiful that sounded great. Further, the more expensive speakers tend to be the more beautifully built speakers with even more attention to finish and style. As is the case with most high performance luxury items. Many of the Tidal speakers, for instance, are among the most beautifully made, and are also in the top sphere of performance.

(And I also happen to like the aesthetics of the MBL speakers, which produce some of the most amazing sound I’ve ever heard).

Right now I have Thiel 2.7 speakers in ebony and they are among the most beautiful speakers I’ve ever seen, and they sound superb. So do my bigger 3.7s.

A friend of mine reviews audio gear and often has crazy expensive gear and cabling. His set up is more of a "reviewer" set up in terms of aesthetics - equipment all around. I prefer most equipment to be out of sight, except the speakers, hence all my cabling is mostly hidden, source gear in another room. Yet my system usually sounds more impressive than his, because I put my money into my speakers (and not cables) and especially because I had the room professionally designed for good acoustics, with a high priority for aesthetics so you don’t see the treatments.

There is nothing about high end audio that bars beautiful industrial design as part of the process. And there’s quite a bit of it in the high end.

inna,

"I rarely just sit down and listen,

"

Wait. What? You don’t sit down and listen to music?

Did you wander into a high end audio forum by mistake? :-)

Can you explain further: Do you just listen to high end audio as background music for other activities?

jon,

My living room (in which we put our nice furniture and decor) was good sounding even before I remodeled it with an acoustician. It had an asymmetrical layout with bay windows, a wide opening to a hallway, and a good ratio of furniture and live to dead acoustics. Whether it was speaker designers, or sound mixers, or fellow audiophiles, all of them were amazed by the sound I got in my room.

After the remodel, it’s even easier to get great sound. And the room treatments are all hidden, built in to the structure of the room in a way that no one ever suspects to be room treatment. It’s completely "clean" looking of room treatment in that sense (I hate the look of room treatments).

And I bet my room is sonically better than plenty of people spending far more on speakers, placed in rooms which are aesthetically challenged looking.

It’s just not true to say if aesthetics are important "the sound will never be great." That’s what industrial design, a care for style,  and ingenuity are all about.

inna,

I wasn’t being mean. Notice I was making a joke, and then asking you to explain further how you listen.

I agree imaging isn’t everything (it’s down my list of priorities, though I like it).

But obviously it’s usual for audiophiles - e.g. those who inhabit a forum like this - to sit and listen critically to music. It’s almost the feature that defines people in this hobby.  A careful placement of speakers relative to the room and listening position is also how one realizes the potential of most loudspeakers, timbrally as well.  So when someone says he doesn’t often sit down and listen that suggests you listen to them as background music and that seems rather unusual given the context of a forum like this.

I in no way begrudge your listening habits. After all, I spend plenty of time listening to just the speakers on my iphone and actually enjoy it. But I wouldn’t spend lots of money on a 2 channel system if I weren’t regularly paying real attention to it, which usually involves sitting in the room with the speakers.

Hi randy,

I had an extensive "build thread" on AVS for my home theater/2 channel room reno.  It's still there but unfortunately all my pictures were hosted on a site that moved from free to paid hosting, and since I didn't pay eventually all the pictures disappeared.  There's only one picture (for some reason) at the very beginning of a "room description" thread you can see here:

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/29-what-s-your-system-configuration/1259917-rich-s-variable-image-size...

The sofa is massive and soaks up a lot, but much of the treatment is hidden in the ceiling, which simply looks like a build-down structure to house lighting, add architectural detail etc.  But it's actually using a tensed brown felt fabric treatment stretched across the ceiling of the build-down, which allows a whole lot of absorption to be hidden at strategic areas.  Overhead the speaker area it's like a giant bass trap.
There's also absorption built invisibly into the wall corner area on either side of the screen.   Further, there are various types of curtains, of various thickness, that can be pulled to anywhere on the walls to cut down reflectivity as desired.  (For instance, there is a cover for the reflective fire place area).   So I can go from a more lively or less lively sounding room, depending on what suits the speaker.  The fact that the room is open to the hallway on one side also seems to relieve bass node problems.

You can see just part of the ceiling build down at the top of the photo.

No one ever recognizes it as room treatment because it just looks like architectural or decor detail (and the rest is hidden).   But, to my amazement, one of the most common comments I get, even from non-audio people is "This room sounds good" even when we are just talking in the room.

It was a very tough set of criteria to balance in that room and we did quite well all things considered.

Cheers!