Home Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

"Better quality speakers are not as forgiving"

This is an oft-repeated statement. In its extreme form, people say that a really high quality system is so mercelessly revealing that poorer recordings are unpleasant to listen to. In my experience, the better the system, the better music sounds. Of course you can hear smaller departures from perfection in recordings with a higher quality system, but you also hear the high quality sound at high quality. That is, you are not using the masking effect of the poor sound of your speakers to hide imperfections in the sound of the recordings. If you think about that, you might come to the conclusion that I did; do everything you can and can afford to avoid having your speakers (and system) degrade the sound. Otherwsie, maybe you would be best off listening on a car-radio or simular low-level performer, where everything sounds equally bad- you just hear the faults of the system.

I don't think I am making myself clear. A so-so recording may sound good on the Spendors, but it sounds even better on the Vandersteens. On the Spendors I hear the deficiencies of the speaker (on all recordings) added to the problems of the recording, but on the Vandersteens I am only limited by the recording. Sure I can hear the faults of the recording itself "better," or maybe I should say more clearly, because the faults of the speaker aren't in the way, but overall it just sounds better. It may take some practice, but it does help to concentrate on the music and what is good about it rather than what is not good about the sound. In this case, a better sounding speaker makes the music itself sound better regardless of the quality of the recording, unless the recording is hopelessly bad. However, I find I enjoy the old performances from the '30s of Schnabel playing the Beethoven piano sonatas more on my Vandersteens than on my Spendors, and these recordings came from some pretty marginal old 78s at times.

Hope this helps.

Joe


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