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Original Message

RE: Ah....

Posted by rick_m on May 22, 2012 at 18:26:54:

"Would you compromise for an amp that has horrible specifications simply because it looks nice on the rack?"

Of course not Stu. In fact I truly don't care what my power amp looks like since it lives on the floor of a closet.

But speakers are another matter, they pretty much have to be in the room with you and that often means tradeoffs. That's where knowing the genre of main interest may help. Like you I don't need to reproduce ultra loud music because my main interest isn't rock concerts and sadly loud sounds now hurt my aged ears and I want to keep what dynamic range I have as long as possible! Even beyond sound the speaker concerns also extend to other's in the house and Wives, Kids and pets gotta be considered. At least a little...

"We need a measure of common sense in audio, and, as I see it, speakers are among the weakest point."

I suppose so, they surely have been traditionally. But I wonder if they aren't getting overall better, especially the affordable ones. I haven't been in the market for so long that I don't have a clue.

As far as distortion goes a lot depends upon it's nature. Usually speakers are the most linear for small displacements and run into troubles when loud. Since our ears also follow that pattern we may be less annoyed by it than by, say, crossover distortion in amplifiers.

Temporal anomalies and dispersion shifting over frequency are sort of speaker specialties and I think they can really snap you out of the music and make you aware that somethings artificial. Artifacts tend to do that...

Reviewer-wise I think that the readers would benefit most from having specialization where each only does a class or two of components. I realize that that might be more boring for them but that doesn't bother me a whit if they are paid professionals, it just goes with the territory!

I have a hard time seeing how any useful lateral comparisons can be done without systematic evaluation and changing other things in the system willy-nilly eliminates doing that effectively. Additionally a small library of 'reference' components should be kept to close the loop from time to time.

As you can imagine I don't put too much stock in reviews, well except for "Sam Tellig"'s. One piece of advice used to be to find a reviewer with similar ears and tastes and he seems to be mine... But he would be even better with a good testing structure!

Regards, Rick