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RE: excuse the odd question - why buy controversial speakers?

Posted by RGA (R) on February 12, 2012 at 08:17:25

In Reply to: RE: excuse the odd question - why buy controversial speakers? posted by Hi-Fi Nut on February 12, 2012 at 04:51:46:

I suppose no analogy is ever perfect but we'll have to disagree. No loudspeaker is a perfect music reproducer - all of them are grossly inaccurate no matter what the magazines or manufacturers or engineers tell you. If they tell you it's accurate they're lying.

So now with that known you have say 100 well qualified degree holding engineers who will come up with a loudspeaker they feel is best at reproducing music.

What do you get from these people?

1) Horns are best - higher efficiency is better
2) wide dispersion speakers with the heaviest possible damping materials available to deaden resonances.
3) cabinets designed in complete opposition to number 2 - to have a live box with the idea to get rid of the resonance from the box as fast as possible - to follow the direct wave such that it is inaudible to the human ear
4) Low efficiency long throw driver designs
5) Transmission line speakers to generate more bass from a small box
6) active designs to keep wiring as short as possible
7) the point source theory that the best sound is a sound where the speaker emulates a point source - all music comes from a single point in space
8) Massive speakers in a line array with 20 drivers per side because big and powerful is better and each driver can cover a narrow frequency response better than one driver doing everything.
9) omni-directional - instruments have sound that go in all directions - speaker ought to recreate that kind of approach
10) direct radiator - want to beam the sound forward because 9 works for instruments but recordings are not made that way and so they need to reproduce the way the disc was made
11) Tannoy - the treble needs to come from the center of the woofer - this resolves the single driver doing all the work in a two way but in the same space as a single driver
12) It has to be flat on and off axis frequency response - all other considerations are secondary
13) 12 is nice and fine but how does it actually sound? If it sounds like crap then let's change it to make it sound better - even if it is down 2db at 1khz if it sounds better do it.
14) Dipole panels - they're faster and have less THD (generally). This is the primary consideration - speed and a lack of box - bass and dynamics and efficiency and treble extension and ease of positioning be damned as well as sane pricing.
15) modular - attach separate boxes to each other - tweeter on top
16) big woofer better than small woofer
17) use the room in the design - corner loading - vs avoid the room - try to get it out of the equation - free standers.
18) Speakers using various drivers to generate sound, paper, silk dome, kevlar, polypropolene, diamond, beryllium, Hemp, ribbon, electrostics, metal, plasma, field coils, alnico, and on it goes.


And it goes on and on. All of these makers have people with degrees in engineering who think they are right and the other approaches are wrong or less right.

So to establish what is controversial is a problem.

I am not sure what controversial is - from my list above there are several makers who make speakers in those general "camps" and in every case they sell very well.

At the lower price end of the market speakers tend to have similar designs - probably because they're cheapest to make. So that tends to be what people might view as mainstream or less controversial because they are made and sold in the largest number - but so is McDonalds - cheap and bland sells.

It might be controversial to sell a Gordon Ramsey deluxe burger for $28 but that doesn't mean it's not a vastly superior burger.

I guess I don't see controversial speaker designs. So long as an individual has actually bothered to audition it they are entitled to make any opinion of it they wish.

You make the point - you have to LIVE with the decision - quite right. And what you choose to live with I may not. This applies to cars, cameras etc. A camera may win in every technical aspect - but camera B comes in blue and I want a blue one. I buy the blue one because I really don't care that much about prints at 40 by 80.

And because all speakers are inaccurate and more to the point inaccurate in different ways you need to determine which inaccuracy you can stomach. I will much prefer a speaker that has greater frequency response errors than one that is much better in that regard but has a slight tilt in the upper midrange lower treble and that has sucky dynamics and compresses badly at decent volume levels. Some people need the tilt in the treble because they can't hear high frequencies very well anymore. So while it may irritate the hell out of me - they may not even notice it.

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