Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Speaker Asylum ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

RE: Purpose of a loudspeaker....

Posted by Presto (A) on May 10, 2012 at 16:20:53

In Reply to: Purpose of a loudspeaker.... posted by BigguyinATL on May 10, 2012 at 12:09:03:

Hey Bigguy:

I think audiophiles like to exaggerate the difficulty in getting good sound - and make assembling a "high fi rig" sound more like a black art handed down from wizards of centuries past. An art attempted by so many yet mastered by so few...

The first thing to check is if the person you are talking with is on any medication for OCD, which is a precursor to having audiophile nervosa in many cases.

The fact is, there are hundreds of excellent sounding speakers out there to choose from for all tastes. I've heard some very nice sounding systems from music lovers who claim not to be audiophiles. They demo'd some gear, liked it and bought it. They have sold some gear, and some in the closet - they just don't seem so darned.... nervous about their system's performance.

I've pursued phase correction and room correction and variable baffle step compensation and all kinds of other speaker witchcraft, even to the extent of incorporating such rocket surgery concepts into a number of DIY designs. Am I a grand master speaker builder? No. But I know enough to know what kinds of speakers I likely WON'T like. For example, I generally won't like a 5" or 6" based 2-way for ALL music unless I have a subwoofer to accompany it. I have a fair degree of skill integrating subs with stand mounts, and don't believe the myth that floor standers are "out of the box" superior to 2-ways + sub. Yes, the floor standers have the "bass built it", but a sub/sat system gives the user more (and better) tactical options for locating things since the sub and speaker are separate entities. I generally don't like side firing subs on towers either.

As far as "function" of the loudspeaker, well, some think it's supposed to be a holo-deck - a transporter which beams you back to the venue and the original event. This is audiophile legend. A speaker is merely a transducer that takes electrical signals and turns them into sound. It does not "convert back" the sounds on the recording because there are no sounds on the recording. The recording is now grooves or pits on a CD. Then in the amplification chain, the recording is now potential differences and migration of electrons. The sound coming from the speaker, even the *theoretically ideal* speaker, is something entirely new - it has never existed before and it is absolutely not the "same" as the original event. Ever.

So why bother?

The trick is to get a speaker that does things in such a way that it tricks you. It either tricks you with spatial information or how it "plays with space and time" so to speak, or how it makes music seem to be more engaging, lifelike, "musical", or "tuneful".

Bottom line? The purpose of a loudspeaker is to give you pleasure. If it gives you pleasure, it serves it's purpose. A speaker with poor measurements, strange component layout, and terrible impulse response that pleases you is more valid that a speaker with flat response, a nice baffle step compensation compromise, and near-perfect impulse response that leaves you wanting more. Ask yourself why Wilson Watt/Puppies were the bees knees for so long after looking at their measurements.

Maybe Wilson already knew how to build the "near perfect" speaker but decided to build one that just sounds good instead...

Maybe this is a black art after all.

Cheers,
Presto

Edits: 05/10/12

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Signature Sound

[ Signature Sound Lounge ]

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---