Music Lovers Speaker vs. Audiophile Speaker

In my quest for a new set of speakers to replace the Paradigm 5se I’ve had for 25+ years I’ve come across a couple of terms I’d like clarified: the musical speaker and the audiophile speaker.

What’s the difference?

I’m sorry but i think there is a difference & I seem to be also thinking along the lines of lowrider57 & sbank.

IMO, an audiophile speaker is one that has all the attributes an audiophile would like: soundstage height, soundstage width, imaging, PRaT, attack, decay, deep bass response, blah, blah, blah... but the sound is sterile & playback thru such a speaker does not emotionally engage the listener. This sort of speaker creates excellent sound but does not create music.
A musical speaker has all the audiophile attributes listed above without calling any attention to these audiophile attributes & at the same time also makes music. In my experience a musical speaker rarely wows the listener (unlike the audiophile speaker which is designed to wow the audience but after a while the wow factor disappears & the listener is disengaged) but it definitely engages the listener from the get-go (there’s that foot-tapping, dancing in your seat, pretending to play the drums, pretending to be the symphony conductor while listening) & you forget about the audiophile attributes & are drawn into the nuances of the music. Upon further long term listening you discover that all the audiophile attributes are present; just not in your face.

Going one step further, in my experience, all the musical speakers that I’ve heard are to some degree or another time-coherent speakers which almost always use 1st-order x-overs. Examples from my listening experience: Green Mountain Audio, Vandersteens, Meadowlarks, SoundLab, Sanders Sound Systems, Apogee, some stand-mount Audio Physic, single driver speakers (the range of music you can playback on these Lowther, Jordan driver speakers is (very) limited but in their music range the sound is simply superb). There are others such as Eminent Tech but I’ve not heard one.

I kind of have a gut definition for this one. If the speaker/system makes me think, "What a great speaker," then it's "audiophile." But if a speaker/system makes me think, "What wonderful music," then it's musical.   :-) 

It all comes down to taste...what you listen to, and how you like to listen to it.  Speakers, IMHO, all have different 'voices', much like us.  Room acoustics vary so much that a given unit in one room sounds terrific, whereas in another sound like garbage.  And then there's the option of 'ignoring the room' and  going to active eq.

I've opted for the latter, going 'flat' as possible.  It sounds a little odd at first, but in a short time you wonder why it's not a more common approach.

I've two sets of speakers, BTW.  A more conventional array, and a set of DIY Walsh omnis.  Both lean on a sub for a bit of bass extension.

Anyhow...let your ears be your guide, and let your wallet follow. ;)

I thought this article by Jeff Day from his blog at jeffsplace.me regarding his "Listening Bias" might be helpful. I know it was for me. Jeff is a writer/reviewer for Positive Feedback and 6 Moons in the recent past. Here is what he says on the topic. 

Listening Bias

I thought it might be handy for those following my writing at Positive Feedback Online to know what my listening biases are to aid you in interpreting and decoding my reviews. Just to alert you, my listening perspective is somewhat of a minority opinion in the Hi-Fi community of North America, but will be more familiar to those listeners in Turkey, Africa, and Japan, who tend to be more familiar with timbral ways of listening. My hierarchy of importance is aligned more closely to how well a Hi-Fi rig plays the musical content of recordings (I know, it’s a heretical concept), rather than how it ‘sounds’ in the more traditional audiophile ‘sonic’ sense.

As a result of my being drawn towards the musical content of recordings, I tend to be a bit more of a timbral listener than is typical for a lot of Westerners, meaning that the reproduction of the textures, colors, and tones & overtones in the music are really important to me. To this end I look for timbral realism at the band level (the band’s signature ‘sound’) and at the individual instrument level (the unique ‘voices’ of instruments). I want them to sound recognizably like themselves in tone and texture, so that their full tone color can develop, which I think helps lend a feeling of beauty and expressiveness to the music. I like the melody (the tune you ‘whistle while you work’), harmony (treble & bass accompaniments to the melody) and rhythm (the steady beat that determines the tempo) to have a life-like flow and connectedness in how the musicians interact—just like in real life. I want dynamics (variations in loudness) to evoke that which I hear in life for an emotional connection to the melody and rhythm. For loudness I like my music playback to be similar to live loudness levels, which for the kind of music I listen to the most, jazz, usually means 80 dB or louder. Finally, I want tempo portrayed so that both the mood and speed of the music are conveyed through it, just like it is with music in real life.

I consider the sonic performance of a Hi-Fi rig on the non-musical artifacts of the recording process to be of value, but of less importance to me than the performance on the musical content of recordings (as above). So things like transparency (being able to ‘see’ into the recording), soundstage (the three dimensions of the recorded space in width, height and depth), soundspace (the acoustic ‘space’ of the soundstage), and imaging (the feeling of solidity and localization of instruments & musicians on the soundstage) are important to me, but they are not my primary focus – the musical content is.

So I like my cake (the musical content of recordings) with a little frosting (the sonic artifacts of the recording process) for a balanced taste treat. Too much frosting and not enough cake puts me off. So that’s me, and you might be different, but at least now you know how.

Hope this helped. Best, Rob

Don't get hooked on only one design like I have to have only first order x over speakers. Many of the best speakers out there are a combination of different order networks. If the designer knows what he is doing you should not be concerned of the x over. Just listen to the speaker and judge for yourself.