How do you know what a good speaker is?


Frequency response for high end speakers at every price level is usually relatively flat. The differences in audible sound quality reported by audiophiles is disproportionate to the differences in frequency response between different speakers therefore frequency response cannot be a very significant factor in what we're hearing.
Distortion is usually below 0.5% so again the same reasoning applies.
I'm not convinced that polar response is quite as important as is sometimes claimed. 

If you look at the specs of most ultra high end loudspeakers,  there's no hard evidence provided by the manufacturers to justify their claims that their speaker is vastly superior.
And if there was it would need to be independently verified.

So how does the consumer know how close any given loudspeaker is to the ideal loudspeaker? How do we know how close a loudspeaker is to recreating the sound of a violin, cello, piano, human voice, or anything else? 

What makes a magico vastly different from a yg or Wilson? On the other hand if the difference between these speakers is extremely small then why is there such a discrepancy in opinions and why do we need a yg and a magico and Wilson and tidal audio and b&w etc on the market if they're all so similar?  







kenjit

Showing 2 responses by audiojan

Regardless of price, every speaker will be a compromise in one way or another. Basically it sounds perfect to the designer given the constraints (price, resources, materials, drivers, components,etc).

what it it comes down to fir me is can I live with those compromises and do I “feel” the music? If I get goosebumps listening to certain tracks then I know they are good for me.
@mrdecibel I think we agree. :-) Hence the comment "given the constraints". I've found most designers I have spoke to are reasonably happy with their design (and yes, they are all thinking about what they could've done differently and how they are going to improve them).

The point I was trying to make that a "good speaker" is highly subjective and in reality doesn't exist. It's only "good enough"