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 kalali

I’m convinced that a “good” speaker is only good within a given “system”. Same speaker moved to a different room and paired with a different system will not be as “good”.
Folks who like live modern rock music should take an SPL meter next time you go to a concert in a smaller venue and see how loud it gets. To recreate a similar experience on home audio equipment will require a system that can handle unrealistic SPL levels without either blowing speaker drivers - mostly due to inadequate power, or sound extremely compressed. Other genres are different with exception of certain western classical content and some instruments within that content and during short transients. So the notion of comparing live music with home recreation of that same musical experience is not always a good baseline for evaluation.