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 mapman

Yep you only know a good speaker for sure when you hear it and each speaker has to be setup properly (including a proper amp) to enable that. Speaker A might handily sound good and Speaker B not on Amp A but swap in amp B and the reverse is very possible.

Also it is true that if the speaker is an easy load to drive, chances are it will sound good off a wider variety of amps than otherwise.

A good example is KEF ls50. State of the art within its limits in many ways, but will not sound good if amp is not up to the task of driving them ie lots of clean not just power but also current. I’ve heard both cases in my house.

Compare to Fritz Carrera, designed to provide a very easy load to drive. . I heard these sound very good indeed off a 7 watt headphone amp recently and have no doubt they would excel with most any amp used.