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 rbstehno

N80 - We are different but probably more in common than we would think. My point was that MOST people will put down $50k to hundreds of thousands of dollars on a car and they don't know much about the true specs of the car. Sure they know that it has XXHP, XXmpg, size, and they base their decision on seat of the pants test drive or from past experience. I've owned Porsche's and even then I didn't ask the Porsche dealer for a cylinder leakage test or dyno results before buying the car. For a track car, if I had a guy build me a 1 off engine that was supposed to get 600hp, then yes, I would demand proof of that. But since we buy production line audio equipment and cars, we tend not to have to go into that deep into specs
By listening with your ears! Measurements (most of them) are worthless. I need to know how efficient the speaker is so I know if I’m going to need a different amp or if my existing setup will work. If I like a pair of speakers that are 65db efficient, I will need a larger more powerful amp.

As for most measurements in audio, when have you seen measurements for the new car you are buying? You might want to know mpg and if it will tow a trailer. The manufacturer might state the car has 300hp, but does the new owner really know if the engine measures 250 hp or 310hp? We don’t, and we don’t care. On the test drive, if the car responds to my right and left feet and my 2 arms on the steering wheel, I’m good to go. I don’t need to know if the hp is lower than specified, or cylinder leakage is out of range or what the vacuum pressure is?
why would we care if distortion of 1 amp is .006% and the other amp has . 00.005% distortion. Like we can hear that.