How do you know what a good speaker is?

First off I agree with those who have stated that the best pair of speakers are the ones that ultimately put a smile on your face.

That said, Specs - especially Frequency Response should only be used as a guide as to how to filter down your purchasing decisions. 

MIT and NASA concur that the natural environment in which humans process sound has a Frequency Response of 15Hz to 150Khz. 

The questions that you need to answer for yourself is how relevant is that information to you? Are you after the purest sound replication or are you more into convenience or aesthetics? What kind of investment are you willing to make to accomplish your goals?  There are no wrong answers.

If you are truly dedicated to pure sound replication then your goal should be to try to work towards creating an environment as close to 15Hz to 150Khz as you can get. The listed specs from manufacturers should be able to narrow this field down for you. It will take actual listening on your part to decide which one replicates the right violin, cello, piano, human voice for you.  

I know one person who does not believe MIT and NASA. The set up he has is good enough for him and his needs.

Another person believes in the findings, however just likes the sweet mid range sound staging that EL 34 tubes create and has worked towards accomplishing those goals.

There are only a handful of companies that list that they have speakers that match the 15Hz-150Khz spec. These are all listed at astronomical prices.

Another audiophile I know does believe in the MIT/NASA findings and has the scratch to throw $250K++ just at speakers alone. However he has learned that the speakers are just one ingredient in creating this environment as there several other components to factor in.

A good speaker for low volume classics and jazz?  I have been trying since 1970 for a low volume speaker with decent bass and imagining.  I am not an expert by any means.  Here is what works for me, when listening and conversing.  1 pair of Magnepan MMG, 1 pair of Magnepan DWM, 1 pair of Heil AMT large transformers.  Each DWM is used in mono mode for a 2 ohm load.  The AMT is wired to one output of the DWM and then a 10 watt 4 ohm resistor from + to - and a 2.2 capacitor to the AMT.  This presents a 1.8 ohm load to the amplifier.  Two Dennon 6600 monoblocks are the amplifiers used.  The living room is 15 by 19, the speakers are 5 feet from the wall.I have musician friends over to listen.  The clarity and imaging seem superb at any volume, imo.  All speakers were purchased used, except for the DWMs.  The DWM is only rated to 40 hz.
In the search for a compatible subwoofer, happened on a Distributed Bass site.  Yesterday, 2 kicker 10's, each in a sealed 2 cubic foot enclosure were placed woofer to wall with 3/4 inches of clearance space.  Power is from old mosfet MTX/Soundcraftsman s800 in mono, the two present the amp with a 1.8 ohm load.  My DBX 223XL gave up yesterday, so far no external xover.  It sounds very good to me.  I solicit honest opinions from my visitor friends.  My first decent speakers were ESS AMT4's in 1973. 

I think Magnepan and Martin-Logan engineers who eschew boxes and simplify the crossover to first order: a capacitor to the tweeter and a coil to the mid-bass regard the very complicated crossovers, notch filters that attempt to tame the wild variability of impedance with respect to frequency and the bracing of cabinets to try to minimize the effect of a speaker varying the pressure on a cabinet as what John Northrup called "inventing rubber gloves for leaky fountain-pens." These simplifications and auditioning made my choice very easy. But these first-order crossover designs and their planar diaphragms take extra power to duplicate the volume of the orchestra and singers in an opera house. I also like the simplicity of the single ended triode amplifier which, in the case of the usual choices like the 300-B, are not powerful enough. So if you want both the open purity of a planar speaker and that SET refinement you have to drive the speakers with something like an 822-A single ended triode amplifier, which is not as difficult as you think to design and build.   

Speakers are First Personal because everyones ears are different.
They should also have Transparency.
A Speaker should sound like the sound is Not Coming from them.
They should sound like you are listening in Person.

To me a good speaker is one that I really enjoy listening to and equally as important I want a speaker that will sound better with each upgrade I can afford to add, whether that is a better amplifier preamplifier Dac even a cable upgrade. I want a speaker that will sound mellow with a mellow sounding amplifier or sound bright with a bright sounding amplifier. If the amp has higher resolution I want to hear it. If the amp is not very good I want to hear that. 

That has been my experience and it works for me.

For the most part, all speakers designed for HiFi are "good" speakers provided they are in good working order.  What you really need to determine is "what's good for you."  Consider your room size, application, and listening preferences.  If you are building a system, I recommend starting with speakers, then selecting complementary electronics.  You will end up with entirely different systems if you are designing for a small room and listening to chamber music late at night vs. a large party room where you are playing rock music at high volumes.  If you listen by yourself from a designated listening position you will likely choose something different than if you have music on as background music and are moving about.

Then there are practical considerations and aesthetics.  Most of us need to choose speakers that are deemed acceptable to other family members and "fit" into the room's decor and furniture arrangement.  Speakers often need to be child-proof and pet-proof.  Many times it is impractical to optimally place speakers, and they must go against a wall or in corners.  Often home users need something that will integrate into their home theater.

Some speakers, like the Harbeths mentioned in another post, are fairly good "all-arounders".  But you still need to apply due diligence in selecting the right size and placement.  If flexibility is needed, sometimes a 2.1 system with one or two subs can be easier to integrate into a challenging room.

Essentially, there are no "bad" speakers.  Just bad systems.

Agreed with @shadorne.  Harbeth comes to mind with their classic design that haven’t changed much but updated with kept up with new development in technology....

But the 'true' sound of an instrument does not translate well with electric instruments. Once saw Andy Summers on a TV documentary make synthesized piano notes with his guitar demonstrating that with the available tech, he could generate any sound he wanted to with his guitar.

You absolutely hit the nail on the head Cleeds!
Not only will a good speaker faithfully reproduce the "true" sound of an instrument, you will be able to tell what is making the instrument produce sound - air (for brass and woodwind instruments), a variety of 'sticks' for percussion instruments, or fingers and/or a bow for string instruments...

One of the best i ever owned were the pioneer S910's...those did a good job from a 40-100wrms amp,Ran them on my first new HIFI technics suv2..1978.In the late 80's picked up a monster pioneer system...

You just know, may not be someone elses choice but if it sounds good to you then it's good !

I've had so many speakers.... dozens but most were not able to convey that "live sound" that blows you away .   I remember years ago i visited a small dealer who  sold Mc Intosh and Klipsch.  When I walked in I was blown away by the opening of the track "Crossfire" by Stevie Ray coming through a pair of LaScalas.... it was awesome and was somewhat the benchmark for me when it comes to capturing the dynamics and huge soundstage of a live performance.

Fast foward 25 years later, I walked into a dealer and there was some weird Bjork song playing, the image was huge and instruments floated way beyond the physical box.   I could not believe it was a pair of Klipsch Heresy III.  I auditioned a few other speakers in their price range and after that I knew that was a great speaker for me...  

I've them about a year and can honestly say I love them .  They aren't perfect but are a lot of speaker for the money.   You have to let your ears decide. 

A good speaker for me is one which lets you enjoy the musicality of a wide genres of music and is able to emlighten me as to the instruments involved.

Forget about the looks, specs and demo them on your amp.I have found the only way to really cover the spectrum is to use 2 or 3 pairs of different speakers.That will fill the gaps in the spectrum and let you adjust tone/volume to support your lounge etc...every room is different with audio.
I run 3 pairs, only stereo.AR8's with qsc/qst speakers from an active lead guitar amp combo.Sony 3 way from a MHC-G77.Aiwa from a retro hi power NSX90, 7 speakers in each box.And sometimes i switch on the G77 with the aux in from the main system which is running JBL control one pro's.Not a single frequency missed.Took some time to sort it out as I have vinyl strip floor....did not have the problem when it was carpeted.

When I get to hear a really excellent system, that's when I know that the speakers are excellent.

Kraco in a 6x9

The "live vs. recorded" thing always mystifies me...is a driving simulator like actually driving? I own high end acoustic guitars, there's an acoustic piano in my hifi listening room, I've been a professional musician for 50 years, I mix live acoustic and electric concerts, and otherwise I'm simply wonderful, although that part is debatable. I KNOW recorded music sounds different from my guitar in my lap, but don't care one iota as I can enjoy the stuffing out of recordings anyway, as long as the performance is great and the producer and engineer aren't idiots. I've been to classical concerts where you could barely hear much of the music (Brad Mehldau playing unamplified piano in a hall that eats sound, the BSO hall burying it's orchestra in reverberant mush), and have heard other acoustic and miked stuff that was astonishing...including a recent Vijay Iyer duet with Dr. Lewis Porter...2 unmiked pianos...astonishing. If you want your last Metallica concert reproduced in your apartment you deserve the eviction notice your landlord is working on, otherwise just remember you're not actually driving.

n80 wrote:  I don't see how measuring a speaker against what a live guitar or live piano sounds like is practical. Even in a live situation a mic'd acoustic guitar will sound different from an un-mic'd guitar.

Agreed there are problems involved in comparing live to reproduced sound.

Yet I have to say I've found such comparisons quite useful and enlightening.

I've been obsessed with live vs reproduced sound as long as I can remember.  So when I became more fervent about trying many different speakers and systems, in the field but especially in my own home, I made decent quality recordings of familiar acoustic sounds - my wife's voice, sons, my acoustic guitar, my sons playing their school instruments - trombone, sax, etc.

Being extremely familiar with those sounds, they really illuminate how closely a speaker in question can reproduce them.  And sometimes I would do direct live vs reproduced comparisons (typically with speakers in my home).

Lots of speakers fail the comparisons, but some are surprising. 
My Thiel 3.7 speakers, for instance, reproduced the sound of my playing my acoustic guitar with fairly astonishing accuracy - timbre accuracy, clarity, etc.

My MBL 121 omnis can reproduce the sound of my son playing sax with amazing verisimilitude. 


But I don't always need those recordings on hand.  When I go to audio shows, or high end stores listening to systems, it's often the case there are real voices nearby (obviously at audio shows, and often at a high end store the salesman may be talking to me or chatting with someone else).

So I often stop and take stock: if I'm playing, say, a good recording of Johnny Cash or some other simply mic'd male voice, I close my eyes and listen to the real voices present in the room and compare it to the reproduced voice.  What IS IT that the real voices have that distinguish them from the voice coming through a sound system?  It's always very telling, and the systems that actually have the least obvious departure from the real voices are the ones that  I inevitably find the most mesmerizing and satisfying for long listening sessions.  (Naturally the more complex and demanding the music source may be, the less able a modest system will be able to keep up.  But, in general, a system that captures certain essences of live sound, to my ears, tends to predict longer satisfaction 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"

@audiojan I have met a few speaker designers in my time, typically during the introduction of a new " ready to sell " set off speakers. This has occurred in retail outlets, hotel rooms, shows, my home, as well as others. The fact is, every designer I have met, never had the " my design is perfect " attitude. That " attitude " was handled by a hired marketing rep or sales agent ( I did that for 2 companies for a short time ). Not that my conversations with any of them were very long, but it was always as if what was going through the designers mind was I could have / should have done this. None of them were " happy " about the design, probably because their minds were thinking of the next improvement or upgrade. My take from experience. ( BTW, same for any designer I have met. The sales and marketing reps, they were the promoters. Enjoy ! MrD.

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.

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.

The truth is this, and it has been pointed out before, and above. We are not hearing " just the speakers ". We are hearing the system, which besides the speakers ( and there specific set up ), includes the room acoustics, the listening seat, the associated equipment, and who knows how much tampering and manipulation of the actual recordings themselves. Now, do you want to talk about over the ear / closed ear headphones ? Let us face it, the speaker is very dependent on everything else. So the question should be " when do you know when a system sounds good to you ? That, to me is simple. When you want to continue listening, to this recording, and to that recording, and to another recording, and so on, and so on, and so on....Enjoy ! MrD.

I have 2 dissimilar speakers around, Silverline Preludes and Klipsch Heresy IIIs, and they sound astonishingly similar relative to general tonality. Although the Silverlines are reasonably efficient, my quest for more efficient speakers led me to try Sonist Recital IIIs which are beautifully made and efficient, but not for me tonally as I was used to the Preludes clearer top end...sold 'em...Next I auditioned the Heresy IIIs and thought...hmmm...could be the thing...bought a pair and man...these things are really great sounding speakers, coherent, efficient, accurate, engaging, short, fat, etc., need subs which I have, so now I'll say goodbye to the Preludes. Note that all of this was prompted by switching to a lower powered single ended tube amp that sounds glorious, but sounds gloriouser with efficient speakers, and the Heresy IIIs provide that efficiency. System dependent? You bet.

+1 Mapman. It is about that simple if you are concerned about sound quality.  If it sounds good, wait for the drum roll ......., it is good. But first you have to know what your listening for. Live acoustic music for me is the best way to get a handle on what sounds best in a speaker.

Great question.  The short answer is I don't.  One thing I can say is that after attending jazz concerts in a small venue, I was left shaking my head when reflecting on my present system.  It has to be incredibly difficult to capture and render in an accurate fashion the level of dynamics and speed of transients I kept hearing.  Stat's and horns come the closest but even then it's a tough act.  I realize this is a theoretical goal which will never be reached but my question is are we even close?  I'm skeptical.  

When you hear it.

Please, stop saying that " we don't here the same and we have different tastes in sound quality" If this is the case, how come we agreed on the best sounding music halls around the world? How come we agreed on the best sounding recordings from LP, Master tapes and even CD's?

I think the core statement is provable. With age, gender and individual exposure we all have measurably different hearing.

On top of that, we have very different choices in music, and listening habits and our pleasure centers are trained by our past.

Listening at low volumes vs. concert levels is a very different thing, and we are right to want to judge our speakers based on that alone, not to mention music preferences.

Oh, and then there are rooms, and amplifiers. Both of these can make a significant difference in the sound.

So, the truth is we do not here [sic] the same and we do have very different tastes in the experiences we wish to have.

Best,
E

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

inna4,896 posts12-18-2018 2:59am

Wrong. This is an awkward effort to please the crowd and renounce objectivity. Really good speakers will be acknowledged as such by everyone with hearing regardless of sound preferences.

No speaker system is perfect. That means weighing the strengths and weaknesses of each is a personal, subjective opinion. There can be no universal consensus and to argue that there is, or should be, is simplistic or naive.

@rbstehno Its funny how different we all are. I study car specs very closely. They actually tell you an awful lot if you are using the vehicle to its maximum potential. Not saying everyone should, but if you do then the specs are critical and you have to know how to evaluate them. 

I have high expectations for my traveling car (comfort, handling, hp/torque curve, etc. My truck has to pull 9000 pounds strongly and safely and my track car has to keep me safe and keep up with the Miatas (which can be harder than you might imagine.)

My analogy probably does not carry over to speakers, just saying that in some areas specs can be important.

When I hear the violin on a good recording of Erbarme Dich on my Graham Audio LS 5/9 as I did this morning before going to work, know I have the speakers for life, they might not have the deepest bass or the most detailed highs, but the music they make sounds so realistic and true that the shortcomings are totally forgotten, also to be able to listen for hours on end without any fatigue is such a nice pleasure, if a manufacturer gets the human voices and instruments right, then some shortcomings in bass or treble it is possible to live with, but for me get the midrange wrong! Then I can not listen long to that speaker, also getting older it is not so easy to hear the highest notes;-) so for me a rolled of treble is no disappointment.

+1 n80

On the sold and heavy cabinets, mine are 80kg (176lb) ea. And they are not so good looking, but provide countless hours of joy. And I understand some isolation from the (stout) stands (or floor) is critical,  currently using asorbathane of the firmer type (70 duro). 
I imagne good speakers can be found in lots of places, but great ones are a treasure, and often worth their weight - pardon the pun. 

Wrong. This is an awkward effort to please the crowd and renounce objectivity. Really good speakers will be acknowledged as such by everyone with hearing regardless of sound preferences.

Doug Sax at the Mastering Lab used Tannoy SRM-B 10” monitors in the early years with his own ML crossover. In later years, he used ATC 150ASL monitors similar to Pink Floyd and Telarc. At one time he was so busy that he was mastering 20% of the top 100 billboard albums. His work always sounded great. The secret sauce was the tube preamp designed by his brother, combined with great ears and great monitors.

Large ATC are rated at 120 dB SPL continuous at less than 0.3% THD. Of course at lower SPL the distortion is less. If you listen to ATC then on countless classic albums you will be hearing close to how Doug Sax heard it when the mastering was done (room, source, preamp excepted).

There is a selected list of albums on wiki. He did 1000’s of albums. Go to guy for all the top studios.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Sax

Doug’s original reference was live sound, as bdp24 indicated. He pioneered direct to disc. However he became so popular that eventually he had a busy business simply doing the final mastering of everyone’s mixes - hence the Mastering Lab. He was revered by legendary engineers with golden ears - a king of kings.

You can’t expect to have ears like Doug Sax. He is probably unique in the history of audio engineering. However, the ATC’s he used were out of the box unmodified and you can buy them as they are still in production. I believe that Manley issued a commercial production of a clone of Doug’s Tannoys but with heavier cabinets - the Tannoy ML10 - you can find these used (the driver is no longer in production). You can be confident that these are both good speakers, as the greatest ears of all time depended on them.

https://www.manley.com/pro/manls/

The sound must be as pure,like the (good,professional) recordings. There are a lot of bat recording and that is sad, because you pay for a good cd,or lp.
Every speaker is different ,but the most important thing is that you have a good harmony between high-mid and low. The most of the speakers (and amps ) have too deep low, throughout wich the “mid” is supplanted.
A Nice explane of a good speaker is the Ilumnia Magister.: a driver with a “floating” conus. In a while, he will be available in the States and Canada. I never heard such a natural speaker before.

Some things sound good at first, but over time become irritating.

"If it sounds good, it is good."

Duke Ellington

First off no one can audition all speakers..  
My take on how to start? Word of mouth, audio sites. What speakers do folks who are audiophiles a long time use? What models are year in year out great and well liked?     
One is way more likely to (even accidentally) end up with a GREAT set of speakers that way.

Only the few lucky, well experienced music lovers (audiophiles), with good ears and enormous amount of listening hours to different hi-fi equipment (well over 100 of good to excellent systems) at the luxury of their homes are the one who can be objective in evaluating equipment. You cannot objectively evaluate any equipment, by listening for a few hours here and there - whether in your friend house, the local store or at the music show. And, please stop saying that we hear differently, and that everyone has different music sound preferences. If this was the case, how come we agree when it comes to quality LP’s or Mater tape recordings with superior sound? How come we agree what sound’s great when it comes to the best music halls around the world? Am I crazy or the rest of you are?

Lots of stuff here.  From some of the comments I read above my post my two cents is that the speaker only passes the information that is sent to it.  For example what "you" may think is the best speaker might not sound as good in every system as stated above.  But to me a speaker will sound good if you components can deliver the goods first.  So how do you know what a good speaker is, I knows it when I hears it!


Happy Listening. 

Dear Audiophiles, 
Please, stop saying that " we don't here the same and we have different tastes in sound quality" If this is the case, how come we agreed on the best sounding music halls around the world? How come we agreed on the best sounding recordings from LP, Master tapes and even CD's? 

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.

As an old, very old, user of Acoustic Research speakers; esp the AR-3A, I believed in their testing of the quality of sound from a speaker. It was how near a live performance could be had. They would put a string quartet behind curtains in a outdoor setting and asked people if they could tell the difference between a live performance and a playback on their speakers. A good speaker should be neutral and add nothing to the original sound. After more than 45 years and thousands upon thousands of dollars spent.....I have not reached the mountain top. Close and yet still wishing.

Kenjit, I would say that correct phasing and driver coherence is just as important as FR. By driver coherence I mean that the sound is the same from both drivers at the crossover frequency. Better yet is no crossover. Some new ESL’s are like that, like new Quads.

How do you know? You'll have to listen.

It’s easier for me than many others, as my main criteria when evaluating a speaker is of it’s ability to make singing voices and acoustic instruments sound as timbrally-lifelike and coloration-free as possible. Non-Classical acoustic music is performed at modest SPL, so extreme capability in that regard is not necessary (though nice to have when I have a cravin’ for AC/DC ;-). The bottom note of a standard 4-string bass (both electric and acoustic upright) is located at 41-42Hz, so the 20-40Hz octave is not an absolute requirement. But an 88-key piano extends considerably below 40Hz, a pipe organ (heard in much of the J.S. Bach I love) down to 16Hz! Bass is expensive, but we no longer need rely on loudspeakers to provide that; there are some great music subs available now.

Studio monitors rarely make good pleasure listening speakers, and if they do, they're probably not very good monitors. How long a speaker is made doesn't have much to do with anything either. Bose made 901s for eons and those sound like garbage. And what about the ESS AMT1? Those things came out in 1975 and they're still making them. Is that thing better that the many iterations of the Wilson W/P? 

As for reproducing the live sound at home, you're doing it all wrong if you're going to your local HiFi shop. You should be going to Thunder Audio and buying some Milo cabs and a couple of 650HP subs. No consumer speaker comes close to creating the SPL that a Meyer rig does. 

@bdp24 Agree completely. I probably should not have said how the engineer/producer "intended" it to sound. As you say, I think there are many legendary engineers who do have a very specific intent but even they don’t know when, where or how we will be listening to the music. I suspect most of the rest of the producers/engineers out there are just getting product out the door and/or dealing with budget and time limitations.

"I guarantee you most commercial recordings are NOT made to sound "accurate", but rather "good".

Agreed. That’s why I don’t think looking for accuracy is the best way to evaluate a speaker. There are usually too many variables and too much variance in production. I guess is all you listened to was classical piano and you knew which producers tried hardest for accuracy then that might be something to seek after but that would be a very narrow measure of a speaker intended for broader use.

And maybe what makes a good speaker should be defined as a speaker one likes.

But I will say this, the more I listen and the more I think about SQ the more I realize that for me it comes down to two big things. And oddly, sound stage isn’t one of them. The first is what I’d call separation or distinction between instruments, voices, etc and the second is sharp, tight, distinct, well defined bass. And then it comes to what I don’t like and that is overly bright high frequencies. Maybe fourth comes soundstage and as long as it isn’t one dimensional I’m happy with that.

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.