Cannot find perfect sound


I've been listening to supposedly some of the finest speakers that currently exist. These include b&w 800 Series, revel high end, vivid audio, Psi audio and kef blades.

None except the kef blades satisfied my high level standards.

When I play my reference tracks on cheap earbuds I hear timing accuracy that is missing on all the above speakers. Only the kef blades came closest to what I hear from cheap earbuds. 

Explanations please?

I really suspect that none of these high end speakers are accurately reproducing the sound on my CDs despite all the marketing claims about accuracy and high quality sound.

What could there possibly be that my cheap earbuds can do that eludes these super high end speakers?  

I'm not so eager anymore to spend any money until I have a good explanation.

kenjit

Dear Kenjit,

This is my first post and enjoy going through all the different posts and often smile a lot. You need to take a step back, compare and try to understand the technical and acoustic differences between your two setups; the earbuds and the loudspeakers.

Like other mentioned, you are more sensitive to “timing”, which most loudspeaker out there have coherence problems. Even the “coherent” design, to a lesser extent. Multiple driver integration is done at a certain distance from the loudspeaker front baffle (more exactly the voice coil alignment) to the listener. A good listening room setup will place you exactly in the sweet spot, not much right or left, nor front or back. A single driver, a coaxial driver, the magnetic and electrostatic planar design will get you closer to your preference. You need to look at your listening position, and where these speakers are getting integrated, the “sweet spot”.

Also true, the room, its dimensions (room mode), its characteristics (liveliness to over damped), and how your loudspeaker’s placement (golden ratio…) is very important. The dipole loudspeaker with their figure eight radiation pattern could fair better in some rooms that the traditional “box” type.

Also true, your loudspeaker match to the power amplifier, tube amplifiers have response problem with loudspeakers with complex crossover network, and large impedance variations, specially the lower impedance. Solid state with design will have to deal with loudspeaker back EMF, screwing the sound with a poor feedback design. You need a good match between your loudspeaker and your amplifier.

So, loudspeaker coherency, their integration into the listening room, the seating and amplification are all components in your listening experience, and not in your listening path when you use the earbuds. There are some crazy good and expensive ones out there, but I don’t like that sound, I prefer the soundstage created in a proper listening setup.

I have not found an electronic/DSP solution to poor loudspeaker integration. The “monitor” loudspeaker allows you to move much closer to them, and they are designed to integrate much closer to the sound engineer. But they also rely on loudspeaker like the B&W to judge for the sound, and believe me, these are at the right location.

So, my proposition is to set back from where you are until you understand better what is happening. You are beyond experimenting, you need to benchmark where you are.  And thrust what you hear, and your taste.


Kenjit;

Have you been to an AXPONA show or something similar?

You can hear lots of options all in a few short hours 

It appears you are a “ show me” type guy. If so, You have one option then!

Read all you can with hifi magazines before you go & plan to cover all the “ kinds” of transducers 

ie) horn, planer, electrostatic, dynamic etc

Jeff

@frozentundra wrote:"It appears you are a “ show me” type guy...
Read all you can with hifi magazines before you go & plan to cover all the “ kinds” of transducers..."

Ime "The Quest" can be an awful lot of fun in and of itself!

In fact some people who already have their main system totally finished enjoy the discovery and creativity and rewards of The Quest so much that they embark on another Quest for an office/workshop/bedroom/kitchen/whatever second system.

Duke

Post removed