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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
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
4,908 posts
 

Distortion is below 0.5%? In what universe?! On some speakers at some frequencies at some SPL, but nothing more. All speakers produce huge amounts of distortion at even 40Hz (10% is common), let alone 30 or 20. And while above bass and midbass frequencies the percentage is less, it is nowhere near as low as 0.5 at realistic SPL.

You don’t need specs or verification of them to hear the serious colorations in loudspeakers. Buy or borrow a recorder of some sort, a microphone or two, and make recordings of family or friends speaking. Play the recordings on your speakers to hear how much they change the sound of even voices! Do the same with an acoustic guitar, drumset, or piano. The most interesting thing you will learn is how much better (more lifelike) a homemade recording can sound in comparison with a commercial one (LP, CD, etc.).

n80
1,227 posts
 
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. If we're hearing it on a speaker then that sound has been recorded by someone. And all the manipulation that involves.  A recording is not the real thing. So it seems to me the gold standard would have to be that what you are hearing is being heard the way the engineer/producer intended you to hear it.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
4,908 posts
 

@n80, did you ever read how Doug Sax (the legendary mastering engineer, producer of the Sheffield Labs LPs) evaluated both equipment and his recordings? Going into the studio, listening to the live sound, then going back into the monitor room and comparing the sound coming out of his (horn) loudspeakers to the live sound, making adjustments as needed to minimize the difference between the two. For equipment evaluation, he would do a by-pass test.

Who knows how "the engineer/producer intended you to hear it"? They’ll be the first to tell you what he heard in the studio and what he captured on tape are miles apart. Having spent a fair amount of time in studios, I guarantee you most commercial recordings are NOT made to sound "accurate", but rather "good". To evaluate, say, loudspeakers using a recording you have no way of knowing the actual sound of is one of the major paradoxes facing the consumer.

kalali's avatar
kalali
1,645 posts
 
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.
n80
1,227 posts
 
@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.
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