"If it sounds good, it is good."
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
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?
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?
- ...
- 64 posts total
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. |
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/ |
"How do you know what a good speaker is?" There's probably not too many speaker designers out there that think their speakers are bad. The important thing to understand is, when you are bringing their speaker into your home your also committing yourself to someone else's paradigm. A speaker is a tool, nothing more and nothing less. If a speaker fulfills your goal it's a good day. MG |
- 64 posts total