How do you know what a good speaker is?

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.

@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.

@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"

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).

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.