People frequently ask me what would be a good speaker to buy for $5.000, for $10.000 for $20.000 for $50.000 and so on. The more I think about it looking at the park of available loudspeakers the more I come to the observation that there are no good speakers our there, for any amount money.

It kind of non-even-ironic how loudspeakers are out there! Do not get me wrong: I am not expressing the horns, ribbons of single driver attitudes. I am talking that each single know to me loudspeaker, whatever topology it uses, always present a large collections of inherited problems to user, and it’s completely irrelevant if it was $500 worth Dunlavy SC-1 or 125.000.00 worth Wilson’s Alexandria.

Yes, sometimes, here and there I met loudspeakers that more or less accurately masked own imperfections and were more or less problem-balanced. However it was always just a compilation of compromises for non-justifiable price instead of a presentation of things that the speakers did well, within the most beneficial design for the given advantages.

When I try to locate the 3 dominating causes why our loudspeaker are so bad then 2 reasons jump atop of my list: luck of proper drivers and absent of the civilized evaluations methodologies of loudspeaker’s performance.

The first cause: it is practically imposable to find a good performing driver for a given application. Ironically the worth application is the more bad-drivers are available. Furthermore the unfamiliarity of most of the speaker-makers with the musically-objective evaluation and assessment methods do not allow them to use successfully even better driver in a given design. Some people fish in the world of older loudspeaker but the result they get always is not really better. Some older loudspeakers (very few of them) had motivating drivers but it takes a lot of pain, expertise and taste to make some older drivers to operate more or less successfully in a targeted topology. Still, in most of the cases the “second cause” kicks in and assures that people get non-optimum result even if they managed to get more or less acceptable drivers.

The second cause: people, professionals and amateurs, mostly are completely clueless how to objectively evaluate the sonic results they’re getting out of their designs. Also, they are mostly disabled to provide any more or less rational music-related support for their design decisions. I spoke with many designers of popular loudspeakers and I was surprised how ignorant they were. Their primary ignorance was not in thier inability to jangler of the semi-technical phrases but rather in thier complete disassociation between their technical expertise and thier cultural backgrounds. As the result, they were completely impotent to merge their subjective assessments  (no mater how off the were) with their objective methods. Consequentially, thier judgment was fundamentally off the mark and in many cases juts essentially faulty. In addition to this, the personal cultural limitations of most loudspeaker designers prevent them objectively interpret the measurable data and navigate themselves across the engineering “language” even if the learn the proper evaluation methodologies.  Another “minor” sub-reasons that I would plug in this section would be a fact that the designers (and the rest people in audio) have no ways to educate themselves how reproduced music actual might sound if everything is done properly. The really serious installations that push envelop of what might be done in loudspeaker are extremely rare and mostly audio people have no access to them. If you find one then pay any amount money to hear “what might be done” and I assure you that you will be benefited to the rest of your life.

In the end, we the consumers, harvest horrible result and paying for it the horrible prices. We pay $90.000.00 for loudspeakers that cost $900 to manufacture and that perform worst then the cheapest loudspeaker in the same company line. Or we have $60.000.00 loudspeaker that have a major flow (converting the performance of this model to a nightmare) and to fix this major problem would cost for a company 50cents but the chef-designer knowing about the problem says: “Who the hell cares, lets run it as it”.

What I am saying that behind the luck of the proper materials and ignorance of the designers-manufactures there is something else of the 3rd reason on my list - the premeditated intentions of people do not deliver to consumers result as good as it could be. The industry targets the lowest common denominator and here is where the reason #3 comes dominating: luck of serious demands form the consumers. As I numerously mention: most of people in audio are Morons and Sound that they get in thier listening rooms is not the result of their personal demands but the “as is” results. Therefore, since we, the consumers, demand “as is result” then the designers-manufactures target thier predicts to satisfy the consumers “as is demands”.

This all works as a well-oiled machine in hi-fi industry and as a result, your loudspeakers are the worst element of your playback. The most important is not the fact that your speaker are bad but that you can’t not do anything about it.

Congratulations,
Romy The Cat

Actually I would like do not use the post above as a promotion of a specific speaker or a specific topology - it is what the cretins from Audiogon do. I’d rather like to suggest whoever cares to think about our idiotic consumer conformism when we, the consumers, bless speakers’ manufacturers with our outrages foolishness.

I am not kidding here: among all commercial speakers that I have heard (and it was quite a numbers of models) I do not know any of them that would performance-wise be worth more then $2000.  There is an army of very inexpensive, a few tens or hundreds dollars worth, loudspeakers that perform “no good not bad” - just like nothing. However, I absolutely assure you that in the scale of proper evaluation methods those speakers perform way more interesting (musical) then a high-end crap that cost $20.000-$80.000

Unfortunately the Morons-audiophiles do not recognize any musical results or an acoustic neutrality – they recognize only hi-fi glitz and the damn chest-pressure. I remember 4-5 years ago I foolishly brought in my home one retarded NH distributor who was sitting infront my playback and while I’ was playing for him music he was asking me: “Ok, and where is the Sound?”

So, boys and girls, next time when you meet your dealer and prepare to pay 86.000.000 for a new model of horribly sounding Karhmas, then please ask your dealer WHAT MUSICAL BENEFITS you will get with those speakers in compare to your crappy $150-worth Scott, JBL or EV.

I assure you that you will fire your dealer as soon you hear his answer…

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

Antonio J. wrote:

I have listened to some expensive speakers from B&W, Wilson Audio, Dynaudio, and also owned the SF Amati, you know already. Musically these ones were more musically interesting to me than any of the others, but still weren't something that completely satisfied me.

I do not think that they were more “musically interesting”. They were more “audio interesting” and it was it.  Dynaudio for instance (any model) is an exceptional example how horrible high-end speaker could be and what is ironic that the more expensive Dynaudios are the more ridiculously disgusting they perform.  Perhaps the larger Wilson might be a limited exception but they for thier price-tag have many “issues”.

Antonio J. wrote:

So what musical benefits could I expect from a back loaded horn speaker using a Lowther, Fostex or AER driver? I ask about back loaded horns because they could fit my room, no front loaded horn would fit it, nor any planar speaker.

The drivers you mention are just fine midrange drivers and they must not be used for upper bass of upper mid rage. As far as “back loaded horns” – this is all utopia and celebration of wishful thinking and practically with those so-called full range drivers.  A “dipolness” can perform more or less acceptable at upper frequencies but as soon as load a room with any signs of lower frequencies then any dipole implementations begin to sound ridiculous.  All those semi-scientific evidence and proclamations of the dipole-enthusiasts about the benefit of dipole room loading are juts unnecessary intellectualism of people with brain instead of ears. I would not mention that “back loaded horns” has huge amount of other problem that no one who trued to built the “back loaded horns” was able to overcome. All those back loaded speakers sound as they should – the “helped” sound resembling the sound coming through body of a mammal.

Rgs,
The Cat

Antonio J. wrote:

It looks like after all we cannot speak about how reproduced music should sound without going back into the "audiophile jargon".

Antonio, you might realize eventually then when you come across to an acoustic system that sound really worthy then none of  "audiophile jargon” might be applicable to it. I mean the better playback performs the less semantic could be associated with the playback. (Now you understand how well were the speakers that got the "raving reviews".) I constantly finding new solutions with my  own acoustic system and keep expose them to some selected people. Interestingly: the better (from my perspective) my playback sounds  (sometimes!) the less feedback I am able to get from those people. Sometimes I have to pull the worlds out of thier mouth…

Furthermore, when I hear a really serious installations then it is a huge educational experience and I feel hardily any semantic that I wiling to express. I think this is very universal tendency…

Yes, I might write a long essay about practically any available speaker that I heard.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

Max,

if you do admit an existence of “higher order language” then why you disagree that “a serious playback might generate a “very serious semantics”? An exposure to a “very serious playback” is an experience and we human tend to react to own sparks of experiences. Also why do you feel that when I said a “serious semantics” I necessary meant what commonly understood as a “better audio jargon”?

You see, there is a connection between a “seriousness of playback” and the seriousness of Music presented within a given playback. When I was talking about a listener’s exposure to a “serious Playback” I implied a certain stress (by a content) of the person’s sensations. This stress within any creative individual arouses the person’s associative viewing and abstract thinking. A “very serious semantics” quite likely be an outcome of those events (in fact it happen always but not all people are accustomed to listen and to “milk” themselves). With audio those stressful events even more “strange” because those events reproduced artificially and by all means by very untypical, semi-barbarian methods…

PS: BTW, the Lehnitsky’s brochure on sound evaluation is not bad first step. Lehnitsky with all his limitations of being a “narcissistic and paranoid radical conformist” presented in his little book a quite fruitful strategic direction. The important thing while reading his book is do not take it all literally (practically his “stricturism”) and do not buy into his revolutionary “aparatchik” attitude. However, the book pitches a few good concepts of audio evaluations. BTW, I absolutely disagree with the book and with some Lehnitsky’s articles that try to build a “new vocabulary” for sound evaluations – this was completely foolish intention. If you give to a “dead person” a collection of the words that Maria Tsvetaeva or Robert Frost used then the person still will end up with a “dead semantics”…

guy sergeant wrote:

..... There is a danger, when talking in elaborate language about audio equipment, that the sound quality of the software, a component or a system might be perceived as being somehow beyond or better than that of 'real' sound. Certainly many dealers and reviewers make their living selling this perception. But do we actually need a special language to describe sound? After all, do we need a special language to describe colour? My young son can tell the difference between 'real' sound and 'reproduced' sound. He does not need work his way through multiple levels of 'music/hi-fi appreciation' to 'get' that difference. It does seem to me that this issue is perhaps being over intellectualised. It is not dissimilar to the way certain religions work, where there are guru's who are apparently closer to the truth, and acolytes who can't or don't understand the faith quite as much and therefore look up to the more knowledgeable for guidance. I'm not sure it's healthy. ..... regards, Guy

guy sergeant wrote:

Again I get the impression that attempting to link 'serious music' as a pre-requisite to 'serious playback' is over intellectualising matters. … The equipment, of course, doesn't know what kind of noise it is being asked to reproduce.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I very much insist on the fact that I do not retrieve my position on this mater. The relationship between a ‘content loaded music’ and capacity of a 'serious playback' is the only mater that counts and this is the threshold where ‘real audio’ become. The Cat

Anthony, without making it too wordy (no strength to write for a long now):

 there are some natural rules of sound creation, sound distribution, sound propagation, sound consumption and so on. They are not my of anybody’s else rules but the rules “as is”? The sound reproducing machines might imitate, mimic or at least comply with those rules. If they do not do then we the listeners activate our driftnet interpreters to associate the heard. Yes, out brain is not Win95 and it can run multitasking but the process of FORCED association has a lot of negative effects to our perception and blocks some important things.

The “content loaded music”, and this it very ironic, employs the similar natural rules (the rules that deeply entrenched into cultural humane background and vise-versa). Believe you or not but by manipulation and turning (if a person know how) some aspects of “audio exchange” (the exchange - is the intricate mechanisms of conversion of Performing Reality into electromechanical algorithms and then back to Sound) a person can moderate the level compliance of the playback system with the seriousness of played material. If you do into farther research on the subject then you might discover that more, content-wise, complicated music require more aggressive level of playback compliance with “a language of the original process” (something that I call the “Beach Effect”).

 One more aspects: unfortunately, most of people in audio do not make audio server the original process but rather make audio to server the interest of the “exchange mechanism”. Sort of a possess for the sake of a process… In this case the process itself become self-serving concept and as a cooling star begin to fill out the entire operational space. The Content Serious Music, in that astronomic example acts as a super condensed material with own comparable gravitation force that prevents the “Cooling Audio” to expand unpunishably…

Rgs,
The Cat