Home Critic's Corner

Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry.

RE: And...

With loudspeakers, the criteria for listeners finding the sound to be "good" are well-established. While it is still possible for a listener to prefer a loudspeaker that is demonstrably poor, I have found this to be rare.


If what you said was really true, there wouldn't be such a wide variety of speaker designs and such a wide variety of different listener preferences for one type of presentation vs. another. So much of what a speaker sounds like is determined by how it couples with the room, and the standard suite of measurements doesn't do a good job of revealing that.

In the market, there are some designers who seem to be aiming for a smoothly downward sloping far field response in a typical listening room, and their measurements sometimes reveal tradeoffs that balance deviations in near-field on-axis response against deviations in off-axis response. And other designers who seem to be trying to make the near field on-axis response as ruler flat as possible, and let the far-field and/or off-axis response fall where it may. Few can do both.

The designers who are focusing on power response produce better sounding speakers than the designers who are optimizing for a single microphone position in the near-field. But the latter produce speakers which are more widely praised as being better engineered. In this sense, that one metric for speakers what THD is for amplifiers.



This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  VH Audio  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
  • RE: And... - Dave_K 11/16/1508:58:21 11/16/15 (0)

FAQ

Post a Message!

Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.