What is going to be your endgame speaker?
- Thread starter thomask
- Start date
I beg to differ.
Your position is based on the premise that all things are constantly improving, which I do not ascribe to. Although it is part of many companies marketing strategy that they are constantly evolving toward perfection, many of us don't view it that way. Sure the latest Wilson speaker may be better that the last model, but that does not make it close to doing what I want.
From observation, there are people who have chosen to go with old technology like corner horns or full range drivers and find musical satisfaction.
I personally believe that there is a modern trend towards hyper detail that is un-musical along with an obsession for the frequency extremes of under 20Hz and way over 20KHz. The more drivers you have and the wider the frequency range the harder it id to get coherency.
Sure, foam surrounds and electrolytic caps have limited life. Rubber surrounds have a much longer life but, interestingly, the old school technology of doped pleated paper/cloth surrounds can last longer than a lifetime.
Well, in this hobby we can stop at any moment. Stereo is intrinsically an hobby of individual experimentation that never ends as long as the listener wants, but it depends on listener will.
Stereo has been in evolution along the years - but if listeners refuse to listen to its current top characteristics, either by faith or considering them artificial and less appealing and engaging than what they currently have, they can easily have their end game.
Surely. If I had five times more resources than I have my next speakers would be different ...
Curiously I consider that we have seen a modern trend towards very high quality detail that sounds natural and musical during the last years. As designers and manufacturers have been able to master much better the technology associated to fine building details, coherency between drive units is better than ever in some top brands.
But yes, the extreme diversity and the wide band has made set up and system matching more critical.
First, to my ears as a 65 year aware listener (I’m older, but for 65 years I’ve been listening somewhat seriously to what has passed for high end audio at the time), there have been advances in speaker technology in every decade. This has been even more obvious to my ears over the last 40 years.
Second, the definition of distortion is the difference between the relative spectral content of the input and the output. If there are details present in the input that do not survive passing through the device, they reflect some of the distorting characteristics of the device.
If one speaker renders more detail from the same amplifier output signal than another, the loss reflects some of the distortion of lesser detailed speaker.
If someone prefers the less detailed presentation, Gordon Gow used to explain it as the preference of some listeners for euphonious distortion.
I think it’s great that we have choices. The person who prefers less detail in the name of greater musicality is misguided in my view. But if that’s their preference, it’s none of my business.
If you sit among the instruments as a member of the performing group, you will hear many things that someone at mid hall will miss. If you’re used to the mid hall position, rather than the close miked position, the extra detail might seem out of place. But if it’s on the tape, I want to hear it rendered by my system.
YMMV obviously. It is great to have choices.
I believe you and dcathro simply have different listening objectives.
(I will spare Francisco yet another listing of the objectives.)
Yes, it's good to have choices!
Interesting that one of the latest Wilson advances is the use of Alnico in their midrange, a material that was common place in the 50s. 1920's technology is now all the rage with more and more offering field coils - I am looking forward to listening to Audio Note field coil speakers at the upcoming Australian Audio show.
I have a friend who has Voxativ single driver speakers, Garrard TT, exotic vintage arms & cartridges and varios exotic SET amps with a selection of rare 100yo tubes. It is very different to my system (CD, solid state amps and 3 way speakers), but it is his end game for his room (he says if he had a bigger room he would have horns) and I can listen for hours and appreciate the incredible strengths of his approach.
There are 2 ways you can have detail - it is there in the recording, or it is an artifact of the system lacking coherence. If you have coherence then the strands of the music join together and are not separated into disjoint annoying artifacts.
I think this is an interesting topic which deserves its own thread.
I’m not going to enter a discussion on what I will dub “phantom detail.”
If it’s part of the performance, I want to hear it.
I’m talking about clarity, not obfuscation.
I know. You have posed the idea that there is hyper detail that is not really present and detracts from the music. I have no idea what this means.
My observation is that fidelity of signal transfer at every stage is critical to believable reproduction of the original performance.
Performance to microphone to storage to duplication to retrieval to amplification to speaker to ear. The weakest link destroys the clarity.
Here we’re talking about speakers … and because they are electro mechanical devices with the job of exciting the air in a believable way, their task is especially complex. They rarely fully succeed. But more often than not, they succeed in some portion of their goal to attract buyers.
Different listeners are attracted to different aspects of speaker success. This is another of those issues where human differences in hearing and psychological preferences guide what each of us likes.
My goal for this thread is to point out that for listeners like me, there is no end game.
Enjoy what you have, but if you get curious, why not indulge your curiosity and consider other options as they present themselves with convincing cases? There is no need for an end game. The game is continuously afoot.
Thank you for explaining your position.
I need to go somewhere, but I will come back to you with a response when I have time.
I agree that if you sit next to an oboe player during a symphony you may hear things that you may not hear if you sit in the audience.
That made me think about the presentation the composer had in mind when writing his work or listening to it performed. What does he want his audience to experience? It also made me think about microphone placement and technique, particularly multi-mic'ing versus a simpler 3-mic tree used used for earlier RCA and Decca recordings.
I suppose one theoretical ideal is the signal out is the same as the signal coming off the source transducer. Perhaps another theoretical ideal is to fully enjoy a natural presentation of the performance. Nothing suggests these are mutually exclusive. It makes me wonder how much of the former is necessary and sufficient to the latter. Can a performance sound believable if the listener does not hear every detail recorded on a tape?
When you are listening at home why would you want to create the experience of sitting among the instruments as a member of the performing group, rather than creating the experience of being in the audience listening at some distance to that group perform?
Interesting that you don’t project any ultimate destination when it comes to speakers for yourself… do you change these out often? If OK could you maybe share a history and timeline of the speakers that you have owned. I find seeing the sequence in evolution of gear ownership really interesting and it’d be great to get some perspective and context on your journey with your speakers.
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