I think many if not most of ASR's members are familiar with the Toole/harman school of speaker design - i.e. relatively flat on-axis/listening window and smoothly changing or constant directivity off-axis - and that research shows this approach is highly correlated with listener preference. It's fair to assume the average speaker engineer knows this. What then, are the reasons so many speaker manufacturers seem to deviate from this approach?
The cynical answer - and probably truthful, in some cases - is that it's just aesthetics and marketing. Some speaker designs look nice or unique, and they might seem more impressive when listened for a couple of minutes in isolation from other speakers, especially when playing sparse music that is unlikely to reveal flaws.
Some people seem to worry that if all speakers followed the Toole approach, all speakers would look and sound the same, although I think @Ilkless made a good case against that in this post. Of course, there also budget constraints on the low end of the price scale - I don't mean to trivialize designing a technically good loudspeaker - but there are certainly affordable speakers that perform admirably as well.
But it seems some manufacturers simply don't 'agree' with the research, or at least actively choose to go against it with their own designs. Sometimes I see measurements that are completely puzzling, but I have to assume the engineers have their reasons. What do you think? Are there any example where a speaker appears to go against the research but ends up sounding good in-room?
The cynical answer - and probably truthful, in some cases - is that it's just aesthetics and marketing. Some speaker designs look nice or unique, and they might seem more impressive when listened for a couple of minutes in isolation from other speakers, especially when playing sparse music that is unlikely to reveal flaws.
Some people seem to worry that if all speakers followed the Toole approach, all speakers would look and sound the same, although I think @Ilkless made a good case against that in this post. Of course, there also budget constraints on the low end of the price scale - I don't mean to trivialize designing a technically good loudspeaker - but there are certainly affordable speakers that perform admirably as well.
But it seems some manufacturers simply don't 'agree' with the research, or at least actively choose to go against it with their own designs. Sometimes I see measurements that are completely puzzling, but I have to assume the engineers have their reasons. What do you think? Are there any example where a speaker appears to go against the research but ends up sounding good in-room?
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