Are modern speakers all just overpriced regurgitations?

[MarkS]

There is more to speakers than flat FR and smooth directivity. If you just optimise for that and forget about dynamics and imaging ability you’ll end up with a perfectly boring speaker.

How do you optimize for imaging ability?

 

[theREALdotnet]

How do you optimize for imaging ability?

I wish I knew. And going by the several ASR threads on the topic, nobody really knows, but people have their theories. The pity is that nobody seems to perform controlled listening test specifically looking at stereo imaging. Until that happens we can’t be sure. In my opinion it may have to do with some combination of the following:
- sample variation between the two speakers (lack thereof)
- artifacts from resonances and diffraction (lack thereof)
- time alignment of drivers

 

[Penelinfi]

There may also be how people perceive sound too. People love talking about how they can hear that performers are 2ft this way and 5ft backwards. But what if you don't have experience with live performers? Will you still hear distances?

 

[Theta]

I will add this, in fairness: Even into their later days, the company started by Hermon Hosmer Scott did produce a surprising number of surprisingly pleasant loudspeakers. Some of the "surprise" reflects the rather prosaic design of most of them.
The 166, which by the way dates from the late 1970s, is a fair example.
The earlier S-15, I would opine, is an even better one. An astonishingly generic looking sealed box (monkey coffin) three way loaded with three inexpensive and unremarkable cone drivers (at least two if not all three of them sourced from the well known driver manufacturer CTS, which was a forebear of today's Eminence company, if memory serves) and a "controlled impedance" crossover network (which I never looked at, truth be told).
I had a pair of these (dump finds) and they were exceptionally pleasant to listen to. They were also surprisingly sensitive (given their rather small sealed enclosures) and easy to drive. I would have them still, probably, but I gave them to a local teacher who was setting up a small, simple, robust stereo for her classroom.

FMI Fulton made a similar speaker using the same inexpensive drivers with exellent results, their 2 way FMI 80 had rave reviews in most audiophile magazines and forums.

 

[theREALdotnet]

People love talking about how they can hear that performers are 2ft this way and 5ft backwards. But what if you don't have experience with live performers? Will you still hear distances?

I don’t think one can measure distance by ear like that, even with live musical sources. It’s more of a relative perception, like: close, farther away, much farther away.

The kicker isn’t detecting how far some sound source is away but to perceive it as a tangible single source in space, rather than a diffuse blob. If you get the former, the distance perception will fall into place all by itself.

 

[robh36062]

I wish I knew. And going by the several ASR threads on the topic, nobody really knows, but people have their theories.

Hello

Having smooth frequency response and smooth off axis response certainly helps. Going back to the early 80's it was recognized that the newer CD horn
systems improved the imaging compared to the previous generation of monitors as an example.

May not be the whole puzzle but it seems to be a piece.

Rob