Are speakers actually already a solved problem?

[terryforsythe]

Solved problem? Yes, long ago.
However:
Perfect? No, not as close to perfection as electronics (i.e., amplifiers, DACs, etc.). Frequency response and harmonic distortion in speakers still is significantly worse than the best electronics. On top of that, add phasing issues between drivers in the vertical axis, combing issues in multi-channel systems, imperfections with passive crossovers, etc. But, speaker technology continues to improve.

 

[goat76]

Seems a weird thing to say. Is speaker efficiency really a big problem when the average wattage used for your average speaker to get to an average SPL that most people would consider "loud" is in the single digits? And with the amount of power you can easily get nowadays, dynamic peaks aren't a big issue either I wouldn't think.

With a some good towers or a good subwoofer or three, I don't think there's really any issue reproducing a piano's bass register?

I don't know, but next time you are in the room of a grand piano or any kind of acoustic piano, play a hard bass note, and maybe you will realize what a tremendously bottomless clean power of a sound it can make, which most loudspeakers could just dream of reproducing. I have heard many impressive loudspeakers over the years, but it is still highly impressive to hear real-life instruments playing as they play very loudly without appearing to be that loud (if that description makes sense?).

 

[Steven Holt]

If it's a 'solved problem' I wish someone would tell NHT because I just bought a pair of the SuperOnes (craigslist, $75) waited 2 days to wire them in and auditioned them and they are flat f*ck*ing awful. Worst money on gear that I have ever spent.

 

[Palmer]

If it's a 'solved problem' I wish someone would tell NHT because I just bought a pair of the SuperOnes (craigslist, $75) waited 2 days to wire them in and auditioned them and they are flat f*ck*ing awful. Worst money on gear that I have ever spent.

Don't feel too bad, sometimes you get burned. I bought a used, but still expensive cartridge from a source I got a good deal before, not so much this time around. I bet you can put those back on Craigs, and maybe someone actually likes them. Unless something is really wrong with those, of course.

For me, speakers are really never a "solved" issue, I like too many aspects individually from all that I have either owned, worked with or listened to extensively.
Plasma tweeter comes to mind... My Edgarhorn Slimlines are what I lived with for the longest, only because they render voice exceedingly well.

 

[Blumlein 88]

If it's a 'solved problem' I wish someone would tell NHT because I just bought a pair of the SuperOnes (craigslist, $75) waited 2 days to wire them in and auditioned them and they are flat f*ck*ing awful. Worst money on gear that I have ever spent.

You know it is possible that small speakers like the SuperOnes are the most improved speakers over the last 15 years. At one time you just didn't expect to get anything much out of speakers that size. Polk made a small one better than average. You could spend a bit more for something like a Mordant Short. Or an LS3 5a which I really didn't like. Small speakers that size any good were almost non-existent.

 

[boxerfan88]

I do not think so. Even very good and well measuring loudspeakers do not sound identical. Whereas many DACs do.

I agree.

Going one step deeper from loudspeaker to driver unit. I wonder if there was ever a band limited music test to compare 2 drivers (different brand/model but closely matched FR +/- 0.5dB)?

I hazard a guess that they will sound different.

Another aspect is how the sound is projected into the room. Box vs open baffle vs omni, all sound different.

Therefore I think loudspeakers is not yet a solved problem.

 

[Chrispy]

How far from a solved issue for most home situations I've wondered for a while. I'd think not in most cases without some radical discovery in transducer tech

 

[boxerfan88]

[...] Voicing is the act of applying a final subjective judgment that may override this applied technology. Knowing how to manipulate both the objective and subjective aspects of a design is indeed the "art" and "Zen" of loudspeaker engineering."

When a manufacturer publish FR spec +/-3dB, that provides a huge 6dB room for voicing.

Even if specced at +/-1.5dB, I personally think that 3dB room is still big enough to do a bit of voicing.

 

[Pearljam5000]

Nothing is really completely solved or ever will be, especially in audio.

 

[sigbergaudio]

Funny you should mention that. I was reading Vance Dickason's "Loudspeaker Design Cookbook" and I thought this little excerpt might create some discussion on ASR!

From Ch 7.90 (p. 188), 7th Edition on "Loudspeaker Voicing":

"Voicing" is a term generally used in music. For piano technicians, voicing a piano means adjusting the hardness or softness of the hammers after you have tuned the piano. That hardness or softness changes the timbre of the notes and gives a different "voice" to the sound of the piano. [...]

So how does the term "voicing" relate to loudspeaker design? First, because loudspeakers are supposed to reproduce music and not add anything to the original recording, there should be no such term as voicing applied to a loudspeaker. However, while loudspeakers are indeed reproduction devices, they are sadly imperfect ones and no matter what, all loudspeakers add some coloration to the original event and make things even more complicated. The room the loudspeaker is placed in also adds its own coloration to the original event!

Whether you are a loudspeaker maanufacturer or a hobbyist building his own "dream" speaker design, the ultimate goal is for your speaker to sound "musical", which is another way of saying you want your speaker to sound as much as possible like the original acoustic event. This is obviously a universal goal for speaker design, and "voicing" is a commonly used term among manufacturers used to achieve that goal. Ultimately it all comes down to some sort of final adjustment that renders the design finished and ready for listening.

[...] Voicing is the act of applying a final subjective judgment that may override this applied technology. Knowing how to manipulate both the objective and subjective aspects of a design is indeed the "art" and "Zen" of loudspeaker engineering."

What complicates things quite a bit, is that the combination of the speaker design and the room means to actually get natural sounding ..sound in the listening position is a composite of quite a few factors. This will inevitably make some amount of tuning necessary. With a DAC or an amplifier, flat in = flat out. With a speaker, anechoically flat on-axis response does not necessarily mean correct response at the listening position.

The second thing that is often still problematic, certainly in budget speakers but surprisingly often in extremely expensive speakers as well, is dynamic capacity. Somehow we have come to accept this / choose not to consider this as an important aspect. Among other things, probably because for various reasons we want relatively small speakers, which means those pesky laws of physics makes things difficult.

As a manufacturer I take both of the above pretty seriously, and imho the result is something "different". This humbly brings me to the conclusion that this is indeed not a solved problem. Or at least the consensus is so low that the different manufacturers still have many different approaches, and seemingly also many different priorities.

 

[Purité Audio]

According to Klaus Heinz of HEDD Audio, the speakers are the least solved problem in audio reproduction, and unfortunately, he doesn't see any new technology coming up around the corner that will change that soon. He doesn't think any significant improvements have been made in the last 30 years, and there are no big inventions to be expected for the current type of technology, other than new materials as a nearfield goal that may improve things slightly but not that much.

The main thing he wants to see an improvement of is the lack of efficiency, and he thinks it's close to a "scandal" that the efficiency of loudspeakers is still down to maybe around 2%, so he sees the dynamics as the largest Achilles heel for loudspeakers.

"When I go home in the evening and have time to play my grand piano, just put one octave in the base and you immediately know there is a lot of work to do." - Klaus Heinz on the current state of loudspeaker technology


46:38 into the video:

I wouldn’t put too much store in KH’s opinion, having stocked the Hedd range briefly and unfortunate experiences with AdamTensors ( his previous brand).
Keith

 

[GXAlan]

Solved science, not a solved problem.

Take a look at the Meyer Sound X20, X40, and X80. They are science driven designs which are Tier 1. You can room EQ and PEQ any remaining squiggles to get perfect ruler flat FR but even then, you can choose between

X20: 110 x 50 deg
X22: 80 x 50 deg
X23: 110 x 110 deg

X40: 110 x 50 deg
X42: 70 x 50 deg
X80: 95 x 40 deg
X82: 55 x 40 deg

These are all concentric designs. And you can also rotate the horn 90 deg.

Many companies like KEF shoot for a full symmetry in dispersion while others choose to have less vertical dispersion to reduce the effect of floor and ceiling.

In cinema, you might use the wider ones for the L and R and go with the narrower dispersion for C.

This is the part where we need to still match speakers to the room.

To the point that it’s a “solved problem” that you can get amazing sound at any budget, then I would say yes. To the point that we will have a concept of a fully transparent single speaker? Only if we are in an anechoic room.

The other challenge is to take a grand piano, listen to it in a real room and compare it to the recording of a piano on any level of system. Even Amir will say that they generate a different sound. (It’s all due to the way the sound is produced and dispersion characteristics.)

 

[Haskil]

I wouldn’t put too much store in KH’s opinion, having stocked the Hedd range briefly and unfortunate experiences with AdamTensors ( his previous brand).
Keith

I, who am a pianist, who has a grand piano, do not notice at all what he think... On the contrary, it is not when we drop an octave in the bass that we find the biggest problem is when you place a chord in the high-mid pedal with the pedal up and you listen carefully that the differences between the real sound and the reproduced sound appear when you are close to the piano... the bass is accommodates it much, much better... But reproducing at real level a piano beyond half the keyboard can very quickly break the ears... the distortion above 300 Hz is very very audible... But when you comes out of the room, it is sometimes disturbing to note that a well recorded record gives the impression that a real piano is playing in the next room... if the speakers are good and the amp powerful enough not to scream him too.

 

[Geert]

Speakers will be a solved problem when they can do 20Hz - 20kHz at 120dB peak with inaudible distortion over the full bandwidth while cancelling all acoustic effects and that in the size of a tennis ball. Until then each design is a compromise and the customer needs to make a choice based on his personal priorities.

 

[sleepy.sock]

Anechoic response is largely solved problem in my view (provided you get a decent modern speaker design). If you can build your own listening environment around your speakers with _no practical constraints_ you can get truly extraordinary performance.

Real in-room response is very much not a solved problem. Certain design strategies can try to improve it but it is really, really hard to guarantee ideal reproduction across arbitrary room environments. This problem is unlikely to ever be solved unless we can somehow upgrade our physics.

That is the big difference between speaker design and DAC or amp design, which have much more circumscribed objective functions.

 

[Haskil]

It's pretty much solved... but what isn't solved is the way each manufacturer approaches their work, well beyond knowing whether or not they have a Klippel to speed up the process. development of its speakers thanks to numerous reliable measurements carried out in record time.

As long as there is a need for speakers that stand out from their neighbors in sellers' auditoriums, we will have speakers that are very different from each other because each manufacturer has its own idea on the issue...

It is also curious to note that entry-level speakers from major manufacturers often do very well what little they do in terms of bass frequency range and admissible power. They are not an issue for their manufacturer... Things get worse when you move up the range, because the models must differentiate themselves audibly from each other in the range and from those of rivals in the range. auditorium...and then the problems begin...

Memories of old hifists: in the 1970s and 1980s, at the Paris Sound Festival, two speaker brands offered speakers that sounded the same from entry to the top of the range: Cabasse and Kef... and it was astonishing to attend the demonstrations of these two manufacturers; because when you went from one model to another going up in range, the only difference was the extension in the bass and the general magnitude of the sound reproduced... In their time and with the means (Cabasse had the most large anechoic chamber of Europe) which were theirs, these two brands worked towards a real objective improvement of their speakers.

Cabasse also organized live music/recorded music comparisons in another auditorium of the Sound Festival. A jazz orchestra was playing live and suddenly it was the speakers that were "playing" in continuity... all at an equal level... and we didn't perceive any differences. It was the best advertising that this brand had found... to praise the fidelity of its speakers... Even if we can criticize this type of experiment... that Pathé did around the First World War to praise its horn phonographs by making singers from the Paris Opera sing behind a curtain where the large phonograph model was also installed... Nobody could tell the difference then... Well, people also shouted at the cinema when the train was rushing on them...
To come back to the question asked: yes, today we can manufacture speakers which will be difficult to distinguish from each other if we apply the same goals to them. Arriving at home, the problems will begin and this problem is still not resolved and some even think that it cannot be.

 

[SSS]

Electrical to acoustical transducers will be always a compromise. Basically the opposite direction is true also for microphones and phono cartridges as well. All loudspeakers up to Magico and Geithain which I could listen to were different in sound. Sometimes more or less in the same room. The room/speaker combination can be optimized but I guess never perfectly. Therefore my estimation is that this will never be solved becouse it is too complex and hardly a single solution can be get.

 

[Geert]

I often see the grand piano being used as the golden standard audio reproduction is measured against, but to make it a fair comparison you would need to compare with speakers the size of a grand piano Meaning, the real challenge of reproducing the sound of a grand piano is more about the limitations of stereo sound.

 

[Purité Audio]

Reproducing the recording of a grand piano.
Keith

 

[goat76]

Electrical to acoustical transducers will be always a compromise. Basically the opposite direction is true also for microphones and phono cartridges as well. All loudspeakers up to Magico and Geithain which I could listen to were different in sound. Sometimes more or less in the same room. The room/speaker combination can be optimized but I guess never perfectly. Therefore my estimation is that this will never be solved becouse it is too complex and hardly a single solution can be get.

One thing that I think highlights the "never-solving" part is the thing you mention about how different speakers sound from different manufacturers. There doesn't seem to be a consensus on how a loudspeaker should sound and behave in a room, or how the dispersion should be. The only consensus seems to be a somewhat flat frequency response in all directions.

If we take Genelec and Neumann in comparison. They both obviously have the same goal of having a very flat response, but still (and generally speaking), fans of Genelec speakers usually don't like the sound of Neumann speakers as they often seem to find them boring and unengaging, while Neumann fans often think that Genelec speakers have an unnatural bright representation in the upper range.

So my main question is: Why can't the speaker manufacturers come to the same conclusion of how the ultimate dispersion characteristics should be?