Speaker lamentations - measurements vs price vs sound

[NicC]

Thanks Amir. Out of interest, I just read a member's post in the high-end hifi thread, that he has never heard a passive speaker at any price, match what his active speakers can produce. Is there a thread where I can learn about this? It intrigues me. The science may go over my head I know, but if I can break it down in simple terms and ideas, it would be interesting. I'm finding the world of electricity and drivers and 1s and 0s (and tiny divots on vinyl) extremely thought-provoking and tbh... awe-inspiring.

 

[Heinrich]

I've read (and thought about) all the posts and thank the members for the info. 1300Euros Heinrich! That's awesome you love the system so much. The 'best' system I have heard was at a hifi shop near me where I heard ... bluetoothed my phone, and I thought I was at a Bon Jovi concert

To enjoy stereo has a lot to do with imagination. Or the motivation to invest imagination. That is not a weakness, but just natural. Stereo or surround is by no means 'virtual reality' allthough the industry wants us to believe and some guys happily replicate this fairy tale to make themselves believe even more. To expect some effortless VR all day long is granted to be frustrating, hence they cannot settle down, spending tremendous amount of money in good hope. The recording should be imaginative, my feelings about it likewise, the speakers are a tool.

Once understood, 1300 is enough for speakers, or outside of a sellout 2300 maybe, subwoofers/stands DIY'ed.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Thanks Amir. Out of interest, I just read a member's post in the high-end hifi thread, that he has never heard a passive speaker at any price, match what his active speakers can produce. Is there a thread where I can learn about this? It intrigues me. The science may go over my head I know, but if I can break it down in simple terms and ideas, it would be interesting. I'm finding the world of electricity and drivers and 1s and 0s (and tiny divots on vinyl) extremely thought-provoking and tbh... awe-inspiring.

It might be a good idea to link that post in this thread so we can see what the poster was referring to exactly.

You may know this, but I'll state it anyway. An active speaker only needs a line level or digital input. Power amps are included with one amp per driver. Cross overs can be done at line level which is a better way than using high power components in passive speakers. Or with some actives they may be done digitally with the result feeding each power amp. This has some advantages and in theory would give you the best possible result. In practice there are advantages, but I personally wouldn't say by definition that means actives are the best speaker.

Here are reviews of some outstanding active speakers.

Neumann KH420 Review (Studio Monitor)

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Neumann 3-way, active speaker (monitor). It is on loan from the company and costs US $5,195. Speaker was too heavy to lug to the loft where my main system is so you have to put up with the cell phone picture above and listening tests there. Back...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Smaller more affordable version from the same company.

Neumann KH120 II Monitor Review

This is a review, detailed measurements and listening tests/EQ of Neumann KH120 MKII DSP active monitor (speaker). It is on kind loan from the company and costs US $999 each. I love the form factor for desktop use. It is not too deep or unwieldly as some larger configurations can be: Back...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Genelec 8361A Review (Powered Monitor)

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Genelc 8361A studio monitor (powered active speaker). It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $4,995. The 8361A looks identical to the rest of the series except massively scaled up: It doesn't look it but it is extremely heavy. It has a...

www.audiosciencereview.com

And a similarly good passive speaker which of course you'll have to add amps to, but superb amps are not terribly expensive anymmore.

Revel F328Be Speaker Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Revel F328Be floor standing speaker. I purchased a single unit through our company (Madrona) with kind discount from Harman Sales (I asked for a review sample from the PR group but was told "don't call us, we will call you."). The retail cost...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Dal1as]

I think this really comes down to the room, speakers, and what you want like Amir briefly mentioned.

If you want live sound in a good sized room a 2 channel system will sound anemic compared to a 9.4.6 room setup properly with good source music.

I listened to a few Dire Straights songs in a dolby atmos lab once. Money for Nothing was insane. Believe it was a 5.1 SACD mix.

It was the most live I've ever heard a speaker system sound. They had over 40 speakers and panels everywhere.

Really got me into bass management and room treatment.

 

[Oddball]

After you set the general targets for budget, SPL, frequency response, distortion, discretion etc. and go through the first cut, the audition is really where the "mating" starts. Best in your liar, but not always possible.

Falling in love is important and you can't really do that remotely. Last time I was on market for LR towers, I ended up unexpectedly with something else that I initially thought would be the pick. Pretty happy with the choice and also saved some cash.

I did buy my horizontal center speaker without auditioning, but then choice in that price range was not great and measurements and reviews were pretty convincing.

 

[NicC]

Living in Australia, we typically end up paying premium prices for most things. After a lousy exchange rate, shipping, import duties etc... The $4 398USD speakers I ordered will end up approximately $10 000AUD - a hefty investment. I'm not into buying and selling - so they HAVE to be right And thus, I'm on this site trusting what people (and Dave Fabrikant) say about the Ascend ELX units. I'm expecting a massive boost in sound quality over the Dali Zensor 7 speakers which have been at the front of a HT setup for many years now. And to be honest, we've enjoyed their sound - but I didn't know there could be so much more, and after hearing the Golden Ear Triton 1s, I began thinking about this upgrade. Hopefully, after installing the ELX speakers, it will be like I've been watching black & white tv all these years, missing out on the wonders of colour. We will see! (er...hear)

 

[NicC]

They had over 40 speakers and panels everywhere.

40 speakers! That would have to be something to listen to!

 

[NicC]

Falling in love is important and you can't really do that remotely.

I had no idea KEF did a great wireless tower range. If my wife found out (she has been on me for years to 'get rid of the wires') I think there would be a few moments of silence every time we sat down to watch a show She would fall in love instantly, with something that hid 'the mess' regardless of the sound. There is no way I'm going to tell her.

 

[Keith_W]

I had no idea KEF did a great wireless tower range. If my wife found out (she has been on me for years to 'get rid of the wires') I think there would be a few moments of silence every time we sat down to watch a show She would fall in love instantly, with something that hid 'the mess' regardless of the sound. There is no way I'm going to tell her.

Wireless speakers are a waste of time. You can choose to run speaker wire to the speakers. Or run a power cable to the speakers. Either way, it's still a cable. And if you choose "wireless", then your speakers become susceptible to the vagaries of wireless transmission. Give me the reliability of cabled connections any time.

 

[NicC]

Give me the reliability of cabled connections any time.

That's actually reassuring to me - thank you Keith.

 

[BenB]

Once you get above a certain price point, speakers are sold more on uniqueness and exclusivity than on actual accuracy or performance. It's best if they look like works of art, and have as little in common with traditional black rectangular boxes as possible, because the owners intend to use them more to impress their acquaintances than for listening enjoyment.
Usually the marketing department will pick some aspect of speaker design to focus on when trying to convince the would-be purchasers that all other speakers are deficient. For example, eliminating internal standing waves, or isolating vibrations from the floor, or "improving" dispersion (accomplished by adding tweeters on the back of the cabinet), or phase linearity (which our ears are impressively insensitive to), or "wave launch" differences, and other technobabble.
The engineering department often (but not always) will play along and design something unique to justify these claims. Unfortunately, by focusing on a relatively unimportant aspect of sound reproduction, they often ignore some of the basics, and end up designing something that sounds and measures worse than more traditional (and less expensive) speakers.

 

[alankila]

I'm going to mention one more time in this thread that that the room is a big factor. In far field, you are very likely to hear more of the room than the direct sound of the speaker. This is typically always true below the room's modal frequency (usually < 200 Hz) where the room becomes just a resonant chamber for the bass, but it also becomes true in other frequences as listening distance increases past some 3-4 meters. Many of use have speakers at far end of a living room and sit like 4-5 meters away, and so it can be true that we mostly hear the room, and not so much the speaker.

Rooms have huge influence to sound, arguably even more than the speakers themselves! In my living room, I have about +20 dB bass boost around 35 Hz. Until I bought a measurement microphone, I never could get bass right -- I simply did not understand how large corrections are needed to bring the bass into proper balance. 20 dB is huge. In terms of amplitude, it is 10 times higher amplitude coming from room than from the speaker exciting that room. Comb filtering, or mixing or direct sound with some short reflected sound path from e.g. side wall, is also huge factor. When a reflection reinforces the direct sound, the boost can go up to +6 dB. But at frequencies where they cancel, it can literally become nearly inaudible, or roughly -infinite dB. So controlling the resonant room modes and attenuating the reflection paths is absurdly important for high sound quality.

Speakers, being the devices that excite the room and provide the sound, are of course important too, but I would give them only secondary importance. Things like amplification, DAC and (digital) source are way below importance after them. Cost has almost no correlation to sound quality above some relatively low limit, e.g. around 2000 euros can buy you a pair of speakers like KEF Q11 Meta. Spinorama says that these are among the most affordable good speakers out there, so there is a kind of limit to just how much sound quality can cost, even in principle. Because once you have good sound, it doesn't really get much better, no matter how much more you spend. It turns out, good sound is actually pretty cheap, if you know what you are doing, and just follow e.g. spinorama tonality scores as a guideline.

The main way to improve sound is to focus on the acoustics first, for reasons I explained. Parametric equalization is also hugely important and can transform a mediocre speaker into good speaker. The order of importance, as I define it, is room > speakers >> amplifier >> signal source. The >> indicates a comparatively major decrease in importance -- I'd say after the first >> nothing beyond it really matters unless your choice of equipment is somehow unexpectedly poor. However, if you are unfortunate enough to use a record player, then it has similar important to amplifier, probably, as it is far more difficult to make a good record player. I would not recommend using a record player if a digital source is an option.

 

[terryforsythe]

Thanks Amir. Out of interest, I just read a member's post in the high-end hifi thread, that he has never heard a passive speaker at any price, match what his active speakers can produce. Is there a thread where I can learn about this? It intrigues me. The science may go over my head I know, but if I can break it down in simple terms and ideas, it would be interesting.

I have not seen a thread that covers everything. Here are some highlights, though these are only the tips of the iceburg:

Speaker drivers have complex impedances, and a complex impedance is not an ideal load for a passive filter - there are issues with frequency response and phase/group delay. Passive filters have power losses (primarily the inductors and resistors).
Although a designer may add one or two resonant circuits to deal with the most significant peaks in the speaker's response, it is not practical to address every flaw in the frequency response due to the complexity of the crossover it would require, as well as the resulting power losses and cost.

Once you go active, which now days primarily is in the digital domain, all of the crossovers and tuning is done in software. You can use any crossovers you like, and use as much EQ as you like, without introducing power losses in the speaker. Also, in the digital domain, the impedances of the speaker's drivers do not matter (they also do not matter if using analog active filters because the filters see a constant load impedance). Moreover, you can use time delay and/or all-pass filters to finely tune phase alignment between drivers. (If being used in an AV system you do need to make sure that you don't introduce lip sync issues, though, with use of too much time delay or too many all-pass filters.)

Finally, with active crossovers, which go before the amplifiers, you have a direct connection between the amplifier output stage and the terminals of the speaker's voice coil, with only wire and electrical connectors therebetween. This gives the amplifier greater control over the driver, which primarly is a concern for woofer damping. Inserting a passive filter between the amplifier and the driver reduces the damping factor.

 

[traind]

But don't forget to also check out the tests here on ASR made on good speakers.

If you want speakers that reproduce the recorded material without altering it, or coloring it as we sometimes say, you can say that this is the most important thing in descending order is:
1. Smooth frequency response (many people find a little slope to be nice). That on-axis frequency response (the speaker is pointed towards you) and off-axis that follow each other.
2. Dispersion of the sound. In many ways a matter of taste.
3. Distortion and noise. When that becomes audible and annoying is individual. There are quite a few threads about this on ASR.

This is usually referred to as a starting point, if we talk about a good smooth FR:
View attachment 438917
There are some threads about that curve here on ASR. Here's one:

The Harman In-Room Target Curve - why is it represented as a thin line?

I typically see the Harman target curve represented as a thin line on an amplitude vs. freq chart, as if the goal were to achieve that target precisely. But looking at a review article written by Toole entitled "The Measurement and Calibration of Sound Reproducing Systems" (JAES...

audiosciencereview.com

Anyone can test that a bumpy frequency curve sounds weird. Just pick up a free EQ app and turn the controls up and down. A big frequency roller coaster (especially in the long run) is usually not liked by most people.

This is such a great post

 

[NicC]

Anyone can test that a bumpy frequency curve sounds weird. Just pick up a free EQ app and turn the controls up and down. A big frequency roller coaster (especially in the long run) is usually not liked by most people.

DanielT, this makes sense to me - while I don't understand the technical terminology and thus can't relate to what many are saying, I get this

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

A comparison from the goofy world of HiFi/HighEnd speakers:

Raidho TD3.8. $103,000 (pair):

Raidho TD3.8 loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

Let's compare Raidho TD3.8 with these: Monitor Audio Silver 500 7G. $3200 (pair):

SoundStageNetwork.com | SoundStage.com - NRC Measurements: Monitor Audio Silver 500 7G Loudspeakers

www.soundstagenetwork.com

Be careful when comparing measurements done with different technique, especially in the low frequency range. Stereophile's John Atkinson is measuring low frequency range below 300 Hz with nearfield technique, which exaggerate output below 300 Hz by up to 5-6 dB. On the other hand, SoundStage measurements are done in a true anechoic room (but with room error resonances at about 45 Hz and 90 Hz).
So, much of the low frequency boost of Raidho below 300 Hz is artefact of the nearfield measurement technique. But, measured peak is bigger than 6 dB, so in reality there will be peak of some 2 dB, indicating bad engineering. Even more, shape of the port output indicate bad dynamic behavior. Dip between 1.5 kHz and 4 kHz will be ameliorated with the use of a tube amplifier with high output impedance (as it was in the Stereophile review) because Raidho has impedance peak exactly in that region - but that is also bad engineering, loudspeaker should not exclude use of conventional solid state amps, demanding use of such tube amplifiers.

Bottom line: Raidho TD3.8 is very, very bad loudspeaker, even at 1/20 of the price. Monitor Audio Silver 500 7G is much better (I have heard them) for a fraction of the price.

 

[Arindal]

To anyone who has downsized by price significantly, do you miss anything from the other speakers?

I feel entitled to answer even as I do not consider myself to be an audiophile or highender on the quest for sound differences. I underwent this downgrading step some years ago (had to, kind of). Have to remark that I did exchange the speakers solely because of size and placement, not because of price. It was rather coincidental that I did not buy bookshelf models north of $10k, which I had been extensively testing at home.

There are two main things I miss which I regularly enjoy in high end speakers: having a really punchy, kicking yet precise beat coming from the lower bass, and getting a wide panoramic imaging from stereo recordings. Everything else that defines sound quality for me, I found in more compact models well under $10k after endless comparison and several moments of disappointment (particularly with speakers being praised as close to perfect from lab point of view, but that is another story). I noticed that ever since I tend to enjoy electronic and groovy music rather in the car, and classical music in surround. For the rest, very little has changed.

and I thought I was at a Bon Jovi concert

I hope you weren't ;-) I remember to experience the worst sound quality I ever encountered at an open-air concert at one of BJ´s last tours (2019). Maybe the stadium was simply too long.

 

[FrantzM]

ASR types, well, that defines normal? Your remark has a different spin than that on the other thread. I bough my speakers "blind", because concept, build and result are top-notch, objectively. Added a DIY sub as otherwise I would have needed a stand.

The system is stunning. It beats everything I've experienced before. Thing is, I do not crave for more, and I hardly would accept less, now that I got used to that perfection. Grand total, exploiting a sell-out, was around 1300Euros plus a little bit of amplification.

The phenomenon of "High End" is over. That's a happy end.

95% agreeing ...

Hi @Heinrich

Slightly different path. I bought my entire system based (mostly) on ASR reviews and some ASR members experiences and measurements.,i especially @RayDunzl . Total for 2-Channel speakers complement, is about the same as yours: $500 for the pair of mains (JBL LSR 308) and , $750 for subwoofers (2 x Dayton Audio SUB 500 @ $250 each + miniDSP 2x4 HD @ $250) ... I am not yet claiming, "perfection" but I am in a state of awe , almost every time I listen to music and am extremely hesitant, perhaps even afraid to "upgrade"... from this full range (19 to 20,000 Hz) at , if needs be, deafening (for me) levels.. >105 dB, at Main Listening Position, measured and shared here onASR...
To paraphrase you" The phenomenon of "High End" is over; however , that's is not yet the end for me. I can hear, at times some of the limitations of my speakers. I also know (more or less ) where I will go from there and it will be acquired "blind", solely based on measurements.

Peace.

 

[DanielT]

There are two main things I miss which I regularly enjoy in high end speakers: having a really punchy, kicking yet precise beat coming from the lower bass......

It can cost a bit to have both. By that I mean.First, high SPL, which many car bass drivers have. We've all heard that, cars with lots of/large bass woffers that pump bass. Second, "nice" bass with low distortion, which my Peerless SLS 10 drivers have BUT low power handling, only 70 Watt RMS. I live in an apartment and can't play that loud so they're ok for me (on the borderline, even though I have four of them). Low distortion + high power handling/SPL bass + good FR, however, can cost a pretty penny. Really high SPL with that combination, you need to open your big wallet.
And also accept having physically large speakers.

Anyway, with two good bookshelf speakers (passive or active) in combination with some good subwoofers you will get really far. Provided that the sub-speaker integration is well done. Plus EQ and subwoofer go hand in hand. For let's say a total of $1500-$2000, you can then get..., check out @FrantzM
Hifi system that he describes in the post above this one.

 

[Talisman]

There are two main things I miss which I regularly enjoy in high end speakers: having a really punchy, kicking yet precise beat coming from the lower bass, and getting a wide panoramic imaging from stereo recordings.

Is this characteristic common to all speakers above a certain price point? What is it due to? Is it a coincidence? Is it due to design choices that are exclusive to projects over $10,000? Is it due to the use of particularly expensive materials that can only be obtained with those figures? Can they be found in some way in the measurements in a distinctive way compared to less expensive speakers?