Pls educate on speakers in general. (1 Viewer)

[chun howe]

i am currently on my way to building a HT. thanks to this web

i need some education on speakers. no specific brand just plain simple/in general.
1. is lighter built drivers better than heavier ones?
2. i was told by sales person that speaker companies that build thier own driver/cone are a better speakers.
3. people like to use terms like warm, neutral, laid back, etc on speakers, what is it actually refering too?
4. what type of speakers (floor/bookshelf) would be appropriate for living hall (14'x11')

 

[Martice]

H Chun. Welcome to the forum. See the below link and in the search bar enter "speakers". You'll find various articles on speakers and such.

Good Luck and come back with any other questions.

LINK

 

[chun howe]

thanks Martice, the site is very informative.

 

[Martice]

Hi Chun. No problem. If you put in the search box "Speaker Articles" it will stick to various articles relating to speakers in general and not speaker brands and such.

This search will give you exactly what you are looking for.

 

[Arup]

Hi Chun,

Auditioning is very important especially with your choice of music. A speaker has to be as neutral as possible. Stay away from terms like punchy, bright, musical etc. and see if what goes in comes out exactly as you expect.

 

[chun howe]

thanks for the tip Arup.

i am new and learning and about to open up a can of worms
how do you know it's neutral?
i was told that i should bring along my favorite CD for audition....which brings me a question. if i haven't had experienced good speakers how am i going to know now it sounded good or bad on audition?

to my understanding punchy would be a lot of cluttered bass.
boomy sound. is that right? bright would be lots of treble. lots of sssssss.... sound..right/wrong??? and what's musical then?

currently i bought home a set of KEF Q1 bookshelf speakers for home auditon. it sounded good (better than my 4.1 Klipsch that runs off my computer) i auditioned Energy Connoissuer C-3, NHT SB3, paradigm studio 80 at the shop. by far i love studio the most. but that's out of my budget. NHT SB3 is my second choice.

Arup: what are your speakers? any suggestion? my living hall is only 14" x 11" two walls.

 

[Arup]

chun,

I use Yamaha NS-300 as they seemed to be the most neutral. I have gone through various speakers like Martin Logan, dbx, JBl L7 etc.

My brother is a musician and I took his friends along to audition and found the Yamaha to be the best. I also have Yamaha's legendary NS-1000x which was used as a monitor by Danish Boradcasting Corporation and several prominent studios around the world.

Give the Yamaha NS-4HX, NS-8HX, NS-100, NS-300 an audition along with speakers from Magnepan, Canton, MB Quart and Sonus Farber. The Yamaha NS-300 speakers use silk dome tweeters which sound generaly better for music and is less tiring to listen to than metal domed ones. Dont go for speakers with massive woofers. Leave that job to the subs. You can mail me if you need more advice.

 

[Rich Malloy]

i was told that i should bring along my favorite CD for audition....which brings me a question. if i haven't had experienced good speakers how am i going to know now it sounded good or bad on audition?

Everyone here, myself included, will tell you to buy That Which Sounds Good To You. But, as you've noted, That Which Sounds Good To You is based almost entirely on previous experience.

Moreover, I've only been to one showroom in my life that I thought was adequately setup (I don't spend a lot of time in high-end audio boutiques). What you'll find at Tweeter and Best Buy, etc., are seriously compromised listening situations that make it nearly impossible to evaluate a speaker, much less know what it will sound like in your own room with your own equipment, properly calibrated.

I'd start with determining your price-range, and then making a list of speakers you'd like to audition. Simple stuff like price and aesthetics will knock a bunch of speakers off your list. If you don't have a lot of amplification, then hard-to-drive speakers can be crossed off. Of those that are left, get a sense of which speakers sound similar and start grouping them together. Now, start auditioning!

You may find that you really like silk tweeters, or horn-loaded tweeters, or titanium tweeters. You may discover that you prefer a more "laid-back" speaker or a more "forward" one. You might prefer a relentlessly revealing speaker, one that transmits every tiny detail in the recording, or you might prefer a more so-called "musical" (or "euphonic") speaker that sacrifices a bit of detail for some sweetness and smoothness. You just won't know until you start listening.

Two traps to watch out for: "louder" is not necessarily "better". It might be important to you to find a speaker that's easy to drive to high levels with little amplification if that's all you have, but don't let subtle differences in output color your decision. Try to "level match" when directly comparing two different speakers and let the volume be a function of your other equipment. The second potential trap is presuming that "bright" or "hot" top end sounds better than a more polite, smoother one. That extra energy might sound exciting in a direct A:B comparison, but it's not necessarily accurate. There's nothing worse than too much top-end "sizzle", as this leads to that condition known as fatigue. I've heard some systems that literally cause my ears to ache in the space of minutes. And I like listening for hours.

Finally, don't rush. Take the time to make the right decision. Nothing will effect the quality of the sound you hear quite as much as the speakers you use, and there are few components that can change the sound as much as different speakers.

 

[FrantzM]

Chun

The goal of Hi-Fi should be a perfect replica of the original performance. In other words if it is a guitar playing then the system (Everything i-e CD + Amplifier + Cables + Speakers) should reproduce the guitar that was recorded. This is the ideal what we will call with apologies to a magazine I respect, the Absolute Sound (by the way the name of the magazine), the absolute reference. This of course never accomplished. What you want to do is to find the component in this particular occurrence a speaker that reproduces the sound of real music as well as possible. Not an easy task and not easily achieved either.

A speaker should be like the postal service, it just delivers the goods the way they are, good or bad... A truly neutral speaker should do that. There is of course no neutral speaker and they add some things or subtract others and present the sound of the event in a different manner. Some grossly change the whole music and some do it very subtly. You should look for speakers that change the original as subtly as possible
Like many things Hi-Fi. There is a matter of taste. What a speaker add or subtract may be or not to your liking. This is the reason why you audition with a favorite CD. I recommend that you go out and hear UNAMPLIFED music live in a reasonably good place. Familiarize yourself with the way some instruments sound and purchase a well recorded CD of a piece you like with if possible un-amplified music and human voices. I could recommend you some brands, Reference Recordings, Chesky, Telarc, Delos, Harmonia Mundi come to my mind but there are other and I can tell you for example if you are a fan of Dire Straits, their CDs on a great neutral system capable of high SPL sound like the real thing...
GO and listen to a variety of speakers and decide which ones reproduces the real thing . it takes a while . Do not rush. The enjoyment of music is well worth it.

Frantz
Port-au-Prince, Haiti

P.S.

 

[chun howe]

thanks Rich Malloy & FrantzM for the inputs.

as an entry level me, it's getting more and more difficult to choose the right speaker for my taste.

i did some research and i want a bipole/dipole rear surround speakers, and i found energy connoisseur c-r1, wharfedale wh2, axiom qs4.
is there any other good brand speakers offer bipole/dipole?

i don't like wharfedale it's bcos it's diamond 8.3 (front) is a 6 ohm impedence speakers. it would be taxing for my pionner vsx-d711 amp to play it. anyone with diamond 8.3 having problems using 8 ohm amp? and is kevlar driver any better than the poly type driver?

i usually see AL or metal tweeter.