gregr@tekig1.UUCP (Greg Rogers) (03/14/84)
First I vote against the Klipsch speaker (all Klipsch speakers), buy something else. Seems to me efficiency and low harmonic distorsion are their only assets. Frequency response is very ragged and limited at both ends. I won't say more, others already have. It has always seemed kind of strange to me how little debate takes place over the subjective ranking of loudspeakers in this newsgroup. There seems to be little reluctance to get in very heated, even personal, debates about which turntables, CD players, and tapedecks are obviously superior to one another, yet few people have championed a particular speaker (or cartridge) and even fewer have attacked them on their choices. The very quiet discussion now taking place over the Klipsch speakers is the first such discussion I can remember and pales in comparison to the CD debate. Why should this be so? Certainly everyone can easily hear the enormous differences between any two models of speakers while very few can identify differences between CD players or turntables. Most people would readily agree that the colorations and imperfections of even the best loudspeakers are orders of magnitude worse than any other component in the audio chain excepting the phono cartridge. I have listened to, auditioned, tested, and compared state of the art loudspeakers for many years and could never mistake one for another their differences and imperfections being so obvious. So why haven't great debates over the best loudspeaker raged over the net? My theory for explaining this reluctance to proclaim the best speaker is that precisely because all speakers are so imperfect, so compromised, that it becomes almost trivial to counter argue against anyone's favorite. For instance, in general (!) even the most expensive electrostatics can be criticized for low efficiency (not really a valid objection in my opinion since this can be overcome for $$ without compromising sound), poor dynamic range, beaming, poor low end response ( yes you can add a subwoofer but then a nasty discontinuity results ), and so forth. Yet even with all that some full range electrostatics have impressed me greatly and I can easily understand why some people would rank them number one. For me however, the electrostatic tradeoffs are too great, and I've opted for another compromise. The problem in picking the best speaker is to decide what ratio to mix all the compromised parameters. Each person subjectively decides which parameters are most important to him, and in what relative weightings, and then finally picks the "best" speaker. Please note (!!), the performance of a loudspeaker with respect to any given parameter, (harmonic distortion, frequency response, directivity, etc.), isn't subjective at all, each can be measured accurately and speakers could be ranked from best to worst with respect to any one parameter, its the weighting of the tradeoffs between each of tthe many parameters that is a subjective personel decision. And unfortunately it's the existence of so many parameters that makes even the most carefully designed speakers all sound so different. Also unfortunately this makes it very difficult for a novice listener to pick the "best" speaker in his price range and can confuse him so much that he totally ignores very poor performance in any one parameter while concentrating all his listening on another parameter. This can easily lead to a poor buying decision which he will soon regret as he becomes more educated in his listening. For this reason I personally don't think there has ever been any worse advice to a novice than "just buy what you like, that's the important thing". This should only apply to those that have no real interest in good audio, and only want background music or some such thing. I must add just one other short thought to this rambling. It can easily be demonstrated that the room characteristics, (reverberation time, shape, reflectivity versus frequeny, etc) and the placement of the speakers within the room can completely reshape the frequency response of the speaker/room system. Frequency response variations of 10 db or more fluctuating wildly across the audio band may result from moving a speaker from one type room to another. This is not the exception it is far more likely the rule. This implies (at least) two things. First, comparing two types of speakers in a room other than the actual listening room to be used is only useful for the most coarse comparisons. It is TOTALLY unacceptable in making final decisions between two good speakers. Second, you must properly position the speaker within the room if it is to perform at its best. A great speaker can sound miserable if not properly positioned. Unfortunately the proper position may not be found in a particular size or shape room or may be unliveable. This can result in a poor evaluation of a great speaker just because the proper room wasn't available. You should also know that different speakers will have different optimum positions in the same room. This is due to different directivity patterns of the speakers. So which speaker do I think is the "best"? After all I brought all this up didn't I? Well in my opinion ....... Maybe when I got more time, Greg Rogers