flatline speakers.

[doofiss]

After reading a bit about how speakers ideally should be neutral, I ask the question, have not speakers in the past and present met this goal? If so, it should be quite easy to just size up the power requirements for the speakers and match it to a power supply to provide the music. Is there no such reference? Say I had a vintage Marantz 2245 receiver, 45 watts a side, could there not just be a list of neutral speakers that "fit" this power supply, then go and buy those speakers and game over? I remember using a graphic equalizer, an lp with different frequencies and a db meter. Match the frequencies produced by the speaker via the correct equalizer slide, adjust the slide to attain the correct db, tada! tuned speakers. Is this the same thing? Cheers, Rick.

 

[lsiberian]

After reading a bit about how speakers ideally should be neutral, I ask the question, have not speakers in the past and present met this goal? If so, it should be quite easy to just size up the power requirements for the speakers and match it to a power supply to provide the music. Is there no such reference? Say I had a vintage Marantz 2245 receiver, 45 watts a side, could there not just be a list of neutral speakers that "fit" this power supply, then go and buy those speakers and game over? I remember using a graphic equalizer, an lp with different frequencies and a db meter. Match the frequencies produced by the speaker via the correct equalizer slide, adjust the slide to attain the correct db, tada! tuned speakers. Is this the same thing? Cheers, Rick.

EQing doesn't necessarily create neutrality. You need to ensure a uniform decay in the waterfall graph(sound reduction in volume per frequency over time.)

 

[no. 5]

After reading a bit about how speakers ideally should be neutral, I ask the question, have not speakers in the past and present met this goal?

Yes, there have been some speakers past and present that have been 'neutral', or at least, fairly neutral. But certainly not all. In fact, if you want to limit yourself to absolutely neutral speakers, you could probably count on one hand the number of commercially available models.

I remember using a graphic equalizer, an lp with different frequencies and a db meter. Match the frequencies produced by the speaker via the correct equalizer slide, adjust the slide to attain the correct db, tada! tuned speakers. Is this the same thing?

Not really. If you are using in room measurements, what you would be tuning with the EQ would be the room response, not the speaker's response. That is a very important distinction, because to use EQ to make a more neutral speaker you need to know what the speaker and the speaker alone is doing; you may see issues in the in room measurements that may have been caused by room reflections and resonances, phase, directivity issues with the speaker, or some other thing. But you have no way of knowing.

Now, if you have anechoic data on the speakers in question, you may be in a position to use EQ to make a more neutral speaker. But there are limitations, for example, quality of off-axis 'sound' and cabinet resonances are two things that will prevent a speaker from sounding neutral, but an EQ will have no way of fixing them.