Speakers don't matter

[jamie2112]

Go ahead buy a pair of bose cubes and take them to abby road studios in the vocal booth and hook them up to a conrad johnson pre and amp and guess what the bose are still gonna sound like S#@T. Speakers are the MOST important part of any HT or music system. In my opinion of course....

 

[jliedeka]

This is fun! I knew I was going to start a s**tstorm with that comment.

I also agree with the comment that cabinet resonance is one of the biggest problems with low end speakers. I have that problem with some music but it usually only comes into play with busy mixes at higher playback levels.

I've recently learned two important things. My low end speakers aren't as bad as I thought. Also, listening for yourself is better than reading a hundred reviews or articles.

Jim

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I've recently learned two important things. My low end speakers aren't as bad as I thought. Also, listening for yourself is better than reading a hundred reviews or articles.

Sometimes we take things, like this audio hobby, way too seriously.

All the "low-end" speakers are only relatively "inferior" to their "high-end" counterparts.

Taken on their own merits, most $100 speakers sound pretty decent overall -- even Bose.

Just add a good quality subwoofer to a "lower-end" speaker, and you got a nice system all of the sudden.

 

[mazersteven]

We did some bias controlled listening tests about 10 years ago. In one of them, we put a $5000 pair of speakers in an acoustically poor room and a $700 pair of speakers in an acoustically excellent room. 70% of the testers preferred the $700 pair in the acoustically excellent room. So I have to say Jim is correct. I've said many times that room acoustics make or break an audio system, speakers are a distant second and everything else verges on the trivial.

I would challenge that all day long.

 

[Shadow_Ferret]

We did some bias controlled listening tests about 10 years ago. In one of them, we put a $5000 pair of speakers in an acoustically poor room and a $700 pair of speakers in an acoustically excellent room. 70% of the testers preferred the $700 pair in the acoustically excellent room. So I have to say Jim is correct. I've said many times that room acoustics make or break an audio system, speakers are a distant second and everything else verges on the trivial.

But $700 a pair aren't bad speakers to start with. Many everyday people would consider those audiophile quality. And really, most ordinary people don't know what to listen for when they audition speakers. That's why Bose sells so well.

However, I'd like to see that same test done with a crappy $100 pair and see if they prefer them to the $5000 ones.

 

[WmAx]

But $700 a pair aren't bad speakers to start with. Many everyday people would consider those audiophile quality. And really, most ordinary people don't know what to listen for when they audition speakers. That's why Bose sells so well.

However, I'd like to see that same test done with a crappy $100 pair and see if they prefer them to the $5000 ones.

Price is a poor method for quantifying quality. Even at $100, for example, I could point to a specific 2 way speaker pair that costs $130, and with some very basic modifications, they would excel in the relevant measured performance as correlated to perceived sound quality as compared to most 2 way speakers that are in a price bracket of 10x more.

-Chris

 

[WmAx]

I think by now most realize the OP has exaggerated in an attempt to maximize attention. At least, that is how it appears to me.

I think most realize that different speakers can have vastly different measured qualities that correlate with known audible differences in controlled double-blinded testing experiments. It is not debatable(by a rational person), for example, that if you use speaker A which has an off axis dispersion at 45 degrees and greater with 8dB variations vs. on axis in a wide 2 octave range of mid band response compared to speaker B that is similar in all other aspects, except is has a nearly identical response off axis at 45 degrees and greater vs on axis, that speaker A will be very audibly inferior in sound quality in a room that has any appreciable ambiance contribution(even most well treated rooms have considerable ambiance contribution).

-Chris

 

[Seth=L]

fmw, how did the more expensive speakers sound in the treated room? I rest my case with that question.

 

[fmw]

And of course you did an A/B comparison between the $5K and $700 speakers in the same room to get some sort of baseline for the room test? And which did the people prefer then?

Nobody is saying the room does not have any effect but if the expensive speakers were actually better speakers they should have sounded much better in the acoustically good room than the cheaper ones.

And they did. We tested them together in the good room. 100% of the testers preferred the $5000 speakers. I'm not suggesting good speakers don't make a difference and neither was the OP. The point is that the room acoustics are more important than the speakers. Obviously, way more important.

 

[fmw]

I would challenge that all day long.

What did your bias controlled tests show?

 

[AdrianMills]

And they did. We tested them together in the good room. 100% of the testers preferred the $5000 speakers. I'm not suggesting good speakers don't make a difference and neither was the OP. The point is that the room acoustics are more important than the speakers. Obviously, way more important.

I'm not entirely sure I follow your logic on that conclusion. Surely that depends on a lot of variables? The fact that extremely bad room acoustics can make even a very good speaker sound crap is undeniable (to most at least) but can a very good room make a very bad speaker sound good? I don't think so. At best I will give you that room acoustics are equally important but not more.

 

[Alex2507]

Go ahead buy a pair of bose cubes and take them to abby road studios in the vocal booth and hook them up to a conrad johnson pre and amp and guess what the bose are still gonna sound like S#@T. Speakers are the MOST important part of any HT or music system. In my opinion of course....

What I have gotten out of this thread and AH in general is that:

1. Good speakers are the first important part of good sound quality.
As WmAx pointed out, expensive and good aren't always the same thing. Bose.

2. Good placement, room acoustics and set up are needed to keep that good speaker sounding like a good speaker.

To me that is pretty good news. I'm not buying a $5000 pair of speakers anytime soon however the $500 speakers that I do have fall under the "good speaker" criteria. Placement and calibration are pretty easy. Room treatments and electronic speaker management are just improvements on the horizon.

Of course bad speakers will always sound like bad speakers.

 

[Shadow_Ferret]

I'm not suggesting good speakers don't make a difference and neither was the OP.

Actually, I thought he was. That was his point, that room treatments are MORE important then the speakers.

 

[Alex2507]

Actually, I thought he was. That was his point, that room treatments are MORE important then the speakers.

That was his point in conjunction with his speakers turning out not to suck as bad as he thought. It's a two fold point. He does state that Bose sucks and does not argue that room treatments would make sucky Bose sound good. Is there really any confusion on this?

 

[Shadow_Ferret]

This is what he said.

Room acoustics and speaker positioning have more to do with sound quality than the speakers themselves. There are very few speakers that totally suck. There are exceptions like HTIB cubes and Bose but most are decent within certain limitations.

That was his point in conjunction with his speakers turning out not to suck as bad as he thought. It's a two fold point. He does state that Bose sucks and does not argue that room treatments would make sucky Bose sound good. Is there really any confusion on this?

His point is based on his experience. He had so-so speakers and improved the acoustics and now his speakers sound better as a result, Thus, he's of the opinion that room treatments are more important than speakers.

However, I believe from experience that the opposite is true. You can have bad acoustics with bad speakers and by adding better speakers will also improve the sound.

My rec room, which is cement floors and paneling is probably awful acoustically. I've been satisfied with my Sansui SP6300 speakers for years.

I didn't change the acoustics, but I bought better speakers and I can hear a significant difference. So in my experience, speakers are more important than room acoustics.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I agree that speakers are MORE important than room acoustics.

Dose anyone here believe that room acoustics can make a $50 speaker sound better than a $50,000 speaker?

If not, then speakers are MORE important than room acoustics.

Let's put it another way.

If someone offered you $5,000 to spend on either Room Acoustics or Speakers (only ONE choice), would you pick speakers or room acoustics?

If you truly believe that room acoustics is more important, then you would spend the $5,000 on room acoustics.

 

[jostenmeat]

Tough one. I think I agree with jliedeka. I believe a bad room and placement will make for worse effects than a "relatively" poorer quality speaker. The difference between a $300 pair of speakers and $3000 pair of speakers will be noticeable if they are well placed in a good room. But the $300 pair in a good environment will sound better than the 3k pair in a bad setup, by orders of magnitude. Which leads me to believe that in most real world scenarios, the room and placement outweigh the speaker choice in impact (outside of tiny HTIB speakers, as the OP has already mentioned).

I've heard BW 802Ds in a horrible room, I thought the tweeters were blown. The tweeters were fine after asking, it was the room that was awful.

Im trying to learn about proper speaker positioning, and treatment positioning in the new stereo room. There are chances that the room is bad enough that I may give up, but I need more time.

A very helpful friend I've made at AVS said this in his last email to me, a portion of it:

The idea of getting your speakers into the room should address one thing in a big fashion. The rear-ward wave will hit the wall. The distance that wave travels tells you something. If your speaker is 4' away from the front wall, you will get a null at the 1/4 wavelength. That is, 1130 ft/s divided by 4' multiplied by 1/4. This yields roughly 70hz. You will get "issues" in the FR at every multiple of that 70hz in addition to the "issues" associated with the 3 dimensions of the room. If you have your speakers 3' away from the front wall, the problem is roughly 94hz. As you go closer to the front wall, the problem frequency increases into the vocal band. In my opinion, Rock music suffers greatly when speakers are close to the front wall. Having a null in the 100hz range hurts the grunge of the electric guitar and makes the rock music lifeless and boring. In small rooms you will trade off bass drum definition and rock guitar grunge. This is where a subwoofer can help, even though you have full range speakers. Get the guitar grunge back, use the subwoofer placed appropriately to get the bass drum back.

The reason why its necessary to make changes slowly and 1 dimension at a time is the following:
1. 3-D room = 3 room modes. Problems at these 3 frequencies and their multiples
2. Floor bounce. If a driver is playing in the range that includes the frequency that correspondes to the distance between it and the floor, there will be an additional 1 problem frequency and at its multiples. Some manufacturers dial this out through the crossover network, some dont.
3. Rear wave. Described above, 1 extra problem frequency and at its multiples
4. Side wave. Similar to above, 1 extra problem frequency and at its multiples

This is a summary of the major problems. As you can see there are 6 frequencies in the 47hz (length mode) through 140hz range (side wall/ rearward wave). If any of these frequencies overlap, they make the problem at that frequency much worse. This holds for any of the multiples as well. This also does not take into consideration tangential modes or oblique modes of the room.

So, how can one get a great sounding system with so many problems? One concept is a large room. Larger rooms have lower modes. The lower the mode, the more multiples you can fit within the spectrum. By having every frequency being a problem frequency in the absolute sense, this also means that the problems at each frequency are relatively small. In order to get close to this absolute, you have to ensure all room dimensions are dissimilar, the placement of the listening position is dissimilar to any of the room dimensions, same with speakers. Similarity is "defined" as divisible by 2 or 4, etc.

So, the take home message is if you have a smaller room, you have to ensure that your speaker placement and listening position placement does not overlap any of the native problem frequencies that your room already has. By spreading out problem frequencies, the problems become easier to deal with, especially with acoustic traps.

Its gonna be a lot of work, but this hobby is all about that

One final note, in my experience I need to be at least 4'-5' away from the speakers. You might have to sacrifice the 38% rule towards 33% to get this distance as you pull your speakers forward. I would pull the traps out of the room first though. Otherwise you have to rearrange the first reflection traps for every move you make. Also, without the traps, every move you make will cause drastic audible and noteable changes that you can write down.

While you might change out your speakers, this is still a valueable excersize as what you learn now will carry to any of the new speakers. If the new speaker has compensation networks for boundaries, your life is made even easier. However, why use those networks if you can optimize placement first? You would only know those optimized placements if you had done the work previously in that room This is tedious, thats why acousticians get paid a lot of money to "make it right". Usually, if you are saving money (by not hiring an acoustician) you are going to make up for that in time costs

So, really, when we go audition speakers, it may be very easy to mistake poor placement for poor speaker performance. Right? Im not even talking about the room itself, just placement. I think its nearly impossible to separate room and speakers. Some speakers can be too large for a certain room, while much too small for another.

I think I would say the speaker choice is a very big factor. Its just that room acoustics are either never or rarely considered, and worse yet, people mistake acoustical issues of the room for the performance of the speaker itself.

 

[Alex2507]

If someone offered you $5,000 to spend on either Room Acoustics or Speakers (only ONE choice), would you pick speakers or room acoustics?

QUOTE]

Silly question but if you are willing to send me 5 grand I just want you to know that not only do I agree with you 100% but I have always agreed with you. You look good too. Have you been working out?

 

[jliedeka]

I guess my point is that inexpensive speakers aren't necessarily complete crap and can sound pretty good in the right room. Someone earlier said I exaggerated to maximize attention. That's a fair cop.

Another thing that prompted the post is that I ran across one of those endless upstream source vs. speakers debates. I thought that room conditions are at least up there with the other variables. I guess my perverse sense of humor took over and I decided to assert that the room is more important.

I would tend to agree that a $300 set of speakers in a good room will probably sound better than a $3000 set in a horrible room. My other point is that outside of some exceptions there are few completely worthless speakers. In a good room, my ~ $200/pr monitors sound good for 90% of what I listen to.

While I would expect the $3000 speakers to sound better on a level playing field, there is a diminishing returns effect when you start spending more $$$. At least that's what I tell myself as I'm trying to save up $2-3k for a new 5 speaker set.

Jim

 

[fredk]

I guess my point is that inexpensive speakers aren't necessarily complete crap and can sound pretty good in the right room.

I agree completely.

I think that you can do quite well for $3,000. Maybe not the best of the best, but at least 90% of the way there.

Fred