2. speakers
  3. 160326-17271

Are my standards too high?

Dear Gang,

I have heard a number of box speakers and only the cream of the crop are just about tolerable. In other words there is nothing out there that can truly impress me regardless of price. 

The KEF LS50 is a state of the art world class loudspeaker. It has won multiple awards and is used by John himself. A few years ago I decided to go and listen to a pair to see what the fuss was about. They were not setup perfectly but there was no bass. All i could hear was typical uneven ported bass response. The highs were a bit bright and off axis response was uneven. Horrible. I then got a chance to hear the kef Ref ones which were supposed to be the finest speaker that could be made by mankind. They failed to impress me. No bass at all. Then i heard the blades and finally i heard proper bass below 40hz. But the blades were not perfect either. And given their cost they should have been perfect. They didnt sound very refined. Imaging was a bit average. 

Gang, I have come to the realization that either most speakers out there are a hoax (overpriced and overrated) OR my standards are simply so high that the worlds finest 'peaker engineers cannot produce anything that can satisfy my perfect standards. 

The only answer to this riddle is to train audiophiles to understand that the speakers currently on the market are substandard goods.We need to also attract better quality minds to the world of speaker design and weed out the people that dont know what theyre doing. There are obviously some people who are better at doing things than others. Am I right? If we can get rid of the worst speaker designers out there and replace them with superior designers, then we will end up with much better speakers on the market for us to enjoy. Its a win win
kenjit
dekay's avatar
dekay
5,541 posts
 
Kenjit:

Your OP’s and responses always seem to remind me of this iconic movie scene...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqwzuiSy9y0

And then, and then, and then why is this so (as I find it disturbing)?

DeKay
audioman58's avatar
audioman58
4,129 posts
 
The Kef ls 50 is a moderate speaker at Best ,not even in the same bad breath as say any world class Monitor say $10-$20k.
it a very  good speaker in the  under $2k range for midrange treble 
no midBass or bass ,leave it at that. It’s a respectable class C speaker in Audiophile terms, The upper Kef Line is  a different story.
kenjit OP
1,771 posts
 
The Kef ls 50 is a moderate speaker at Best ,not even in the same bad breath as say any world class Monitor say $10-$20k.
Name me some world class monitors costing 20k. 
nyaudio98
420 posts
 
Its about listening to music first. 
speedbump6
760 posts
 
Kenjit, he can ask the same question, you  prove you are a better audiophile than him. I’d say you’ve pretty much disproven that, as according* to you, there are no good speakers, when that is not the case. You just don’t seem to have the ability to hear well enough, and/ or the knowledge to understand what you’re hearing to discern what is good from what is not. Your made that clear to us over time, which is why people are saying you’re not an audiophile. It would be hard for a deaf person to be an audiophile also.  We cannot worry about what people will listen to in a few hundred years, as we won’t be here. And that’s a battle you can never win, the technology will always improve so there will always be something better over time. We have to deal with the tools we have at our disposal today, and base decisions on those choices. 
More to discover