If studios were trying to mimic what end users where using to listen to recordings on, they would not have went with the Yamaha's. They would be using Bose 301's. As far as i know, they are ( or at least they used to be ) the best selling speaker in the world. We should all be thankful that this is not the case and that some engineers / studio owners DO have common sense and ears.
I've been in a few studios and seen speakers ranging from JBL to Legacy to B&W's and then over to "professional grade" gear like Toa's and Fostex to stuff that i would not use for a boombox. Many studios have several different sets of "monitors" so that the engineers and musicians can get a feel for what their recording will sound like on a variety of speakers.
As to Lazarus' comments about "accuracy not being subjective", i would tend to disagree. The fact that one can show several different products as being the best in any given category has to do with the type of testing done, how the tests were conducted, what one was looking for or which part of the results one was going to exploit, etc... If one has very specific parameters that are set in stone and limited in scope, then yes, you can measure what is "best". Otherwise, you would need to be able to measure a million different parameters all at once since that is what our hearing does for us instantaneously. As such, what sounds best and what measures best can sometimes be very different things and will forever remain a subjective topic of discussion.
As to Dunlavy's comments about domes, i'd like him to show us ONE driver that is linear in the time domain across the entire bandpass that it will be used within. How can ANY cone type driver produce coherent wavefronts when parts of the driven element are always closer to the listener while other parts will always be slightly more distant ? Of course, the severity of this problem will vary somewhat from driver to driver depending on the size and convex of the cone being used.
For the record, i think that John Curl stated something to the effect of the Manger drivers being as close to "technically correct" that you can get. I know that he is not a speaker engineer or specialist, i'm sure that he knows enough ( both through formal education and hands on experience ) to not just spout off something like that without good cause. How these drivers sound to various individuals is a whole 'nother can of worms. Sean
>
