Speaker grills

Of course it should be mentioned that most grills are *extremely* transparent to the sound, so what doesn't make sense is that having no grills would subjectively make so much difference in the sound. But nobody ever experiments to see why a transparent grill is so bad for the sound. You could even make an experiment using a grill that has only say 1/5 of the number of strands of fibers so the grill is mostly open. Then it would be really, really difficult to explain, no? Same goes for headphone grills, they are bad news.

It is also not just the grill itself but also the grill frame that can interfere with the sound.

I build and tune my systems to sound right with grills on. Grills stay on for both aesthetic and protective reasons.

Various grill designs will inevitably attenuate various frequencies, especially the higher ones to some degree, but between initial speaker design and various things that one can tweak themselves easily if needed, having grill on has never been a practical problem for me.

I once refurbished the hood grills on an old pair of OHM Walshes in that the originals had become worn. These speakers had a particularly laid back presentation. I had to choose a fabric to use and I ended up using a loosely woven wool fabric (much different than thin but much more densely woven material originally used) from the fabric store in order to keep grill effects to a minimum. That also made it easy to stretch and form the fabric tightly and cleanly over the grill hood without having to cut and sew much.

Really depends on the speaker like most have already stated. When I had the original DYn C1's they sounded much better without the grills. When I upgraded to the C1 Signatures - well not so much but ever so slightly better without them. Now my Raidho's don't even come with grills.

Remember those thick foam grills on the JBL Century L100's? That type of grill definitely had to go.