Speakers that are very accurate sounding but don't produce an emotional connection.


I have listened to a few speakers over the years that impressed me with their accuracy and presentation of the music, but just did not create an emotional response or connection. I have often wondered what that quality is in some speakers that produce an emotional connection with the listener. This quality has been identified by audiophiles, as "magical", "engaging"  "just right"  "euphonic"  "natural"  "true to life". " "satisfying"  "musical"....  I am sure there are at least 50  other  adjectives that could describe this "quality" of  sound . 

Considering the various aspects  of achieving  good and accurate sound by component synergy, is there a way to explain this so-called magical element that often eludes so many of us??.  I don't think such a feeling is temporal, conditioned by personal moods, or the phases of the moon or sun.  

Like to hear from members who have given some thought to the same issue.    Thanks,  Jim   

BTW, I know the thread is a bit out there, but  I don't think the topic is pointlessly pursuing the genie in the bottle. 


sunnyjim

o, again, it was the phase coherent car speakers…not the Beatles…I give up.
wolf_garcia, maybe you didn't fully understand what I meant to say...
for you, listening to the Beatles at that time, of course it was the Beatles & the low phase distorting dash-mounted speakers allowed you to gain max listening pleasure i.e. they affected the music signal the least.


bombaywalla --

There are too many other factors for a phase-coherent speaker to potentially sound like the less desirable choice compared to a speaker not being phase-coherent. I’m guessing you refer to speakers being mechanically aligned to achieve named virtue, although delay via DSP is a viable solution as well - likely better than any electrical ditto. In any case, phase-coherency alone - to my ears, at least - is far from the deciding factor.

The thought experiment could be made whether a hypothetical speaker of my liking, one not being phase coherent, would gain significantly being converted into phase-coherency. For the sake of not altering the overall design of the speaker let's just say we'd modify it accordingly via a DSP solution, bearing in mind other sonic changes that could follow in the wake of this implementation. In that case, given these are speakers I'd fancy despite of phase imperfections, I gather the phase modification (into coherency) could lead to the desirable outcome. If anything, and if proved to be a big factor, the rationale could be to seek out the overall preferred speaker principle as a phase coherent design, but as such phase coherency would only be one of many factors to achieve the desired sonic goal.
phusis, i'm sorry to say but you are wrong!
you need to go back & read a couple of really great threads (if you haven't already) &/or re-read them -
* Is DEQX a game changer? 
* Sloped baffle
there is a lot of great info in these threads that will dispel a lot misconceptions you have...
A correction re. what you wrote - i'm talking about TIME-coherency (& not phase-coherency). These are 2 different things with time-coherency being the superset. A time-coherent speaker is always phase-coherent but a phase-coherent speaker is not time-coherent. 
Time-coherency in a speaker is a design paradigm; it's a parameter that you trade-off in the midst of speaker design as you are thinking. Once you make up your mind to manuf a time-coherent speaker it dictates how you build that speaker. It's a decision you make at the very start.
You are talking about "mechanical alignment" - that's but one very small aspect of time-coherency in a speaker. Merely having a sloped baffle means very little (it just means that the acoustical centers of the drivers are on a vertical plane) if the rest of the speaker design doesn't take it all the way towards making that speaker time-coherent.

Time-coherency in a speaker is a design paradigm; it's a parameter that you trade-off in the midst of speaker design as you are thinking.
typo on my part (sorry!) - I meant to write - it's NOT a parameter that you trade-off in the midst of speaker design as you are thinking.
Interesting that some of the discussion here focused on the spectrum just above 200 Hz.  To me this is lower midrange territory since over many years I've read references to the bass range being the first three octaves; thus from 20 to 160 Hz.

However, regardless of how it is labeled, here is a further thought for consideration.  Just as WAJ suggested the importance of the 200-400 Hz range, so does Jim Smith.

Many of you may know about Jim from his association years ago with Magnepan, as a dealer in Georgia, as importer for Avantgarde, and currently as an audio consultant and author of "Get Better Sound".

In that book he identifies one thing he believes one must have for musical satisfaction, "a flat to slightly elevated response curve in the critical region from approximately 192 Hz to 348 Hz."  If that leaves you curious then I suggest you read his book.

For my own experience I will only add that I've heard many expensive systems that seem to emphasize detail but they fail to convey the emotion of the performance/recording.  Then I could hear the same recording on a "lesser" system and find emotional connection.  So for me it is something more than extensive engineering and ultimate cost.

if they are accurate and no emotional connection the problem probably lies elsewhere.