New Speakers up to $15k - The more I read the less I know!

@soix You are correct in that the resonances are easily measurable.

However it’s Alan Shaw’s opinion (designer/Mr Harbeth) based on historic research carried out by the BBC that the best way of dealing with these inevitable resonances is to allow them to move below the threshold of hearing. Then it won’t matter how they measure as long as you can’t ever hear them.

Harbeth argue that brute force methods of resonance control only serve to move them upwards in frequency to where our hearing is most sensitive. Any coloration in the midband, even the mildest, can quickly destroy the illusion of reality.

Since loudspeakers cabinets will always resonate due to considerable internal pressures caused by the movement of the drive units and the harm they do as they try to force their way out of the box and back through the drive unit itself, something must be done to reduce this pressure. But what?

The Harbeth approach of lossy cabinet design is one method of dealing with these resonances. Doing away with the cabinet altogether as in Open Baffle designs is another, but that has its own issues.

Still, I prefer either of those approaches to the solid 2 inch thick, glued, screwed, reinforced cabinet wall approaches where something beautiful can so easily get lost.

Can't say enough about how good I find the GoldenEar Triton Reference speakers.
Hopefully you could try them in your house if you are interested (borrow overnight from a friendly dealer).  And you'd have $7K of your budget left over...

My 2 cents on the Harbeth (and other wide baffle designs):

The Harbeth speakers - the larger ones included - do a surprising level of "disappearing" as sound sources. Not what you’d expect from looking at them. So their design philosophy does seem to be working to quite a degree.

That said, Harbeths don’t "disappear" as sound sources as well as any number of other speakers that take the "dampen resonances" approach.

Thus far I’ve auditioned 3 brands of the wide baffle, resonating cabinet approach: Audio Note, Harbeth, Devore. In each case they disappeared more than their shape lead me to expect. But also in every case, that aspect was pretty easily bettered by other resonance-controlled speakers (e.g. my Thiels and others). In the wide baffle/resonating designs, I always sense some level of "fill in" between the sonic images. This can lead to a nice cohesiveness and richness to the sound, but can also become a bit more confused with more complex material, with a lot of instruments playing in the mix.

One of my go-to tests for this are some cuts from the Lost Angeles Guitar Quartet, in which 4 similar sounding guitars are simultaneously playing complex parts. The wide-baffle speakers I auditioned could make it harder to untangle one guitar from the next, vs my Thiels and some other low-resonance speaker designs.

The trade off is that wonderful bigness and warmth of tone from the wide baffle designs. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve heard from Devore speakers which is why I’m contemplating buying a pair from the "O" series.

Yes, the state of the art loudspeaker design still involves serious compromise.

I'll compromise on anything this side of a screechy treble to get a vivid midrange. Its the best way for me to forget that I'm listening to loudspeakers.

For some others the goal may be the imagery / disappearing act combination. Devore seem to be a modern take on the classic DC Tannoys from the past with their luxury bass.

 

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