Best Loudspeakers for Rich Timbre?

It is not strange that after over a century of development that there is still no consensus amongst audiophiles as to which loudspeakers provide the greatest fidelity to the signal. Heck, some still believe nothing beats the wax cylinder for reproduction of the human voice.

What is surprising is the sheer diversity of designs, techniques and technologies. What began as a simple horn soon developed into the moving coil system followed by the electrostatic principle. Yet at each phase the new technology merely complimented the previous one rather than replace it.

For example we see moving coil drivers alongside BMR units alongside ribbon units and even plasma ones for treble.

We might see beryllium, polypropylene, radial, paper (doped/undoped), kevlar, aluminium, graphene etc all tried as cone materials amongst others such as hemp.

Then we come to the cabinets where we might find ultra rigid versus lossy designs, damped versus undamped, sealed box versus ported or transmission line designs. Sometimes there is no box at all as in open baffle or electrostatics. 

Cabinet materials might include MDF, Baltic Birch Plywood, aluminium, bamboo, or some form of composite design materials. 

Even the number of drive units can vary anywhere from just one to over a dozen. All this diversity begs the question of whether we are actually making any progress or are simply going around in circles? 

After all this time there's still so little that is commonly accepted and agreed upon by designers and loudspeakers still remain by far the weakest link in the audio chain as far as measurable distortion goes. 

So the choice of loudspeaker might therefore remain a choice of taste rather than a matter of one design being superior to another. Especially once cabinet effects and artefacts have been substantially reduced as we are beginning to now see even in relative budget designs such as the Q Acoustics Concept series.

As far as the search for timbre / instrumental colour goes there doesn't seem to be any consensus there either other than it probably depends upon primarily the drive unit material itself. And it's kind of reassuring that paper is still employed in many high end designs. 

It’s not any more surprising than the fact that people choose to wear different clothes, some styles more popular and enduring than others.

As good as the various designs were there was only one loudspeaker there that left me unable to find any fault sonically, and that was the Kerr Acoustic K320 (https://www.kerracoustic.com/k320)

Interesting; other than having a single mid-woofer instead of two in a D'Appolito configuration, this speaker is very similar to the Acoustic Zen Adagio which admittedly, is something of a classic performance-to-price bargain. 

@mapman , interesting point. Clothes have a function to keep us warm, cover us up, make us look better, define which tribe we belong to etc

Loudspeakers should be attempting to reproduce the recording as accurately as possible. Preferably having as little / zero character of their own. In a perfect world you would have a believable field of sound existing entirely free from it’s source. Should they be a matter of taste?

@fsonicsmith , when I found out that K320s used a ribbon tweeter and were a transmission line design I was surprised. I then began to listen hard for any dispersion anomalies that I had read about with ribbons, I couldn’t hear any. I was also listening out for any hint of sibilance/crossover distortion (hate it) and there was only the mildest amount on Peggy Lee’s Fever. Probably the cleanest treble I have heard on any loudspeaker. It didn’t have the explosive dynamics of the Vivid Kaya 90s, but those were almost scary at volume.

I had to return to the room at the end if the show just to check if I hadn’t imagined it all. They sounded exactly the same, even after I had heard several other designs in between.

If I had the space I would get a pair in white immediately, (hopefully they come with a grille) but my circumstances probably mean selling my current speakers (which are far more childproof) first.

Hmm, what to do?

cd318,

I’m fascinated by the diversity of designs and opinions among speaker designers and audiophiles as well!

It seems to me there are a lot of variables going on here.

First is that both designers and audiophiles come to audio with differing criteria. Some are most focused on, for instance, strict accuracy to the source, reproducing the electrical signal as accurately as possible. Others are more concerned with accuracy to "The Absolute Sound, " in terms of being able to reproduce a sense of reality, and if it takes a bit of fiddling from strict neutrality from the signal to get there, so be it. Others may be more in the "I just want it to sound good" camp, who aren’t demanding strict objective accuracy, who think that The Absolute Sound is a pipe dream, but just hold the criteria of ending up with "sound that satisfies me." Or "does it communicate music in a way that moves me?"

And then there’s the fact that even when you have people generally in one camp as to their criteria, within that camp there will be variations in which compromises are acceptable, which elements most important. So in the "Absolute Sound" and "As I Like It" camps, some may focus on timbral accuracy, others on soundstaging, others on dynamics, etc, so you’ll still end up with different designs. Even those trying to reproduce strict neutrality, accurate reproduction of the source, will have to contend with debates over whether to design the speaker to output a perfectly ’neutral’ flat signal, or how much to take the likely room effects, or even our hearing, in to the design, so it all sums to neutral at our ears. So there are different ways people design speakers to be "neutral" in that regard.

And THEN of course we have the subjectivity of the listener. Especially in the Absolute Sound/As I Like It camps, our hearing may be slightly different, our perception different, or we may even simply of our own preferences zero in on one aspect of the sound we like, where someone else will notice the aspects they don’t like.

I find it fascinating when I sit in front of some systems with a fellow audiophile and they are really happy with what they are hearing, but for me I am nonplussed and would be just as happy with that system turned off (or happier). They may be hearing great clarity and imaging, I’m hearing a bleached tone that leaves me completely unmoved.

So with different approaches, and of course everything in between, naturally we end up with a variety of design ideas, which satisfy varying criteria of audiophiles, naturally we end up with tons of different designs and preferences.

On a similar note:

I often agitate for a more rigorous, science-like approach to high end audio (for products that are essentially engineering problems, way too much of it seems to operate at the level of, say, alternative medicine).
And I certainly would love to see more high end audio equipment produced via more reliable testing/vetting methods, with objective support for claims etc.

BUT...that’s not to say I also don’t quite enjoy some of the Wild West aspect of high end audio, where you have designers trying out all sorts of wild ideas. I’ve certainly heard products whose marketing comes with really dubious design claims, but which sounded really impressive and fascinating nonetheless.

And I’m very glad that there isn’t the homogeneity in high end audio design that is suggested by the attitude of some posters - or manufacturers for that matter who become fixated on "designs ought to be THIS way and NOT that way!" e.g. People who will say things like you should never use X cone materials, or never allow any resonance in the cabinet, or never go with X, Y crossovers, never combine X, Y drivers, etc. A certain single-mindedness and hard-headedness in pursuing a certain design goal can really work for a speaker designer. But in the wider scheme of things, we want people exploring various approaches.

Thanks goodness we have designers trying different approaches. The recent example from my own experience I keep using are the Devore O series speakers. They have been criticized by the neutrality camp for doing everything wrong - "you never combine a tweeter with a 10" driver like that, the beaming! The mismatch, you’ll loose coherence! You don’t let a cabinet sing like that. It’s all just so wrong, any DIYer can even tell you that!"

But when I auditioned them several times against a bunch of more "neutral" speakers, sure some of the defects were likely there in the mix, but not remotely to the overriding audibility the nay-sayers make you fear, and to my ears they were doing SOMETHING really wonderful that most of the other speakers weren’t. (A certain combination of organic tone and body to the sound).

I also like neutral speakers too (as I’ve owned a number of them). But I’m very glad we have other choices!