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Best Loudspeakers for Rich Timbre?

I realise that the music industry seems to care less and less about timbre, see
https://youtu.be/oVME_l4IwII

But for me, without timbre music reproduction can be compared to food which lacks flavour or a modern movie with washed out colours. Occasionally interesting, but rarely engaging.

So my question is, what are your loudspeaker candidates if you are looking for a 'Technicolor' sound?

I know many use tube amps solely for this aim, but perhaps they are a subject deserving an entirely separate discussion.
cd318
audiokinesis
2,753 posts
 

@prof wrote: "But when I auditioned [the DeVore O/96] 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)."

Excellent description of "what matters most". While the specifics of "what matters most" may change from one listener to another (and from one designer to another), imo you nailed the essence, which is these two things:

1. A speaker must do SOMETHING so well you can get lost in the music. That something can be timbre, imaging, coherence, slam, PRAT, low-level detail, whatever. But it must do something wonderful.

That’s the easy part.

2. The HARD PART is, the speaker must not also do something so poorly as to ruin the magic and collapse the illusion that its "something wonderful" just created. There are more things that can go wrong than I can begin to list.

Apparently the DeVore O/96’s indeed do their something wonderful and then don’t turn around and do something so poorly as to destroy the illusion. Imo that’s the magic formula, and it’s much easier said than done. Kudos to John DeVore.

As for "accuracy", one of the worst-sounding prototypes I ever made was the one with the flattest response. As I tweaked the design closer and closer to flat, it sounded worse and worse. I pressed on, having faith that the heavens would open once I had achieved flatness. Nope. These days my target curve for home audio slopes gently downward as we go up in frequency, so I guess I don't even try to build objectively "accurate" speakers.

Duke

fleschler
2,030 posts
 
My wife insisted on removing the large electrostats from my systems and replace them with speakers with bass and dynamics. For me, I required a speaker that sounded good off-axis, basically good along a 10 foot wide sofa, 13’ from the center between the speakers.

Some have commented on how wonderful the inexpensive Tekton speakers are. They maybe but they are reportedly aimed for on-axis performance, like giant headphones.  These would not meet my 10 foot wide good sound criteria.  Neither do original Quad speakers to those who have heard them.

I also desired a speaker which is easy to drive but can handle moderately high power as well (play quietly and loudly). Once one increases the demands on the speaker measured facilities (bass, dynamics, efficiency, wide seating area), then one has to select other criteria which makes it musical such as timbre, imaging, coherence, slam, PRAT, low-level detail. So, I have limited myself as far as speaker choices which is a good thing because there are so many fine speakers made today to choose from.
prof
3,485 posts
 

fleschler,

Forgive me because I'm sure you've mentioned the speakers you own before but...which ones do you own now?

(A couple speakers off the top of my head that do particularly well over a wide listening area would be: Audio Physic, Joseph Audio)
cd318 OP
2,636 posts
 
@prof , as you say loudspeaker problems are basically engineering problems and until this century's Ed Villchur comes along and radically advances the technology it is going to remain a case of shuffling compromises.

I hate treble coarseness, as well as a bleached tone like yourself, fsonicsmith couldn't abide a bloated bass, Duke said he didn't enjoy a flat frequency response so as things stand mapman is right - it is a case of horses for courses. At least until a major technological breakthrough arrives. Can't some audiophile at CERN 
or MIT have a look at this in their spare time? Do they get any spare time?

Duke summed it up really well in that a speaker must do something really well to get your attention, and since they can't do everything well you have to decide which compromise you can live with. As he said it's up to the designer to try to make sure that these compromises are not deal breakers.  

Unfortunately for us, the only sure way of knowing this is by listening. On the plus side, it's a way of getting to know yourself better. Oh the lengths we have to go to in the pursuit of beauty.
prof
3,485 posts
 

So true cd318.

For instance, as many know speakers like the Revel brand have been designed using the research spearheaded by the great Floyd Tool and others, in which a scientific approach to studying listener perception and speaker design, combined with blind testing, yielded methods of predicting listener preferences for loudspeaker design.  And the Revels were built on those principles.

I auditioned a number of Revel speakers and they were indeed terrific!  They clearly benefitted from the research as they were hugely competent in just about every way.

And yet...they didn't quite do "it" for me, for whatever reason.  Not as much as a number of other speakers, some of the neutral camp, some of the "musical/colored" camp.

It would be fascinating to take part in the HK blind testing to see if I would in fact pick the HK speakers over some of the ones I like better in sighted testing.
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