douglas_schroeder said:
In reality a speaker is either good on all genres of music or it is not a good speaker.
atmasphere said:
This is arguably the biggest myth about loudspeakers in particular- that they favor certain genres, the classic being JBL L100s are best at rock.
While I respect and admire both of these industry stalwarts, I disagree with their assertions. I do agree with atmasphere that no rational mind would purposely design a speaker to play only one type of music. But that does not mean that all speakers are equally good for all types of music.
I agree that if you listen to many types of music and you have some flexibility with your gear, many (most) speakers will work very well with all musical genres. But there are a lot of different speaker designs out there: full range vs. limited range, dynamic vs. planar/EL vs horns, unidirectional vs. bidirectional vs. polydirectional... I think you get the point. Not all speakers sound (as) good with different music to me and my ears.
Example: I love single driver monitors paired with small SET amps. This would not be my combo of choice for heavy metal or large orchestras. But for music that works in the 80 Hz-10 kHz (aka most music) they sound great. There is a special quality that I don't hear from other combinations. I love them for jazz music. But I don't find that they work well for "complex music" like large orchestral recordings and opera. Does this make them bad speakers or poor designs? You might say yes but I don't think so.
If there was a single speaker design, technology, size, manufacturer that was clearly best there would only be one speaker. In theory, of course. Then there are the contrarians, like me.
