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Are my standards too high?

Dear Gang,

I have heard a number of box speakers and only the cream of the crop are just about tolerable. In other words there is nothing out there that can truly impress me regardless of price. 

The KEF LS50 is a state of the art world class loudspeaker. It has won multiple awards and is used by John himself. A few years ago I decided to go and listen to a pair to see what the fuss was about. They were not setup perfectly but there was no bass. All i could hear was typical uneven ported bass response. The highs were a bit bright and off axis response was uneven. Horrible. I then got a chance to hear the kef Ref ones which were supposed to be the finest speaker that could be made by mankind. They failed to impress me. No bass at all. Then i heard the blades and finally i heard proper bass below 40hz. But the blades were not perfect either. And given their cost they should have been perfect. They didnt sound very refined. Imaging was a bit average. 

Gang, I have come to the realization that either most speakers out there are a hoax (overpriced and overrated) OR my standards are simply so high that the worlds finest 'peaker engineers cannot produce anything that can satisfy my perfect standards. 

The only answer to this riddle is to train audiophiles to understand that the speakers currently on the market are substandard goods.We need to also attract better quality minds to the world of speaker design and weed out the people that dont know what theyre doing. There are obviously some people who are better at doing things than others. Am I right? If we can get rid of the worst speaker designers out there and replace them with superior designers, then we will end up with much better speakers on the market for us to enjoy. Its a win win
kenjit
kenjit OP
1,771 posts
 
Because my standards are so high that it won't be easy to produce a speaker that can exceed my perfect standards
yeti42's avatar
yeti42
287 posts
 
Go and find some MBL 101 X-tremes, when the shows start again. They’re mighty impressive with orchestral music. At Munich a couple of years ago that was all they were playing on them so I don’t know how they’d fare with a bit of motörhead or Tool, maybe you find out.

I think you’ll find all hifi is a compromise, even the oligarch level stuff.
oldhvymec
5,101 posts
 
"exceed my perfect standards".

Oxymoron, K.

You can't exceed perfection. If you're lucky, talented, and pay a lot of attention, you might get close to perfection. You can't achieve it though. There is no perfect here on earth..

But there sure is obsession with trying to achieve perfection, or is there K? Really I wonder?

Regards
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,788 posts
 
Brings to mind the expression my Pa used regularly: "He likes the sound of his own voice." Ignore him and he'll go away usually works, but in this case I doubt it.
knotscott
917 posts
 
Rather than taking pot shots at other people's work, try building your own.  You have access to the same materials and physics that all  speaker designers do. 

It's not hard to build a speaker that works.  It's not even that hard to build a speaker that sounds pretty good....especially in today's world with computer and internet assistance.  It gets increasingly more difficult to build a really, really good speaker that's profitable and attainable to audio consumers. 
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