Audio Lessons Learned - post your best advice for the newer members!

Short sweet and simple.
Ignore watts.  It is all about instantaneous peak current.

@mahgister,

I think Peter Aczel’s point was that all box speakers always have some tendency to sound like boxes.

Here is his full quote:

"Loudspeakers are a different story. No two of them sound exactly alike, nor will they ever. All, or at least nearly all, of the conflicting claims have some validity.

The trouble is that most designers have an obsessive agenda about one particular design requirement, which they then inflate above all others, marginalizing the latter.

Very few designers focus on the forest rather than the trees. The best designer is inevitably the one who has no agenda, meaning that he does not care which engineering approach works best as long as it really does.

And the design process does not stop with the anechoic optimization of the speaker. Imagine a theoretically perfect loudspeaker that has an anechoic response like a point source, producing exactly the same spherical wave front at equal levels at all frequencies.

If a pair of such speakers were brought into a normally reverberant room with four walls, a floor, and a ceiling, they wouldn’t sound good!

They would only be a good start, requiring further engineering. It’s complicated.

Loudspeakers are the only sector of audio where significant improvements are still possible and can be expected. I suspect that (1) further refinements of radiation pattern will result in the largest sonic benefits and (2) powered loudspeakers with electronic crossovers will end up being preferred to passive-crossover designs.

In any case, one thing I am fairly sure of: No breakthrough in sound quality will be heard from “monkey coffins” (1970s trade lingo), i.e. rectangular boxes with forward-firing drivers.

I’ll go even further: Even if the box is not rectangular but some incredibly fancy shape, even if it’s huge, even if it costs more than a luxury car, if it’s sealed or vented and the drivers are all in front, it’s a monkey coffin and will sound like a monkey coffin—boxy and, to varying degrees, not quite open and transparent."

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I’d like to think that he did consider the subject of rooms and placement in detail. He just didn’t like what cabinets tend to do to the sound of the drivers.

To my ears ported speakers sound easier on the ear than sealed box ones do. On the other hand many dislike the effect that the port (hole in the cabinet) usually does to the bass timing. As ever with loudspeakers you have to chose the compromises that you are most able to accept.

Peter Aczel with a lifetime of experience behind him finally settled on boxless designs like the Linkwitz Orion and the LX521 both which placed the midrange driver on a backless panel, much like what Stewart Tyler had also done with one of his ProAc designs.

Aczel also liked omnidirectional designs like the Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 5.

Here’s his preface to a 2005 review:

"I have a dream. I dream of the Ultimate Loudspeaker. It can only exist in my dream because in the real world no manufacturer would have the overarching vision and multifaceted expertise to incorporate each and every one of its ideal features in a single design. No way; it could never happen.

It would of course have to be a powered loudspeaker because perfect matching of the amplifier channels to the drivers is possible that way and because separate, free-standing power amplifiers are hopelessly twentieth-century.

It would have to be a 4-way loudspeaker because 3-way design always stretches the capabilities of the drivers to the limit.

It would have high-order digital filters in the electronic crossover because they are linear-phase and just plain superior. The four power amplifiers would be extremely powerful yet small enough to be tucked unobtrusively inside the speaker enclosure, thanks to the most sophisticated switch-mode design.

The various functions and protection modes of the speaker would be controlled by a powerful internal computer and DSP processor, which would also permit a single digital S/PDIF connection from a stereo signal source to produce music from the all-in-one amplifier/speaker system.

One of the capabilities of the DSP would be to tune the bass response of the speaker to its specific location in the listening room. (I can dream, can’t I?)

Also, the midrange and treble response of the speaker would be much wider in dispersion than the usual 60° or 90°, extending essentially to 180°, so that the location of the listener would become totally unimportant. (Asking for the moon? What are dreams for?)

Am I still dreaming? What are those two strange-looking monoliths in my listening room? Could they be loudspeakers? Introducing the Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 5, the speaker that makes my dream come true in every detail, bar none. I can hardly believe it. Amazing. Speakers will never be the same again."

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If you have been able to overcome the long recognised limitations of cabinet loudspeakers then good for you.

Perhaps you can help the rest of us attain some of your success via embedding, but I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that loudspeaker cabinets do not present certain sonic issues.

https://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic_web3.htm

I’d like to think that he did consider the subject of rooms and placement in detail. He just didn’t like what cabinets tend to do to the sound of the drivers.

First i greatly appreciate your toughtful post....

My point is in spite of their limitations what Aczel forgot, is the room precise tuning by controls, with many acoustic devices,( my grid of 18 Helmholtz pipes and tubes among others) not only passive material treatment...

The sound we listen to dont necessarily come ONLY from boucing on passive walls, the room could be activated and help greatly by improving the box speakers...

In fact my box speakers in MY room sound better than magnepan in a bad room.... This is my point by experience....

Then calling all boxes monkey coffins is only revealing a lack of understanding about acoustic controls and where the sound come from.... In a simplistic conception of acoustic the sound come from reflection, absorbtion, or from diffusive surface from the walls, ceilings etc...

This is ONLY half of the story.... A room is a pressurized potential engine that can be activated by many pressuring engine devices like Helmholtz botlles, tubes and pipes... Then what we listen to is no more ONLY the results of waves boucing back from the walls but also a results of this different adjusted pressure devices created by Helmholtz for particular speakers needs and for the particular ears of the listener ...

Then the alleged " monkey boxes" dont lost their limitation, but dont sound either boomy or lacking trans parency... For sure they are mot magnepan but they can beat it in some acoustically prepared room designed for them, when the magnepan are in a bad room...

My point is Aczel go too swiftly to a condemnation of box speakers...

ALL speakers ask for a particular acoustical settings and have all their limitations.... Box speakers are very useful in a small room when we ask also for some level of bass....

I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that loudspeaker cabinets do not present certain sonic issues.

I NEVER said that box speakers dont have limitations of their own, i only said that calling them monkeys boxes coffin is saying too much negative...

For example the rectangular boxes had an internal resonance problem, and it is possible using dyssimetric compressive force and a load with 2 sets of springs under the speakers, and one set under the load on top of the speaker to control the destructive power of the resonance .... It is a result of my listening experiments...And some transparency come to the ears only from that.... add to it a better controlled noise floor of the electrical grid and more transparency comes... At the end add an helmholtz tubes and pipes grid adjusted for these particular speakers in this specific room, another level of transparency comes with it....

Calling them "monkey coffin" is not a solution, nor dreaming also about a totally other kind of perfectly controlled and powered speakers with filters etc....Horns or magnepans are better without being perfect, but a good controls on their working mechanical, electrical and acoustical dimensions we could make them acceptable .... No more monkey coffin.... Acoustic controls of the room is more powerful anyway than the design of any specific speakers...This is my experience....

My deepest regards....

1) While DIFFERENCES can often be heard quickly, PREFERENCES can take a LOT longer to decide.

2) Don’t pass up an opportunity to hear new equipment. Especially if you can hear it in your own home.

If you get the first 80% right, the last 20% doesn't matter so much.