Speakers: Anything really new under the sun?
After a 20-year hiatus (kids, braces, college, a couple of new roofs, etc.) I'm slowly getting back into hi-fi. My question: is there really anything significantly new in speakers design/development/materials? I'm a bit surprised that the majority of what I see continues to be some variation of a 2- or 3-way design -- many using off-the-shelf drivers -- in a box (usually MDF at it core) with a crossover consisting of a handful of very common, relatively inexpensive components. I'm asking in all sincerity so please don't bash me. I'm not trying to provoke or prove anything, I'm just genuinely curious. What, if anything, has really changed? Would love to hear from some speaker companies/builders here. Also, before one of you kindly tells me I shouldn't worry about new technologies or processes and just go listen for myself -- I get it -- I'll always let my ear be my guide. However, after 20 years, I'm hoping there's been some progress I may be missing. Also, I unfortunately live in a hifi-challenged part of the country -- the closest decent hifi dealer is nearly 3 hours away -- so I can't just run out and listen to a bunch of new speakers. Would appreciate your insights.
No kidding though… One place played what I wanted over Spotify… and I ended up ordering a set of speakers. They also played a lot of other stuff.
At the last place I was at, I noticed that the ARC preamp was set to a higher level on the more expensive speakers… I thought to myself. “I see what you did there… (with the preamp going from -34 to -31)” |
Check out the Yamaha NS-5000. 8 years in development. The only speaker with Zylon drivers (that beats beryllium, which Yamaha pioneered in the 1970's), the only full range speaker with woofer, mid-range and tweeter made from this same material) and all made by Yamaha, a whole new tech for internal damping, A real 12" woofer that does not break up, a true dome midrange (not cone), traditional looking with a real piano finish, and only $15,000 including stands. |
I think the principals of design have been well known for a long time. I think if you are asking the speakers to do some very difficult task maybe new speakers might be able to do it better but for normal listening volumes and materials any good speaker, new or old, is probably fine. The hobby tends to get hung up on scenarios that are largely imaginary or theoretical e.g. nobody over 50 years old can hear 20k tones. If this is about money then comes the question of what you can get in the new vs. used market. You can buy some pretty nice used stuff depending on what you want. Nobody wants your used floor standers. They come cheap. The other thing is that there are a lot of great cheap speakers now like some of the Andrew Jones stuff or the KEF Q150. I think that you can put together a really accurate and nice sounding system cheap now and that marginal gains are ever more expensive. Personally, I feel like room setup and placement is a big deal but nobody likes to talk about it. Cheap DSP, like MiniDSP has come a long way too. So, in my mind, what's new is there are great cheap speakers that will really do a nice job for short money and you can get some really nice used speakers if you want a form factor that's out of favor. DSP is now so accessible and underutilized. In the end though it's about being satisfied. I stopped reading forums mostly and dropped out of my audio club because I felt that both things made me unstatisfied with my systems and made me unhappy. Also, I'll just throw this out there, my wife and I were outside in kind of a pavilion we have with some Dayton outdoor speakers and a chip amp. We were listening and both of us turned to each other and were like "does this sound insanely amazing?" I was checking behind me to see if I had installed extra speakers there or something. It was absolutely amazing. Maybe it was just a nice day and we were outside, but I would put that listening session up against small house money systems I've heard. |
"Nobody wants your used floor standers. They come cheap." Taxonomy, A lot of what you said makes sense and I agree, but that statement doesn't make sense because the category of floorstanding speakers is bigger and more popular than stand mounted speakers, and many of those speakers are among the most costly and desirable. |
Also, I’ll just throw this out there, my wife and I were outside in kind of a pavilion we have with some Dayton outdoor speakers and a chip amp. We were listening and both of us turned to each other and were like "does this sound insanely amazing?" I was checking behind me to see if I had installed extra speakers there or something. It was absolutely amazing. Maybe it was just a nice day and we were outside, but I would put that listening session up against small house money systems I’ve heard.
I’ve had this happen too, once or twice and in my case I’ve tended to put it down to some psychological effect. I don’t know. In any case it was actually a bit annoying on one occasion when my brother played back this cheap ferric tape on my NAD tape deck and it sounded way better (image size, transients, dynamics) than my own chrome tape recordings done at home via my LP12 turntable. Slightly taken aback, I asked my brother to find out more about how this tape had been recorded. It turned out to be a common or garden all in one music centre! I’m pretty sure now that it wasn’t a psychological trick but back then my audiophile sensibilities couldn’t accept it as anything other than a as yet unknown anomaly. Reminds me of the old Groucho joke, ’Who you going to believe, me or your own eyes?’ |
