Custom Tuning Conspiracy
I have a theory that the reason custom tuned loudspeakers are not offered to the market place is because it would essentially destroy the whole speaker industry. If every audiophile had their speakers custom made for them, there would simply be no need for further speakers to be made, until the next generation of audiophiles came along which would take decades.
If you think about it, most speakers are mass produced junk. They are made in vast quantities so that more profit can be made.
Even the few companies that do offer so called custom speakers are not really customized. Companies such as Gr research and Fritz offer their range of speakers hoewever GR research tunes all their speakers flat by default and Fritz does not tune his speakers to his customers exact specifications.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a speaker company that made speakers according to your exact specifications? You would choose the material, shape, drivers, components, configuration, crossover slopes and frequency response. It would be made to measure.
The people that mock this idea say that speakers dont need to be made to measure. This is nonsense. Every speaker on the market already sounds different from one another. Audiophiles then go on the merry go round and buy one speaker after another, each speaker never quite fulfilling their needs. How much time would be saved if the right speakers were made for you right from the start?
Not only would it save time it would save resources and energy. Every speaker model is produced in their thousands. Yet perhaps only a dozen people will eventually find that particular model suits their ears. So that means several hundred speakers have been made and will eventually end up in the junkyard. What a waste of time, energy and resources?
Should there be more companies doing truly custom tuned speakers among the vast sea of mass produced junk producing companies?
Kenjit what you propose already exists for those willing and able to pay for it. Everything else is a progressive or regressive form of compromise based on affordability. I struggle to see the problem? This is similar to every manufactured good with a variety of price points and commensurate compromise. |
@kenjit - You clearly spend time on this forum, so should be able to recognize that it's effectively impossible for any discussion to come to a consensus. Also, very few of the most dedicated audiophiles keep the same system for long periods of time, they are always looking to upgrade with the goal of improving things and also to satisfy their unquenchable drive to try new things. Most recognize that the final sound quality results from the "sum of the whole" rather than any individual component. Even if it were possible for someone to custom design a speaker for a customer which would rely on the designer to understand the personal preferences of the individual customers, the market would be limited to people that had the funds, interest, and knowledge to desire it while also not wanting to approach it from a DIY perspective.
I would also argue that a custom car would be much easier than a custom speaker. For a speaker the preferences are not easily defined or understood. For a car a customer can describe if they want comfort (Rolls-Royce is essentially fully custom) or performance (Bugatti is essentially fully custom). If performance is what you want, you can adjust a car to suit driving preferences based on track using speed as the unit of measure, this is commonly done in racing. With a speaker, you could theoretically design for a specific person using a specific room, album, and song, but all bets are off if a component were to change, the room changed, or there was a desire to listen to different music. It's a compromise at every level. |
Its not a model designed to make money. That is exactly the problem with speaker design. Its based primarily on maximizing profit. My technology would be based on meeting the needs of each and every audiophile. It has nothing to do with profit. Why shouldnt it be profitable? If the customer was present while the crossover was being tuned by the designer, he could then state his preferences based on what he was hearing and that would then determine the final crossover circuit. Why is that so hard to implement? How many people in the world wear eyeglasses? Millions. Yet we can somehow manage to get each and every one of these patients into the office for an eye examination and then fit them with custom tuned lenses. If we cared about sound just as much as we do about vision then perhaps it would be workable? |
and part of the reason for that is because their speakers were not tuned correctly in the first place. Potentially, the upgrade process that you speak of could be curtailed if the damn thing was custom tuned correctly. Dont you think its silly to upgrade a speaker just because the tweeter level was set just that little bit too high? All it needed was a change in resistor and that would have fixed it yet audiophiles spend thousands on cables thinking it will sort their problem out.
I dont think you understand how this works. Its not a question of WHETHER we tune a speaker or not. Its a question of WHO does it? The designer or the customer? EVERY speaker you buy is already tuned. There is no such thing as a speaker which is not tuned. The points you make about the room, components and music choices influencing the tuning reinforces my point. Whose room, music choices, personal preferences and components should the speaker be tuned according to? Mine or the designers? |
