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We should reject hard-to-drive speakers more often

Sorry I know this is a bit of a rant, but come on people!!

Too many audiophiles find speakers which are hard to drive and... stick with them!

We need to reject hard-to-drive speakers as being Hi-Fi. Too many of us want our speakers to be as demanding as we are with a glass of wine. "Oh, this speaker sounds great with any amplifier, but this one needs amps that weigh more than my car, so these speakers MUST sound better..."

Speakers which may be discerning of amplifier current delivery are not necessarily any good at all at playing actual music. 

That is all.

erik_squires
kenjit
1,771 posts
 

If we are to reject hard to drive speakers then we must reject the SNR1 immediately as they are horribly hard to drive with all the terrible components in the passive crossover. Get that dreadful thing out of there and go active Nigel I implore you!

johnnycamp5's avatar
johnnycamp5
124 posts
 

I still say it’s just different human perceptions of what sounds good

I had some 3-way tower speakers that were supposed to be the bees knees- scan speak drivers with Ber. tweets) at around 87db sensitivity (translation more like 84 db) 

Same thing, comments on how “smooth” or “even” they sounded…

Every time I tried to turn them up loud for a more live concert experience (rarely), they always seemed to fart out (probably the thermal compression mentioned)

Im talking loud as hell here (balls out) for just a song or two.

 

My floor to ceiling line arrays do seem to get there db wise, but still sound smoothed to hell in terms of dynamics

Only thing I really like about em is their uniform loudness wether listening close or far (they don’t blow your head off up close, or fade way off if far away…)

 

As always.…YMMV

lanx0003
1,022 posts
 

In the opening, the OP said out loud that "We need to reject hard-to-drive speakers as being Hi-Fi". Now the tone was evolved to "... It's fine with me if you buy a car that gets 10 MPG. What I disagree with is the awe and bragging rights associated with that..." and followed by "No, your car is not better to ride in or more exclusive than high MPG Cars just because it's low MPG."

In reality, in the hi-fi world, I think very few audiophiles (if there is any) will procure speakers just because it's low efficiency. The speaker designed to have lower efficiency has its good reason. Take ATC speaker/driver as an example, if one desires a good low frequency extension out of a small-to-medium sealed enclosure (which I prefer) design speaker with a given size of driver, efficiency has to be sacrificed. Manufactures/designers could achieve higher efficiency by utilizing vented enclosure like tube/flat ports, lighter material for moving parts, horns, etc., but the sound reproduced from those designs may not suit some audiophiles' taste. In addition, quoted from the ATC designer, "The low mass parts are often not suited to the forces and resonances generated when reproducing audio at high SPLs and the structures that behave well at low levels can become unstable.  When the driver was reinforced for its stability and high internal damping, reduced sensitivity is unfortunately a trade-off.

 

Post removed 
erik_squires OP
16,644 posts
 

In the opening, the OP said out loud that ...

 

It is really hard to get nuance across in a single sentence so I really am happy when readers take the time to digest the entire paragraph. Of course no one types things perfectly, and hard thoughts often require multiple drafts to craft well.

My apologies for the confusion but overall I stand by the entire paragraph, as a whole:

 

We need to reject hard-to-drive speakers as being Hi-Fi. Too many of us want our speakers to be as demanding as we are with a glass of wine. "Oh, this speaker sounds great with any amplifier, but this one needs amps that weigh more than my car, so these speakers MUST sound better..."

I realize that there are technological marvels which may be very hard to drive because of the way they are stretching the state of the art. The legendary Apogee ribbon speakers are probably the best example I know of at 1 Ohm resistive, and if that’s your thing go get some.

My complaint is more about the machismo that hard to drive speakers are naturally better sounding, and more hi-fi than speakers which meet their spec, and stay at 4 Ohms or higher.  Of course there are great sounding but hard-to-drive speakers as well.

I’d also like to point out that there’s a sub-thread here about high efficiency speakers which is not mine, I take no responsibility for those statements regarding efficiency vs. sound quality.

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