The best speaker you ever heard?

08-13-14: After_hrs
Electrical synergy that translates to emotional and component harmony is key. As we all know a speaker is only as good as what the amplifier is doing for it primarily and what the room is doing additionally.

You raised a good point After_hrs. I've seen plenty of classic Infinity IRS speakers for example setup with cheap amps like rotel sitting on the ground with no isolation, cheap cables etc. I also recently read a review by Robert Youman who blew his budget on a pair of Magico Q7's which he is driving with a Vitus RI-100 integrated amp, PBD MPS-5 sacd player & VPI Aries turntable. He's using good cables (KS Elation) and good isolation (Rix Rax, Qpods, SRA), but the reality is with that setup his Q7's will be held back and he will never reach their full potential. I agree with this philosophy of using the best isolation and cables which are critical to getting the best out of your system, but that's about it.

My view is yes, you need to invest a good amount of money on speakers which firstly have good synergy with your upstream gear and are capable of growing with your system as it evolves (which a good reference speaker should do). For my system I chose Magico S5's which are a good value high end speaker which tick all the above boxes. But unlike that Youman's setup, I stepped up to a Vitus SIA-025 integrated, Stillpoints Ultra 5's + Ultra bases and mostly recently, Jorma Statement sc's for synergy with my Prime ic's & pc's. I'm also using a better power conditioner imho (Gigawatt) and have a front end upgrade around the corner which will easily best the PBD. Once my system is finished, that reviewer's budget would still well and truly outstrip mine, however whilst i'm sure his Q7's would have it over the S5's in terms of linearity, authority and scale, I bet my system would give his rig a good run for its money.

09-11-14: Ctsooner
Have you ever heard the Vandy 7's? If not, you should give them a listen as they are some of the best sounds I've heard and I have heard tons of the larger speakers on the market and have for many years now. The Vandy's have sounded better for me than the Rockports I've heard too.

Cts, you mentioned you've compared Magico speakers to the Vandersteen 7's and preferred the Vandys. Have you heard Magico S5's paired with Vitus Signature Series gear & good cables (eg: Siltech Royal Signature, Jorma Prime etc)? The commentary i've read suggests the S5's lose out little to the 7's, and even sound better in areas like tonality, body/texture and inner detail (especially in the bass).

The only problem any of us really have is listening to speakers side by side. It's all about emotion to me. I know HOW I feel when listening and why I do. As for the cost of the Vandy's, the carbon drivers are hand made using balsa wood and YES they are worth it to plenty of us who have paid for them because we felt they have sounded better. I was a Proac guy for years and still like much of what they do. They are some of the only ribbons I even like. They don't convey the emotions. The Vandy's reveal just as much as 'detailed' speakers do and they soundstage just as well too as long as they are set up right. I just assume that stores are setting things up the way they are supposed to be and go from there. Electronics are a bitch to match. Folks just don't get it. Most just say "I want X amps" because they know the name and have been TOLD they are great. One reason I decided to go to a store where I trust what they say, was because I wanted them to show me what amps THEY liked best and why. I made my own decisions, but it was easy to hear why they liked various amps and sources. Do I still want more out of my system? Yes, but I don't have the money to buy the integrated bass that I'd love. I can't afford the top of the line Ayre gear, but when I can, I know my speakers will let me hear the upgrades in spades. I can listen to MIngus all day long and sometimes I do. Yes, piano is tough to make sound natural and they carbon midrange of the Vandy upperline speakers get it right. They are some of the only speakers I've heard that can do that to the mids AND still do everything else right that we all talk about. RARE breed indeed. I was a detractor until I heard them and that opened my ear.

Ct, yes I understand that dilemma. It's hard to compare the Magico S5 to Vandy 7 as most Dealers carry either one or the other line, but not both. And show conditioners are never, or rarely ideal.

I can see the money in the Vandersteen 7. Use of carbon-lined cabinets in particular would add a lot of cost. The Vandy 7's are a similar to Dartzeel amps..they are hand tuned for high performance and demand a lot from upstream equipment and careful setup. Vandersteen supplies a laser level for good reason as the 7's have a narrow sweet spot. But once setup correctly they can sound amazing.

The 7's carbon/balsa drivers are not that dissimilar to Magico's carbon nano-tech/rohacell M380 midrange which uses extremely light and strong carbon cones with extremely lightweight rohacell foam as a dampening material. This midrange is fast, nails female voice and has wonderful tone, timbre and texture/body which to me is the essence real music. I'm sure Richard Vandersteen's mid does one or two things a bit better, likewise Magico's Q series mid shines in other areas.

I agree that developing a good relationship with a Dealer is essential to getting the right advice & being able to sit down and audition gear to see what sounds good to you. At the end of the day, you only need to please one person. Btw, nice system and congrats on your Vandy Treo's!

The best speakers I have heard have all been fairly easy to drive. Getting saddled with a hard to drive speaker is next to criminal in my opinion- if you can't play all the volume you want with 200 watts you are in big trouble due to something often called 'gold plated decibels'.

The idea has to do with the fact that it takes double the amplifier power to increase the volume by 3 db which is not a lot by the human ear. The trick is that your amplifier has to produce musical power- and the smaller the amp (tube or solid state) often the better it might sound being the popular wisdom (actually I think our amps fly in the face of that, but they the unusual exception). So you might a musical amplifier that makes 200 watts, but how many are really out there than can make 400 watts or 1200? The fact of the matter is that if you want an amplifier of that sort of power that sounds like music, you can count the number of amps that qualify worldwide on your hands.

In short, its impractical to have a speaker that requires a lot of power regardless of its price. I usually draw the line at about 86 db 1 watt/1 meter - anything below that is not really a contender for the best speaker in the world- the math simply does not allow it.

Now keep in mind the difference between efficiency (which I think is a more honest statement of how easy the speaker is to drive) and sensitivity (which is 2.83 volts at one meter). If the speaker is 4 ohms instead of 8 ohms, subtract 3 db from the sensitivity figure to get the efficiency figure.

So if you have a speaker that is 86db sensitivity and is also 4 ohms, its actual efficiency is 83 db. In my room, which is 17' x21', I need about 200 watts to make a speaker of 89 db play to a satisfying level. If I had a speaker as in the preceding example, I would need 800 watts to do the same job. If we flip this around, right now my speakers have 98 db, which means that I only need about 25 watts to do the same job right now. Its a lot lot easier to find a nice sounding 25-watt amp than one that make 800 watts!!

So far impedance has not been explored but that too plays a huge role in the sound of speakers. Not directly, but it affects the amps playing the speaker, whether tube or solid state or class D. Essentially, all amps make more distortion into lower impedances, and the distortions that they make are higher ordered harmonics and increased IM distortion, both of which are easily audible. In addition, the lower the impedance the more critical the speaker cable becomes! Conversely a 16 ohm speaker is not critical of the cable, and all amps make less distortion driving the higher impedance.

So if the speaker forces the amp to work harder, you will hear increased distortion. In a nutshell, such a speaker cannot possibly be the best except in theory, as in the real world the amps driving it won't sound like music- they will sound like electronics. If you like a nice hifi, this is OK, but if you want real music, this is something to keep in mind.

Two speakers that I like a lot as they are easy to drive and are full range are the Sound Lab Majestic, which has gotten very easy to drive with a change that was made about a year and a half ago. The other speaker is the Classic Audio Loudspeakers model T-1.4, which is 16 ohms and 98 db 1 watt/1 meter and goes to 20Hz no worries. Rather than say 'this is the best speaker' I like to think about what speakers might be the top 5 or top 10 made world wide. These are two examples. Sorry to say, many of the speakers I have seen on this thread don't belong there IMO. Some do though...