How come that when most audiophiles

I don't see any reason whatsoever that an ideal speaker "must" -

- have SPLs from 88-95 dBW at 12 feet?
- have an 8 ohm impedance?
- have a driver that measures and weighs less than the air it displaces?
- use a magnet that delivers equal force, etc. etc. etc.?
- must occupy less space than a Vandersteen 2C?

Some of those specifications are essentially irrelevant to the end sound. But if we're looking for ideal technical accuracy, including phase response, it'd be extremely difficult for any speaker to match or exceed the Dunlavy SC-VI, which near as I can tell doesn't meet any of the above except for sound output.

Here is an excerpt from Twl, the creator of this post.

Notice the specs only show freq. Response, and nothing about phase non-linearity induced by multiple crossover components. This seems to be a non-linearity in system philosophy where short signal path does not apply to speaker systems, but is paramount in all other aspects of the system. I use a direct input from source to OTL amp and DIY Fostex based 1-way speaker cabinets. The result is very natural, dynamic, phase-coherent, detailed, and revealing. The only nonlinearity I have to deal with are the ones inherent in the driver/cabinet combo.

MY POST BEGINS HERE, ON THE TOPIC AS BEGUN BY TWI:

His point being that simple, single driver systems retain more of these specific properties than the more complex designs.

My "impossible" speaker posting was exactly on topic because it listed ideal standards for that single driver system, including the crossover design and ability to be driven (impedance load and efficiency specs).

If you do not believe that these are important to a speakers design and performance, you have much to learn. There is no free ride in the realm of high performance audio, and the better and more coherent the speaker, the more likely the amplifier will deliver the information from the source and electronics that follow.

The speaker is the most flawed component in any system, it must convert electrical energy to mechanical energy. This is an extremely difficult task with the best conditions, and if the speaker has any design flaws to overcome, the ability to produce near believable results become impossible.

Phase coherency, driver mass, crossover phase distortion, notch distortion, cabinet resonance and wildly varying load impedance are but a few of the obstacles to making a speaker behave properly when driven by the electrical signal.

My "ideal " speaker addresses more of these problems than most designs and may be proven in the real world by auditioning the speaker these specifications represents. Twl's ideas are not new and they are not incorrect. He is seeking to accomplish this goal with dynamic drivers, I simply pointed out that an electrical version already existed that conformed to these ideals.

Thank you Albert. By the way, I checked out the Millenium 1 on the web. They look very nice and the TAS review was very interesting, however I couln't afford them and my amp wouldn't drive them. I can't help feeling that, for my needs, I saved the $14,500.00 difference and still achieved a very satisfying result.

No doubt, and I am pleased that you found happiness with your system. The important thing is finding the special combination of equipment and speakers that allows you to listen to the music without constantly thinking about how the system "sounds".

If you are there then you are successful, regardless of how much money is spent.

Two comments for Twl:

Where does the Quad 63 series fit into your schema? It's a phase coherent point source design, yet at the same time with its miles of wire it definitely ignores the shorter is better philosophy.

Shorter is better may only apply to the analog world. Correctly implemented DSP processing is essentially transparent and opens up the possibility of digital crossovers driving multi-amp/multi-speaker arrays with phase coherent in-room results.