Speaker priority: high or low???

Common Audio Sense -- (Apparently) A Minority Perspective

To say that the transducer is the most important part of a system is understatement.

I would wager that most of us would have little problem in identifying speaker "A" over speaker "B" from two rooms away. I would also wager that those of us who believe that the amplifer is what molds the sound of a system would not be able to consistently determine the differences between or identify one quality transistor amp from another in a controlled double blind --- or to conssistently diifferentiate between one high quality tube amplifer and another under the above described conditions. This position, of course, assumes that the amplifiers measure well and are of the same approximate wattage and current ratings as well as input sensitivities.

System synergy? I don't deny it exists. However, all too often it is a euphemism for the equivalent of an equalizer. That is "compensating," for example, for an overly bright forward sounding speaker with a polite and rolled off tube amplifier.

On a more positive note, I do agree, in part, with Beemer. The room is very important and sometimes the only way to upgrade is to move. ;>

Cliff

I also agree with Beemer. It is not just 1 piece that makes a system, it is how all pieces work together. Spend $5000 on an amp, $5000 on speakers, and $200 on a cd player or $200 on a turntable cartridge, you get crap. An amplifier nor speakers will not make a bad source component sound good. I have heard other people discuss that the most important piece of equipment is the source object itself, be it a cartridge, cd player, dvd player, etc.... A nice amplifier will amplify crap to louder crap. Hook up a pair of NHT superzeros to a Levinson or Classe monoblock amp and you will not get any more low end than hooking these speakers to a smaller integrated amp.

Just a note, Paul: It is not tube amplifiers that do not have flat response within the audioband - most do, as do amps in general. It is some speakers possessing uneven or reactive electrical impedance characteristics that will display slight deviations from flat response when driven by tube amplifiers, or by some SS amplifiers that eschew high levels of loop negative feedback in their designs.

I believe the room, speakers, amps, etc. direction of priorities is the way to go. I feel that the room and speakers need to work as one. In as much as you may like the sound of a speaker at a dealers, they may sound awful in another room. It's almost an electro-mechanical interaction. Speakers need the right amplification to perform properly. Personally I think speakers should be sold with outboard crossovers preceding appropriate amplification.I also find that speakers tend have the greatest variation in sound. This indicates to me that speakers are perhaps the most colored component in the chain. It's important that you find speakers with colorizations that offend you the least. I always find it interesting when I see post's asking for help choosing speakers around a particular amp. To me that would be like choosing an automobile to use with a particular gasoline. Now if you only had leaded low test available, that might make sense. I doubt that many have such an issue. Another cliche' we often see is "garbage in, garbage out". As far as I'm concerned, if you contaminate the system chain at any point you'll have garbage out. Just my humble opinion, to each his or her their own. We all find our own path to happiness.

I too am going to weigh in on the speaker end, with the provisos that (1) you do have to reach a certain level of amplifier and source performance, which varies from one individual to the next depending on what you can tolerate, and (2) really disparate levels of spending on source/amplification/speakers are bound to lead to a worse result than an intelligent distribution.

Having said that, there is absolutely no question that speakers have by far the biggest deviations and distortions from perfection, that is, they color the original signal far more than any other component, usually by several orders of magnitude! And the worst types of offenses are just "passed over" by the reviewers, e.g., a total lack of time or phase coherence, massive impedance and phase anomalies which put tremendous demands on the amplifier, highly inconsistent diffraction and dispersion patterns, etc. It's as if the reviewers take the attitude that "everyone does it, so it must be okay"! It's not even close to okay, it's just that very few speaker designers have tried to seriously address these issues.

I will make an even bolder statement: If you assembled a system of decent components including a typical 3-way rectangular-box speaker with a typical high-order multiway crossover, and then took a short sample of a complex musical signal and studied it all the way through the chain, it would remain largely intact until it reached the speakers, at which point it would instantly transform into a waveform that is literally nearly unrecognizable compared to the original. Of course, I could be proved wrong, but I doubt it. If anyone has done this, I would love to see a reference to it.

Please do not accuse me of suggesting that measurements are all that matter. I am merely suggesting that screwing up the waveform to such a degree that it hardly bears any resemblance to the original, cannot possibly be a good thing. There is a reason that full-range electrostatics sound so good, and it is that they avoid most of the problems I just mentioned. Of course, they have a whole new set of problems, most of which revolve around unsolvable room interactions, which is why most people don't put up with them.

So while I'm not saying that one should spend more money on speakers than anything else, I am saying that they have the most variability and thus deserve the most effort in searching for one that satisfies.