Are your speakers designed for your listening taste and hearing ability?


It occurs to me that speaker manufacturer’s and designers in many cases design their speaker ( and its subsequent sound) to the expected ’typical’ buyer. IME, a lot of high end speakers are designed to appeal to the consumer who has a certain amount of ’hearing loss’ due to age! This might sound odd, but I think that there are a lot of a’philes who have reached a certain age and have now two things going for them..1) A large enough wallet that the expense of the speaker isn’t really the issue and 2) a certain amount of high frequency hearing loss. This circumstance leads to designers and manufacturer’s bringing out speakers that are a) bright, b) inaccurate in their high frequency reproduction and c) not accurate in their reproduction across the frequency spectrum ( some may be tipped up in the highs, as an example). My impression is that a certain technology catches on--like the metal dome ( beryllium or titanium, as an example) and the manufacturer sees a certain public acceptance of this technology from the --shall we say-- less abled in the high frequency hearing dept, and the rest is as they say...history. Your thoughts?
128x128daveyf

Showing 3 responses by daveyf

@kenjit Agree, mostly. However, I do think that there are some folks who can actually hear when the high frequencies are tipped up, or the hard metal dome is ringing like a bell. So, IMO, there are some things that are obviously wrong ( to those that can hear them, that is) and some things that are right.
@larry5729  Nice post. Agree 100%. The most important thing when shopping for speakers is to have a home trial...if at all possible, IMHO. The speaker has to have synergy not just with your upstream gear, but also your room. 
I also agree that dialing in two subs is very tricky...and quite time consuming. The way you describe the set up is about how I ended up as well, although I have dialed my subs back even more than 40%...they are about 25% up on the volume dial....but then I also have a very small room.