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How come that when most audiophiles

follow the philosophy of "shorter, less complex signal path is better", they then wire their carefully chosen equipment to speaker cabinets filled with a boatload of transformers, capacitors, resistors, and drivers which exhibit gross non-linearities which are only compounded by adding them all together? I believe that the reason is the "specification game" again, where people believe that speakers must have a frequency response from DC to light +-3db, and as a result, speaker systems must have many drivers to cover the range. 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 non-linearities I have to deal with are the ones inherent in the driver/cabinet combo. With some careful design and impedence curve mods, I get a more musical sound than any "high end" speakers I have ever heard(and I've heard alot) as well as any of the multi-way speakers I've ever designed and built(also alot). Why do you think that there is this disconnect in thinking regarding short signal path as it relates to speakers?
twl

Showing 3 responses by onhwy61

onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,135 posts
 
I reject the notion that there is a single technical and/or equipment path to audiophile nirvana. What works for one person may not work for someone else. While the system you describe might work wonderfully on several types of music, I doubt it would really excel at raggae, large scale orchestral, rap or electronica. At the same time these other systems may not have the textural magic and transparency that your system possesses. Any system involves making trade-offs. The success of each system will depend heavily on the biases of the listener. To paraphrase another Albert - it should be as simple as possible, but not more than necessary.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,135 posts
 
Other than the reference the other Albert (Einstein's description on how complex the laws of physics have to be), who's exact comment escapes me, my earlier post was solely directed towards Twl's excellent post. To be referenced in the same sentence as Albert E. is no disparagement.

To Twl: it sounds like you are really happy with your setup. It seems to accomplish everything you are looking for in music reproduction. My point is that someone else may have a slightly different set of musical reproduction priorities which could be better met with a different type of system. For instance someone with a large room who likes pipe organs may not be happy with your system. To quote that great American composer S. Stewart - "Different strokes for different folks, and so on and so on..."
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,135 posts
 
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.
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