Music Lovers Speaker vs. Audiophile Speaker


In my quest for a new set of speakers to replace the Paradigm 5se I've had for 25+ years I've come across a couple of terms I'd like clarified: the musical speaker and the audiophile speaker.

What's the difference? 

I can think of two analogies, both of which may be way off mark.

One is the "mp3" analogy. mp3's dumb down the music, but capture what a music lover may consider to be the important stuff. The audiophile version is the CD.

So in this case, the musical speaker doesn't perform as well as the audiophile speaker, but it is at the right price point or has other features (particularly finish) that the listener desires.

The other analogy is the "radio station" analogy. The station doesn't dumb down the music, but it does intentionally change the sound to suit the audience. Classic rock is bass heavy, and dynamic range may be compressed to raise the overall level. An easy-listening station will have a lighter sound with different frequencies emphasized.

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Showing 1 response by bombaywalla

In my quest for a new set of speakers to replace the Paradigm 5se I’ve had for 25+ years I’ve come across a couple of terms I’d like clarified: the musical speaker and the audiophile speaker.

What’s the difference?
I’m sorry but i think there is a difference & I seem to be also thinking along the lines of lowrider57 & sbank.

IMO, an audiophile speaker is one that has all the attributes an audiophile would like: soundstage height, soundstage width, imaging, PRaT, attack, decay, deep bass response, blah, blah, blah... but the sound is sterile & playback thru such a speaker does not emotionally engage the listener. This sort of speaker creates excellent sound but does not create music.
A musical speaker has all the audiophile attributes listed above without calling any attention to these audiophile attributes & at the same time also makes music. In my experience a musical speaker rarely wows the listener (unlike the audiophile speaker which is designed to wow the audience but after a while the wow factor disappears & the listener is disengaged) but it definitely engages the listener from the get-go (there’s that foot-tapping, dancing in your seat, pretending to play the drums, pretending to be the symphony conductor while listening) & you forget about the audiophile attributes & are drawn into the nuances of the music. Upon further long term listening you discover that all the audiophile attributes are present; just not in your face.

Going one step further, in my experience, all the musical speakers that I’ve heard are to some degree or another time-coherent speakers which almost always use 1st-order x-overs. Examples from my listening experience: Green Mountain Audio, Vandersteens, Meadowlarks, SoundLab, Sanders Sound Systems, Apogee, some stand-mount Audio Physic, single driver speakers (the range of music you can playback on these Lowther, Jordan driver speakers is (very) limited but in their music range the sound is simply superb). There are others such as Eminent Tech but I’ve not heard one.