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OMG, just removed my speaker grills and the sound just opened up to a new level!

My recently purchased Focal Maestro Utopia speakers look so good with their black front baffle and side and back Camara white, I couldn’t even think about removing the grills to hear what they sound like with them off. With nobody around to voice their displeasure to seeing those drivers I boldly went were no man, or in this case myself, said he would never go and removed the grills. Hello, said the speakers
this is what I really sound like. I might not be as pretty, but love me for what really counts, how I sound,
not how I look. I have to say I love them even more and they’re not looking too bad either! 
hiendmmoe

Showing 2 responses by douglas_schroeder

douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
Congratulations on your daring move! ;)

Yes, this is basic, one of the simplest and effective ways to improve speaker performance. I remove absolutely every speaker grill possible. Consider a speaker playing through a grill to be akin to firing a tomato at a strainer - it's a mess. Not much good comes from shoving a mesh/grill in front of drivers, despite the hoopla over Paradigm's grills on their new line. Sure, it has a more diffuse sound - because they're blocking half of it!  :(

Magnepans - all panels with fixed grills - suffer significant degradation of sound quality, too. I have the Kingsound King III electrostatic speakers, and the difference between grills on/off is striking, quite evident. 

I'm not as  impressed by speaker companies that put fixed grills on drivers. Wretched mistake, imo. At this point I don't know that I would own such a speaker (Aside from perhaps HT use, like the small, wall Maggies I use because they are inexpensive and get the job done).  :) 

There is one thing that can be beneficial about a grill; it can help tame a wickedly strident tweeter. 





douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
lowtubes, chill, no reason to ride the OP. Everyone is at a different place. Some people are more into the media collecting, etc. and don't pay that much attention to the nuances of gear, etc. 

As for speakers that are "voiced" with grills on, whatever. It's usually because it looks like crap, for they used ugly materials underneath to save money - not always the worst thing cost-wise - but a disadvantage when it comes to performance. Yes, this is true of Vandersteen and Magnepan, too. Sorry, fanboys.  :) 

Do I care if the manufacturer says the speaker is better with a grill? No. I'll probably never own it. It's that important when you put systems together for high performance. I get the aesthetics thing and WAF etc, but I'll not quickly succumb to acceptance of a speaker without removable grill. In 30+ years a speaker with a grill has never performed superior to without.  The only exception, as I said, was if they did a poor job on the tweeter. YMMV 
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