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We should reject hard-to-drive speakers more often

Sorry I know this is a bit of a rant, but come on people!!

Too many audiophiles find speakers which are hard to drive and... stick with them!

We need to reject hard-to-drive speakers as being Hi-Fi. Too many of us want our speakers to be as demanding as we are with a glass of wine. "Oh, this speaker sounds great with any amplifier, but this one needs amps that weigh more than my car, so these speakers MUST sound better..."

Speakers which may be discerning of amplifier current delivery are not necessarily any good at all at playing actual music. 

That is all.

erik_squires
jeffrey75's avatar
jeffrey75
107 posts
 

So Erik when did you start drinking your wine with amirm at Audio Science Review, specs are important but saying a 16 ohm speaker design is better than 4 Ohm speaker design strikes me as hyperbole.

erik_squires OP
15,626 posts
 

saying a 16 ohm speaker design is better than 4 Ohm speaker design strikes me as hyperbole.

@jeffrey75  Since I've never said or alluded to anything like that statement I don't feel obligated to defend it either.  I encourage you to read all of my posts, in addition to my original on this thread.

jeffrey75's avatar
jeffrey75
107 posts
 

We need to reject hard-to-drive speakers as being Hi-Fi.

I guess I missed the point of this statement, and yes I have read many that is why I mentioned amirm.

erik_squires OP
15,626 posts
 

I guess I missed the point of this statement,

 

Yes you completely missed the nuance I meant this with, and explained in depth later, and instead applied your own meaning to those words.  Try reading the next three sentences also.  It seems you are conflating my words with those of others who are making other, related points, which I am most certainly not.

Further, I really appreciate the camaraderie you have shown me by immediately suggesting I don’t belong here and should be at ASR, regardless of how you interpreted my statement. That was really elegant and I’ll absolutely attempt to emulate your behavior when I interact with others going forward.

jeffrey75's avatar
jeffrey75
107 posts
 

I guess I’m unhappy with speakers being hard to drive... just because they are hard to drive. 😁

I analyzed a pair of Focal 918 speakers and really had a tough time believing the crossover design was NOT deliberately meant to make it hard to drive. Some caps and resistors in the woofer section dropped the impedance to unnecessarily low values below 100 Hz which could easily have been avoided.

In the case of the Infinity speakers I’m thinking of, they were designed in an era when we lacked the simulation tools we have now, it could have been they got to the right sound and then didn’t want to also optimize to avoid the low impedance.

OK, thinking about this this is less about the gear and more about the awe created by hard to drive speakers. Like we somehow want to make the speakers happy because they are so demanding. Maybe we should get speakers that are happy with any amplifier instead??

I think the real answer is between everyone and no one. The implicit situation set up is "well, it’s a demanding speaker, and it’s my fault for not having an amp up to it."

It’s like an implication there is something wrong with the audiophile if he doesn’t have mega amps. Why don’t we instead say "there’s something wrong with the designer of this speaker if they rate these 2 ohm speakers at 4 Ohms and expect us to fix their bad design?"

I still do not get it, I thought phase angles and Ohms law had more to do with speakers being hard to drive than efficiency or P= V2/R or 2.83(2)/8=1 Watt, but that is alright. Live music needs efficient speakers to reach suitable SPL levels but for smaller spaces speaker designers can flatten the curve but the impedance does go down. I fail to see how attacking only my statement and no one else’s here who have clearly disagreed with your statements has anything to do with camaraderie. As far as the rest of it goes it was a joke erik_squires and amirm sipping wine talking only about speaker specs not the music coming out, come on sir. I ghosted here from 2002 until 2009 when I officially joined the only other member I have ever been prompted to defend myself against was with geoffkait. He was really good at attacking and trying to bully me whenever I got in the way of his opinions. erik_squires I really do prefer you see me as someone who has been reading and liking your posts for some time now I am in a friendly disagreement over a few statements you have made that is all.

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