What does listening to a speaker really tell us?

You got it Albert. Go out and get yourself a pair of Carpe Diem Acoustic
Orgasms and use those phased arrays of yours for kindling! You can thank
me later.

Marco

What my speaker told me on my summer vacation:

Life is good.

If I am in a position to sit around and my biggest worry is how my system is coming along, sounding, or not sounding, I know life in California is good. Sometimes we don't know how lucky we are, but it is a great feeling when we do.

Yes, I try to compare them to a live performance, at least to the halls and locations I have heard and attended.

Dan

Everything is relative. Many like to forget this fact.

The folks at Linn have always touted, the easier it is to follow the tune the better the system. I def. agree with that, whether or not one thinks that their equipment does it the best is another issue. Anyway the list of audiophile jargon is endless and I find most of it has nothing to do with music. Things like "neutral" when was the last time you went to a live performance and called the band "neutral"..if you did,sounds to me like a bad band.

Concerning the recording issue, I did a full length cd, so I was there (drummer) was the "image" anything like it was when we were in the studio...nope...did the "image" sound like pretty much all my other cds...yep.

So when it comes to hi end audio I just listen and see if it is musical...like real music...if the gear is it makes me want to listen to music more...all the while tapping my feet and bobbing my head.

So there is no one speaker etc..it is all a combination and the end result is how well it plays the music, not how well it plays the audiophile jargon.

Fidelity only takes one form. All the rest is editing. Some like edits some don't. Problem is no speaker is close to the ideal. Add to that the room interaction and then all hell breaks loose and the subjectivists have a field day opining willy-nilly. Subjectivists are happy with some of the most coloured speakers and pronounce them "moooooosical". Check out the measured response for the Verity speakers in this month's Stereophile. Unless the aberrations are great, most people’s ears get used to pretty dismal sound pretty quickly: that's called "break-in".