There are so many speakers out there it boggles the mind. I find it helpful to group them in categories by technology; Dynamic, horn, planar magnetics, ESL and Line Source. I think everyone should go out of their way to listen to examples of each and decide what kind of sound they like. Compare them with the experience of live music in various venues. Some people do not care to emulate the live experience. Whatever. Decide if you prefer the large soundstage of a line source vs the smaller one of a point source. Then compare open dipoles to enclosed speakers and finally horns to regular dynamic drivers. Many people choose speakers based on the amplifier they are using. The SET group does this. IMHO that is backward. You chose the amplifier to drive the loudspeakers you like. There are many decent loudspeakers out there. Most of them are enclosed dynamic speakers because they are the most commonly produced driver and can be reasonable sized. Any major "breakthroughs" are more likely to be marketing hype. It has all been done. The only significant new development of recent time is the use of more exotic materials in enclosures such as composite and aluminum. The prevalence of CAD mills makes this much easier to do without human labor. Wilson was the first to do this. I believe it was Dan D'Agostino who started using aluminum in subwoofer enclosures. |
Here is the Ohm Guru’s opinion. https://ohmspeaker.com/news/top-10-greatest-speakers/ Mbl makes the list. |
