Loudspeakers are easy High Fidelity products to purchase, I know many of you will disagree, so let’s agree to disagree.
To make my point, I have spent many happy hours comparing quality amps. On occasion I too get confused as to which one is which. Not to be misunderstood, comparing a good amp to a great one is a cinch, a bad one to a good one too, but two great ones?
Can you tell ten times out of ten which is which? Really?
Speaker comparisons are different, you actually can tell, ten times out of ten. The mistake some people make is that they compare a speaker to another speaker, therefore there is no frame of reference. Instead, compare a speaker to the best recollection you have of live music, does it cut the mustard? Or does it sound like a really good speaker playing music?
Close your eyes and listen to a voice (voices are always the sound we are most familiar with as we hear them every day). Does the voice, at any time, sound like a real person is singing right in front of you? No? Move to the next speaker then. Einstein supposedly said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” Well, listening for a few minutes over and over again will give you the same result, time after time. Thanks, Einstein!
Although there are limits to the frequency range of the human voice and some musical instruments will go much higher or much lower than that, it is a good starting point. That said, if a speaker does not pass this first simple test, it’s irrelevant how low and how high it goes. It is just that easy!