There is no "perfect" speaker. 

Even if the "perfect" speaker exists, thats still just half the equation. You still got to have the "perfect" room to house your "perfect" speaker.

Cool complement to the “measurements don’t matter” video!

This video is packed with excellent information, great stuff as always Erin.

Great video and thank you for posting. I’m always working expanding my knowledge in understanding speaker measurements and your contributions have been a massive help. Cheers!

Great explanation! I wish I had a dispersion graph like the ones you used for every speaker!

Congrats on the 10K subscribers!

Love the way you summarize these topics. Long life ! :)

Like musical performances themselves, there is no "perfect." There is ONLY "better."

This was great. Honest and informative

FANTASTIC, INTERESTING, AND UNIQUELY INFORMATIVE VIDEO ! This is not a topic you find addressed on YT often, let alone in layman terms. A real eye-opener. Thanx Erin ! The Pinhead.

We want more reviews like this. I already subscribed.

Excellent information. I liked the comparison between the Elac & Kef speakers with similar designs and objective measurement differences plus the subjective explanations. Just happens to be 2 of the 3 (the other being SVS Ultra) speaker upgrades that I'm considering.

Excellent video! Balanced and informative and a great primer on how measurement should be used.

Excellent review of this issue Erin. Very accessible approach to a difficult subject. +++

Good overview Erin. Everybody's " must haves" are different. I like big sound with the ability to sound good playing loud, and good bass. How it does it ( soundstage and imaging) preferences I had has evolved over time. Bose 901's ( mostly reflected sound), EPI 400 towers (omni directional), Magnaplaner Tympani 1d ( dipole "room devider"), AR9ls ( conventional wide dispersion) , JBL 590 (fairly wide dispersion controlled directivity horn) Every one met the must haves, but had their own pluses and minuses with regard to imaging. For now, I like my wall of sound without the 8 x 8 foot mouth or instrument. I guess that is why we only have several thousand speakers to choose from.

Thank you for you view on measurements. I agree :)

Erin, congratulations for your clear and actually objective explanation. Many people are buying loudspeakers for there price tags or brand name; but will a couple thousands dollar Focal suite you. Are they good; absolutely. But are they good for you.!what genres do you like, what levels do you listen. That’s so subjective….

Very interesting discussion.

Thanks Erin.. Awesome clip..

The more woofers that you have the more challenging it becomes to obtain a constant radiation pattern. You do a great job explaining the data and the graphs. I like the explanation you gave about the directivity pattern making a big difference in the focus of the soundstage. Smooth handoffs and crossovers cost money. I am learning so much from these videos.

Thanks for the effort explaining and measuring, best ever speakers are the One that will put smile on your face while you’re washing the dishes or doing something else not just sitting down and listening trying to get the level through your ears. Peace out 😁

Great content and very nurturing, great job man!

Nice comparison between Elac and Kef. I have been involved in DIY speakers fir years and doing my own measurements, perhaps not as comprehensive and detail as what your Klipper could do, I am definitely in camp where measurement matters. In terms of radiation or dispersion pattern, I do think wide dispersion speakers, while offer better soundstage, the imaging which is the perception of placement and positioning within the sound field would be less precise. Wide dispersion speakers would also greatly benefit with some room treatment and even near field listening. This will cut down any excessive sound refraction. For Kef, a narrower dispersion speaker, often toeing out the speakers or listening off-axis might help and sometimes may in fact achieve an almost similar result as Elac. Frankly I would like a speaker with a slight narrower dispersion pattern, assuming the off-axis measurements are consistent, since I do my listening in an untreated room. This is why measurement and understanding them helps. Otherwise all the subjective tweaks would be an extensive trial and error approach. Again, great job on this video.

Agree. It's just hard because most of the things that matter are hard to find unless the speaker has been measured. There's no spec to show dispersion or how good the on vs off axis correlates for EQ purposes and even if there was I'm sure manufactures would find a way to skew them to mean nothing like sensitivity. Then on top of that the number of people taking good measurements (anything gated or better) isn't very big. One thing you didn't mention that I feel is relevant is with narrow dispersion speakers you can generally use time intensity trading (ie crossing the streams) to create a wider sweet spot but generally you need to have a bit boosted top end to do so.

I like the explanation about the treble bump when measured on axis. I enjoy a treble bump. I wish the KEF had a wider soundstage . I would enjoy a Frankenstein speaker of the KEF and Elac combined.

Yes Good Video. Thanks, Bless You.

It absolutely exists. It’s the one you give a great review to that I can’t afford! 😃

Great vid. Very informative 👍

I absolutely the colourful and tuneful music coming out of them Harbeth 30.1......after 30 years of searching and damn they sound good in my room too.

All I want is the best setup (amplifier+speaker) for particular music genre, sound preferences (bright vs natural), room size (bathroom vs stadium) and budget. That's all! And it's incredibly hard to get that information consistently. Reviewers are mostly concentrated on a single thing such as speaker or amplifier or whatever.

This is how it should be done! Teach. Transfer knowledge and insights. Provide an understanding of how big a resource measurements can be for all audio enthusiasts - regardless of taste. Concrete examples that many can relate to. And you have an important pedagogical point and a community-strengthening point when you point out that audio is more than measurements - as when you highlight your own relationship with McIntosh. Enthusiasm and joy of ownership is something everyone can relate to - regardless of "camp" This is so infinitely more constructive than ridicule, dividing lines between us and them and pubertal "club" t-shirts. That's why I subscribe to your channel and opt out others. Keep it up! (sorry for my lousy English)

Best in category is probably a better word than "perfect." I think the easier thing is to dismiss most speakers when they aren't best in category. Lots of stuff from B&W, Klipsch, and Focal fits this.

The NHT C3 bookshelf and C4 tower are extremely neutral speakers that have also measured well according to a respected reviewer that tested both.

Something that everyone misses out on is group delay. Group delay or phase across the frequency range of the speaker makes a massive difference in how a speaker sounds. Two speakers with flat responses and the same dispersion pattern will sound wildly different if the phase responses are different at different frequencies. A larger group delay at a frequency makes the audio image you hear seem farther away and less group delay closer. If you have the ability to dial in a speaker to have a flat phase response and A/B the difference, it is astounding.

Great video. To bad I didn't see a measurement of my Klipsch RB51-II before buying it. After 10 y I don't know if it sounds good or if I got used to it. I saw a video comparing the 500Ms with 600Ms and appeared that the little one is better. Hope it holds for the older RB II line. Otherwise my ears got not so well educated

15:20 Active DSP multiamping need not be expensive. I'm doing it with a Dayton DSP-408 and an older used Onkyo 7.1 AVR with 7 discrete analog inputs as a power amp to distribute and power 3-way speakers plus a passive sub. Just over $200 out of pocket thanks to Craigslist, cheaper than most 2-channel amps of reasonable quality. Takes some learning to get up to speed, but the results I'm getting are highly satisfying and far above the pay grade!

Fantastic!

I like that you make a point about a perfect speaker is different for everyone in different situations. For example my primary listening space is near-field (1.5ft or so) at my desk. And because I have no room for sub in my room I'd trade sensitivity for size and low end extension any day of the week. As a result my desktop speakers (that I built), may only have a sensitivity of 85 dB/2.83V, but they do reach down to the low 30hz (f3) in my room. So for me, they're great, but for someone else who was listening at a mid-far field in a large room they're pretty garbage. You'd really have to crank the amp up for decent SPL and I'm not sure they'd tolerate that without getting all heat soaked.

There's a lot to unpack about the "perfect speaker", namely that there are a lot of factors outside of the speaker's performance to consider. Everyone hears differently and, thus, has different needs or desires from their speaker's output. The space you put your speaker in also matters a tremendous amount with regards to the sound being heard. Then there are just inherent characteristics of the speaker's design and individual preferences for such characteristics. For example: Klipsch's Heritage speakers, due to their horn-loaded nature, have a very unique sound and this doesn't necessarily suit every genre of music perfectly. AMT tweeters, popular on Adam studio monitors, Martin&Logan speakers, some models of ELAC speakers, and more offer a unique tambour to the treble response, along with an interestingly broad dispersion pattern that some people are really attracted to, but others find to be off-putting. There's a lot of people that dislike rigid dome tweeters, or who prefer pulp fiber woofers for their sonic characteristics. There are those who have had the luxury of hearing large electrostatic panel speakers and fell in love with their sound quality and dispersion characteristics (Even with the inherent drawbacks of the difficulty in designing a listening space to properly enjoy a speaker which produces an equal amount of rear sound wash as it does from the front). But that's also part of what makes the HiFi community so special. There are just so many speaker designs, materials, implementations, etc. that somewhere, in the wider world of personal audio, there will be a speaker that is just right for you. Just to list off the different varieties of driver designs that I can remember from the top of my head: rigid dome tweeters (polypropylene, aluminum, copper, magnesium, titanium, beryllium, ceramic), inverted rigid dome and W shaped rigid tweeters (Focal is the main proponent for these), textile tweeters (silk dome and ring radiator), AMT tweeters, ribbon tweeters, planar-magnetic tweeters, electrostatic tweeters, compression drivers, and piezoelectric tweeters; then there are midrange and woofers made using a conventional cone design (which can be made of just about any material like paper pulp, wool, aramid fibers, carbon fiber, aluminum, magnesium, ceramic, or even wood), those made with domes (typically aluminum but can also be made of paper pulp), flat surface drivers, and you can even have some with inverted magnet designs where the magnet is placed like a phase plug in the woofer in order to reduce mounting depth (though these typically require the use of neodymium magnets or the like to make them efficient enough to get away with using a reasonably small magnet so as to not impede the pressure wave from the speaker cone). You can also use planar or electrostatic drivers for your mids. And this hasn't even mentioned coaxial drivers which place one or more drivers within a larger driver. In car audio there is less attention paid to trying to have a single point source, so the tweeter isn't well integrated into the larger driver, but in HiFi, you can get coincidental or concentric coaxial drivers where the tweeter is placed within the voice coil of the midrange driver. KEF is a good example for these, but you've also got another example using compression drivers in Tannoy, another brand with quite a bit of history in their use of these interesting speaker designs. HiVi even made some 3-way concentric coaxial drivers at one point in time that used radial AMT tweeters, ring radiator mids, and a standard cone for the woofer. Fascinating speaker technology, if difficult to properly implement. The variety of HiFi audio is nearly limitless and that is what makes the hobby so interesting. Even after you've found your own personal "perfect speaker", there is still room out there to find new and unique experiences in audio. Speakers which provide your favorite songs with their own inherent coloration, and that's really great. I love that there is no default "perfect speaker" because it means that we get such a breadth of variety to explore and unique speaker characteristics to experience. If you ever get the chance to listen to some of these more esoteric designs, definitely take it. There's nothing better than getting the opportunity to hear how different speakers change how things sound. Who knows, maybe it'll even give you a new "perfect speaker" to aim for.

Sooo I bought a McIntosh MC462 a few months ago because I like the look and brand and thought it sounded good (I have owned a number of amps) and I have to say what I love is the sound. Wow it really surprised me. It is so smooth without being rolled off. Powerful without being harsh. This is the best system change I have made in a long time. The “new” Mac sound is pretty great. I am listening to old non audiophile music for the first time in a long time. The amazing thing is while those old rock songs sound great nothing was taken away from the audiophile music. Gregory porter sounds better than ever but so does Metallica.

The Perlisten-s7t seems to check a lot more boxes than most.

I came to terms with the downsides to my aDs 910s and still feel they're my end-game loudspeakers. They're extremely neutral and dynamic with great bass output and lovely mids/highs. But, they are not great at soundstage. They're okay if situated properly, but I have lots of other speakers that do a much better job with soundstage depth and width. Still, I find the 910s to be so much better at accurate sound and at how forgiving and efficient they are, as well as how well they do with better electronics. I am most fortunate that they fell into my lap here in S. Arizona, with the original stands and in such immaculate condition. The seller was about to pull them off eBay/Audiogon 'cause he was tired of the trolls and BS'ers. I got them for half the asking price when he found that I knew what they were and their value. He even drove 2+ hours/each way to deliver them to my house! ( I paid him for his time/gasfare, of course. )

Hi Erin, do you think round front baffle will make vertical dispersion pattern much more even, why home speaker would not adopt car audio coaxial driver designs and front round baffle?

Finna hit 10k

With all the speakers being made now, what percentage are actually better ?.

Does the Elac seem to have wide dispersion, or just wide for a coaxial? Most people seem to think coaxial=narrow dispersion.

Erin love this. Can you do one about mtm vs tm speaker trade offs.

Interesting.

What about line source speakers. What is your opinion on that technology vs point source speakers?

The closest you can get to that sound would be to use the same reference speaker that the studio that engineered the recording used! The majority of studio from the 60’s to late 80’s used JBL 4311s. I personally have worked with many of the recording engineers and that has been the consensus among most of them.

number one criterion ; does it work in you room ?

They do try YG acoustics Sonja XVi there is no compromise

The difference between good and great is 8 hours uninterrupted sleep ;)

The perfect speaker for me is the speaker that isn't "there". Added to that is there such a thing as a perfect recording?

Where do you get or calculate the estimated room response? Also regarding the irons law. Considering how cheap high power amplification from class d has become and customer demand for smaller speakers, why don't we not see more low sensitivity speakers?

Help me! Help! Ok, heard about how good the Magnat Transpose 1500 & want to use it to create our first serious home theatre. Have about $4000 maybe $5000 to create it. Is the Magnet a good choice for a nice uniformed 7:2… maybe up high 2 or 4 ceiling speakers. I want active because it sounds better…. Right? My AV (just bought) is Onkyo NR7100 9.2. Help me HELP!

On active vs passive topic, what is lost in analogue to digital conversion when doing dsp crossover? It seems crazy to me to have a dac box, then an adc and again a dac inside the speaker

Agree with that. One should be able to get pretty close to "Original Sound" if it's a single Human Vocalist or Mono-Sounding Instrument. OR THE NEAR IMPOSSIBLE- HAVE A SINGLE MIKE T4O RECORD EACH VOICE/INSTUMENT, A Perfect Signal Separation AND THEN a speaker in your room for each Instrument/Voice. Not a very practical solution. 🙂

Hey Erin, LOVE your channel! Great assessments. Yes I am in the camp which likes having measurements as another tool for assessment. I recently bought a Benchmark AHB2 amp and LA4 preamp. Absolutely love them. I liked them so much that I bought the benchmark DAC3 to audition. That I don’t like so much so far. Yes it has impeccable timing and is very linear. But I think my Marantz HD DAC1 sounds better. It’s more 3D and the Timbres sound more realistic. Go figure. At some point I was thinking of maybe sending you my Marantz DAC for evaluation. I have chosen it over the Benchmark DAc and RME DAc which both measure incredibly. Any thoughts on this? Why I like the Marantz DAc much more? Btw I am a musician of over 40 years and I know what instruments sounds like. Thank you !

Can you review the tekton double impact?

Going over 10K subscribers.... right now!!!!❤🔥❤🔥

that condor reference tho

when you go buy a speaker the only thing you can see , is how it look , how many watt and how much it cost , , and that preti much it , not many shop have them connected or have thow you want in stock

The problem is that there is no definition of what a ”good” speaker should behave like. The Harman study is an attempt at objectivity but its not a de facto standard. But if one accept the ”Harman standard” one could make a ”perfect” loudspeaker. A speaker that has the right frequency respons and is big enough to handle high spl. Then its just a matter of scaling down the efficiency and spl as you scale down to lower prices. Then you would have a range of speakers that look and sound very similar but being at different prices. The Infinity Primus series of speakers is one example of cheap speakers that measure really good. But the loudspeaker industry would look really different if they followed this route. But one must also understand that the sound quality that you get is depending around 70% on the room and 30% on the speaker. To a certain degree you can design the speaker to integrate better with the room. But in the end you nerd quite alot of (full range) dampening and diffusion to be able to get ”perfect sound”. And here you have another pitfall since most acousticians have no clue how to make a room behave in an optimal way for sound reproduction.

My perfect speaker is one that makes me excited to sit and listen to music and sad to turn off. Or maybe that was the perfect cable and my speaker is just average 😒

find you a pair of yamaha NS-1000s and tell me there isnt a perfect speaker!!! You cannot find one negative comment about them online! nothing but pure praise!!! as far as im concerned and many others, there is not a better speakers out when it comes to reference!

I like good sound but I still listen to movies and music...I don't listen to my speakers. As long as everything is relatively clear and the bass shakes the room, then I am good to go. If I focus on speakers too much, it takes away from the media I am trying to consume.

And the timbre of the speakers ?? Paper, polypropylene, kevlar, aluminum speakers. Which approaches the greatest realism?

How about examples of good speakers.

hearing is really very subjective. For example, some ppl with minimum access to vast type of speaker or system wont even know what is the sound they like. And some ppl might have hearing sensitive issue, will tell u treble boost speaker is more clarity. And some ppl without any reason and purely from their taste probably would like certain kind of sound signature. So its really very very subject using ear the hear and tell the whole story of the speaker. amateur wont even know what is freq is missing in certain speaker. if u ask me, i dont think i will notice it until owning diferetn speaker and comparing it. And there is where i like the way you talk about this speaker characteristics with that directional pattern wave graph. that really tells a lot of story. At least from looking at it i am comfort knowing all the freq is linearly there. i bet if u let me hear the klispch hersey speaker, i wont even notice the middle is having some issue. if u look at some review in the youtube, everyone was saying that the vocal was fantactics, so that does give us an impression that everything is lienar in the directional wave pattern. After listening to review, i was wondering if it is better to get a speaker that has much linear result in directional wave pattern (like this KEF) so that listener can do much less with the room correction calibration. Less means easier to setup or probably can exclude out more room correction gear in between....i think i got an idea on how to pick a speaker in the future, this video kind off giving me an idea how...

I tend prefer slighly brighter sounding speakers But not to much, but i would not buy anything before trying it in my room

That's why there are lots of speakers it's all down to personal listening and taste

The perfect loudspeaker is the one your wife allows you to keep otherwise you get no speaker and the backyard shed gets too hot in the summer!

for the people that like having a separate amp, i have to say that you forgot the main reason i like them : the fun of hooking up your speakers to your amp and setting the gains

Measurement graphs/data are very similar to nutrition facts on the box of a cereal, does it tells you how it taste? No, but if on that list you see quite a bit of sugar, you can PREDICT that it will be somewhat sweet, and that's all it is. The measurement graph/data will help the end user to choose which one he/she likes, need more spice? or less spice? or saltier? or sweeter? We will need the "nutrition facts table" of a speaker to determine if it's something we will like or not.

Hey, 10.000 subscribers 🎉👍🏻😀

Raidho td3.4 or tidal Akira are perfect... But with a highhhhhh price

The folks from ASR will tell you ruler flat is the best. No if’s, ands or buts about it. They would buy the anything based solely on the measurements in an anechoic chamber.

Idk to me personally kliptch horns with Bob crites mods sound perfect to me

👍‍‍👍‍‍!

There's also no perfect person with perfect hearing! It really comes down to budget and preference.

Arny Krueger used to say, "A perfect loudspeaker is an oxymoron."

Actually, you can have all 3 if big speakers is what you want. :)

there are a some things I disagree about in the video, most 'narrow' directivity are more like controlled directivity speakers, offering significant sound power +/- 60 degrees of-axis (at least +/-45 degrees). so no the sound amplitude / tonality will not change if you moved your head in your seat. that's ridiculous and i have never seen a competently designed speaker acting that way like a laser beam. The only way i can think of that happening would be if the speakers are toe-ed in AWAY from the listener, significantly, like to the side wall.

Bobbleheads don't mind a sound stage that jumps around.

Peter Ustinov came close, and he had his own tux.

赞！牛逼！音响早该这样用数据说话了哈哈哈哈

Alright, so perfect speaker for simply off-axis dialog/vocal clarity…… ?

Even if there was a "perfect" loudspeaker, audiophiles of today would probably dislike the "sound". Actually, sound bouncing off the walls around the speakers is not a good idea. You are adding too many reflections to the direct sound which confuses the ear brain mechanism. My room is 90 percent absorbent and 10 percent reflective. With this arrangement, i can now hear the natural reverberation of the recording venue which gives me a wide and natural soundstage.

Kinda going Dunning Kruger mode...oversimplified. But fun video anyway.

The perfect speaker is no speaker. Direct brain interface. 🤖

Hmm, so high efficiency, controlled dispersion, lack of stored energy, affordable, Somebody make it! And more faster and fun bass too

Try dutch & dutch 8c

Those Klipsch are polarizing to a degree, but they are popular among the audio community. Klipsch have had some speakers over the years that were/are bad. That is part of the reason they have a bad reputation among many as well. I do enjoy my Cornwall Iv but they probably measure like shit but I generally don't let measurements guide my purchasing decisions. My ears are pretty good at determining sound characteristics. My Golden Ears speakers are probably one of the most neutral speakers I have ever owned and are under rated in my opinion. My PSBs Stratus Golds are generally neutral in the mids but tilted up on the treble, the bass isn't very linear in my room, not the widest dispersion. Despite their flaws, they are fun to listen to, have slam, and a certain charm to the sound. The PSBs are an example of a speaker that I don't believe would measure particularly well but was beloved by many. I'm not a measurement guy, but I do like the dispersion measurement you highlighted. That is useful, but I'm confident on judging tonality and frequency response fairly well with my ears.

Ok but there are things like "indistinguishable from perfect", when something is so accurate to the refrence, for example less than 1% error, that is to humans indistinguishable from perfect. So... we can kinda call that "perfect" because its indistinguishable from perfect, but i'm 100 sure we will never get a speaker like that 😂

MacIntosh Amps dont measure well

Very obvious captain obvious no speaker is perfect this is true but you set your goals high and you come as close as you can to perfection and you’ll be happy healthy and wise

I never cared for the Heresy, but I love the La Scala

A perfect loudspeaker cannot possibly exist and the reasons are quite simple: (in no particular order) 1. Room acoustics are never perfect. 2. Drivers are all inadequate and imperfect. 3. Our physiological hearing are not exactly the same. 4. The recording equipment and process itself are imperfect. 5. Science understands the physics but not the psychoacoustics of sound. This is precisely why audio is subjective even if it measures flat as a ruler, why measurement and music fidelity are independent.

Wrong the NS-10s are *PERFECT* in every way! Flat from 5hz to 30khz, don’t need *any* room treatment and work perfectly on any amp, tiny, they are basically fantastic and perfect in every way! This video is an outrage!