[jrosenth]

A couple of years ago (I think) someone started a thread asking whether head-fiers we're speaker dumb.

The OP expressed an observation that a lot of posts in this forum we're asking great, headphone rivaling quality for unrealistic prices. Specifically, do people really expect to drop $100 on new paradigms, athenas, and the like and expect to hear anything approaching descent? He pointed out that there definitely seemed to be a jarring discrepancy between the nature of the discussion here between headphone and speaker related gear and the corresponding expectations and experiences.

That thread ran about 10 pages if I remember correctly and although I followed it with great interest, it never really seemed to get to the bottom of it. Yes, this is a headphone site and speakers have dedicated sites where the level of discussion is analogous. But that just didn't seem to me to explain the whole oddity.

Anyhow, since then, there's been new things afoot in the speaker related world - some really cool stuff.

Meanwhile here on head-fi, the speaker discussion, IMHO, seems to be generally loosing ground if anything.

Numerous folks who enjoy the virtues of inexpensive Grados over ipod buds and Bose - even laughing about it in their signatures - extol the virtues of their analogs in the speaker world.

Often, this type discourse just floats around the peripheries of other forums, as in one thread in the amp forum about using tube amps in a dorm.

Here's but one exchange, in which someone was extolling the virtues of a system with Jensens and Cerwin Vegas that could make the floors shake and bested systems costing up into 2k - and he wasn't alone.

So that got me thinking about the subject again, and, rather than jacking those threads or resurrecting the one on the subject from years ago, I'd thought I'd pose the question anew.

What in the frick is going on?

Are head-fiers speaker dumb?

Is it just that the headphone market is flowing towards a younger demographic and we should expect a sort of cross talk?

Is head-fi just hi-fi with headphones and for discussions about speakers of a quality paralleling those we have here about headphones we best go elsewhere?

I do know that there are some folks here who really do know speakers and can give great advice - so why are so many discussions so apparently ridiculous?

Finally, are head-fiers better or worse off on our speaker IQ since the other thread on the subject was posted a couple of years ago?

thanks

 

[928GTS]

Well thanks a lot for making a thread just to call me out,should I feel honoured or something? Are you trying to question my ear or my intelligence when it comes to making smart audio decisions? It seems rather childish to take an issue and turn it into an entirely new thread just to stand on your apple crate and beat your chest about how you feel you possess a superior kind of knowledge.

I do not have a lot of money to spend on my hobbies because I have so many of them. I'm a college student that has to spread his income earned through selling things and doing odd jobs through about 10 or so main hobbies. I can't afford the absolute best for each of my hobbies so early on I learned to make what I have work and work well. For example I'm also an amateur radio operator and have a station that puts out roughly 1/10th the power of other average amateur stations and costs about 1/5th of the average station and yet I can hear and talk to pretty much 90% of the stations that they can.

The same applies to my home stereo system. Is any of it of any high end nature? Heavens no,I can't afford that and I doubt I'll be able to for quite some time. See,unlike you I can't drop $1,000 just because the wind wasn't blowing the direction I wanted it to and so I felt like I needed a new set of floorstanders. I wanted to give myself a challenge to see how well I could make average components sound. So what I did was buy up various speakers from flea markets,private sale and other places and sit and listen to them. I then started mixing and matching the speakers I had so that I had speakers together that would complement each other. If I had a pair of speakers that lacked in bass but had terrific mids and highs I'd team them up with speakers that perhaps had great bass but lacked up top. None of the speakers I bought would stand well by themselves because they aren't top of the line but when I put all of these speakers together,matched them and EQ'ed them precisely the entire system began to wake up and it plain floored me with the sound that was coming out of these speakers.

You seem to make me out as a bit of a dumbass and I find that again rather arrogant and childish,I spent many hours comparing,listening,EQ'ing,moving things and checking various odds and ends. I tore apart most of my speakers and rewired them with better gauge wire,replaced connectors and other modifications to get them to sound as best as I could. If you honestly think you can discount my work as being a work of some mindless "kid" who has little or no idea what good audio sounds like then I'm sorry but you're a lot less intelligent than I can even give you credit for. Its one thing to politely question one's preferences or motives but its an entirely unacceptable thing to call someone out,insult them on their beliefs and then walk around like you're someone knows something everyone else doesn't. I don't appreciate being insulted over the dedication and passion I put towards this hobby. If you're trying to come at this issue with some sort of maturity then I'm sorry but you're failing miserably.


You seem to be caught up in the whole "if its expensive then it must be good" or "if people say that brand is good then it must be". Ignore the brands,the labels and the price tags and go by what sounds good to your ears! Musical enjoyment is the end product we're all looking for and spending our hard earned dollars toward here. In the end who gives a crap what brand is on that speaker but if it performs and sounds good then we should give it the merit it is deserving. Don't follow trends,experiment,have fun and try to make a lot out of a little. I've spent quite some time listening to expensive sound systems and I agree,a lot of them are very good and they certainly make good buys but I don't have that sort of money so I tried to recreate the sounds I heard with those expensive systems with something that would cost me far less money and I feel like I've succeeded. It makes me feel a little better that my audio loving friends have agreed to me so I hope I'm going the right way. You just seem to be stuck in a circle of self delusions and its an utter shame.

In conclusion however I find it quite hilarious that you stoop to such a level to point out a single post and call out a single person so as to try to get an entire community to hound that one person so you can stand atop your mighty hill,sip on your glass of arrogance and think you're the king of the hill. I'll tell you this though,with an attitude like that nobody is going to listen to you because nobody will ever take you seriously.

 

[Planar_head]

I find this place to be a headphone (and all branches of it, and whatever common ground there is between speakers equipment and headphone equipment) first, and a speaker place last.

I think that firstly people are attracted to headphones as the first entry into hi-fi because of the sound quality you can get for relatively cheap (Grados in particular.)

Secondly, headphone take up much less space and are a lot more kind to rooms with poor room acoustics and small rooms.

Thirdly, the detail that you can hear in headphones, even at the lowest end (not all headphones, but a good chunk are more revealing than your average speaker), are only rivaled by speakers that cost much more than a half decent headphone setup. (without factoring in the cost of the rest of the speaker setup)

Honestly, the only speakers that I find as good as my Grado SR-225's are my Monsoon's (computer speakers), but they only match, and when they do, both present the music differently, to the point where it's up in the air about which one is better.

In the end, I guess if you spend a lot of time researching one branch of hi-fi (heaphones), and want to get into the other, you need to research the other branch, which may or may not take too much time, depending on what you're looking for, and it's far easier to just post in the speaker forum and be done with it.

EDIT:
After reading the above post, I realized what I was supposed to put here...

Price: performance with speakers is a touchy thing because there are more variables in running speakers compared to running headphones (room acoustics for one) that make speakers sound better or worst depending on the room, for example. Stick some $100,000 speaker system in a small room and you'll get horrid sound. Maybe he has a acoustically good room (above poster) that gives the speakers some good sound. Besides, even if it isn't a real 800 watt into the speakers (don't quote me on that, just an assumption) and closer to 400 watts, thats still a lot of headroom, especially if the speakers are in a corner, close to a wall, so on...

People who are looking for a budget speaker probably aren't expecting to match headphones, but if they want it for whatever reason, then they have it, and its far better than the crap stereos they sell at Wal-Mart. If you can DIY, even better! Make a open baffle speaker. Need a cheap amp? DIY it, there are plenty of DIY sources for speaker amps, just like headphone amps. Sources can be exchanged between the systems to save there. Above poster DIY'd after doing some research and got something that is above expectations, and people like it.

 

[Kees]

I think there are a lot of very young and inexperienced people around here, that don't have a clue (yet) about the difference of what sounds natural and what sounds good to them.
Very often they combine that with an attitude of "knowing it all" that is appalling (and quite often offending) to those who know better.
Some of them grow older without getting any wiser.
I don't blame a college student for not knowing anything about $10000 speakers, but I find it annoying if he expresses a very definite opinion about them and condemning other people while doing that.

 

[Uncle Erik]

jrosenth, I think this is the reason we have a high-end forum now.

There are a lot of younger members today; of course they don't have the money to spend on the expensive stuff. The important part is that they're interested and stick with the hobby.

 

[marvin]

928GTS, I wouldn't take it personally. It's a cyclical thing in this forum. You just happened to be the most recent advocate of inexpensive speakers.

It's really down to one thing. Demographics. Head-fi is, in general, younger, poorer, and more transient than the high fidelity speaker crowd. We're also less homogeneous. The speaker hi-fi audience mainly consists of older, middle to upper class, settled males. It's a lot more diverse here given that it's mainly younger members looking for portable rig improvements and the sound quality bang for buck crowd. There are some from the high fidelity speaker crowd that seem to have made it to Head-fi for situational reasons. (Say, living in apartments/condos.) But given the low level of activity in the "Summit-Fi" forum and how most of the chatter on this site focuses on the < $500 equipment range, there ain't many of them around.

Either way, most the Head-Fi crowd gets their hi-fi dose from the headphone world already and usually want speakers for situational use, not for critical listening. Because of that, the level of quality in their speaker selections are much lower than the traditional high fidelity crowd's gear. Money is also generally an issue and speaker high fidelity is a rich man's game.

 

[928GTS]

I just find it a bit crude in the way he chooses to take a stand about it. I find it a bit insulting and rather immature and so I chose to express my opinion about it. I just find it strange that people won't even begin to even think that there is a slight chance to believe that maybe you can make cheap sound good. Debasing someone's opinion just on one's age is a bit silly. I see many thread here about products that are cheap and that rival products costing multiples more than said product. According to some people's thought processes on here this situation would be impossible!

I have X amount of money and I tried to make a system that sounded as best as it could for X amount of money. I've had people ranging from audiophiles to recording studio engineers listen to it and they all think it sounds pretty good. I'm happy with it and I'll just keep working at making it better.

Kees,if you honestly think the way the OP presented his opinion was in any way mature,intelligent and progressive then I certainly beg to differ. I certainly do not claim to know it all,in fact I have much to learn but I do believe I have a pretty decent idea of what sounds natural and right. Is there room to improve in that view? I am most certain of it because I have many years ahead of me from which to learn but your quick discounting of my opinion is appalling and quite unfortunate. Where anywhere in my post did I mention anything about $10,000 speakers and when did I ever say I had a definite opinion on them? I'm not condemning the OP at all,I'm just shocked at his lack of tact and maturity. You're extrapolating to a frightening degree.

Just because it sounds good doesn't necessarily mean it has to cost a bundle.

 

[Planar_head]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kees /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think there are a lot of very young and inexperienced people around here, that don't have a clue (yet) about the difference of what sounds natural and what sounds good to them.

"Natural" seems your ideal, and there is a good chunk of people that think the same. But, I didn't buy Grados for exacting sound that has a flat frequency response, far from it. I bought it because I liked the way people described it (insert typical Grado response here).

For some reason, you think that if I listen to your (insert best equipment here) that I will think exactly what you think, and enjoy it. Maybe I like a different sound? Perhaps I have a different ideal sound? Sometimes I wish we could move away from things like this, and move to preference based ideal sound. Everyone generally fits into liking a certain sound.

 

[panda]

you can't expect the majority of a given group in say a forum to be just as enthusiastic and hardcore with a different category of gear as the gear that the forum pertains to even if that other category might stem from the same tree or even be a counterpart... supposedly you browse around a mini-bike forum but you're asking them if they are harley or crotch rocket dumb? think of what their responses might be.

 

[Agnostic]

1. This is not a speaker forum.
2. I find your treatment of 928GTS's comments in another thread less than tasteful.
3. To whatever online forum you go you will from time to time run into people making outrageous claims.
4. I can't help suspecting you of trolling.
As panda said: Quote:

you can't expect the majority of a given group in say a forum to be just as enthusiastic and hardcore with a different category of gear as the gear that the forum pertains to even if that other category might stem from the same tree or even be a counterpart... supposedly you browse around a mini-bike forum but you're asking them if they are harley or crotch rocket dumb? think of what their responses might be.

 

[geekchic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jrosenth /img/forum/go_quote.gif Is head-fi just hi-fi with headphones and for discussions about speakers of a quality paralleling those we have here about headphones we best go elsewhere? What in the frick is going on? Are head-fiers speaker dumb? Finally, are head-fiers better or worse off on our speaker IQ since the other thread on the subject was posted a couple of years ago? thanks

JRosenth, let me start off by agreeing whole-heartedly that I am speaker-dumb.

And let me add, my interest in hi-end speakers ($1000+) has dropped drastically of late.

I belong to an older demographic (30+) and I spent a good part of my teen years drooling over speakers that I knew I would never be able to afford - read reviews of Polk, B&W, JBL, Jamo etc. and thought I would never be able to set up a decent sounding system for myself. I went to every road show I could attend, listened to as many speakers as I could, befriended lots of sales/ marketing reps (who unfortunately never gave anything away free as I hoped they might) and came back home wishing. All I could afford to do was collect a lot of music and I did my best to record/ swap with friends to build a good collection.

I could always afford decent portable gear (walkman, discman etc.) and I kept up with it practically, while following high-end speakers as a hobby.

Today, the scene is different - I earn more, I could afford high-end speakers at a pinch if I wanted them really bad. The simple truth, is that my interest has dropped because I have an alternative, and one that is more closely integrated with my life, AND more cost effective. My PC is the centre of my life for work and pleasure. I have XX GBs of ripped songs. I believe that the future is digital for better or worse. I want to work my music set up around my PC and that requires a different set of equipment. Portability of music has become more valuable to me since I'm out most of the time and I am interested in investing there too. And yes, money is short as there are so many other categories of gear I am now interested in (car audio, laptop, better desktop, PDA...the list goes on and on). So my interest just dropped.

Youngsters certainly are cocky these days

but also plenty smart. I do admit that I learn a lot from their suggestions on getting more bang out of my buck. As a general principle I also believe that as technology improves, good quality should get cheaper/more accessible, and why should that not apply in audio too?

Finally - at some point I began to find high-end speaker talk, well exclusionary and a little too elitist (I'm not flaming). It's just that, either you belong in this club who can afford this much or you don't. I have friends who are into this hobby and they tend to trash - or at least, harshly criticise - lower end audio. Brand and price become talking points too much and they tend to look down on my more modest preferences. To put it bluntly, they are inflexible. One of the refreshing things about the headphone forums for me is that they help people with all budgets find the best sound at that price point. And even people with high-end phones are open to cheaper stuff sounding good.

I must add that I don't think that necessarily younger people are not interested in high-end audio equipment. My 25 year old cousin has built a great set up piece by piece - and still uses stock buds with his IPod

) He refuses to try my gear because he does not want to get tempted. We all make our trade-offs and draw our boundaries I guess.

This is a long post but I hope this helps towards answering your question.

 

[Skylab]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agnostic /img/forum/go_quote.gif 1. This is not a speaker forum.

'Nuff said! This is a headphone forum. I have escalated the heights of loudspeaker quality as I have aged and earned more money, but that isn't what I am interested in discussing on HEAD-fi

I hosted a head-fi mini-meet at my house a couple months ago, and several people commented to me "I never knew you were a speaker guy" when they heard my rig. I am not a headphone guy or a speaker guy - I am a music lover and an audiophile. Headphones and speakers are both awesome - but here on head-fi, I mainly discuss headphone listening.

 

[jrosenth]

Skylab has a point and maybe it's as simple as that - go elsewhere for speaker related discussion. But I would expect that since people enjoy music and a good presentation of it, as he also points out, that there would be some overlap between the values & experiences among both headphones and speakers. And there is overlap in that lots of folks are talking about both, using both, sharing sources with both, etc.

Thanks Geekchic - I think that does makes sense.

And, as Uncle Erik pointed out, there's now a high end forum - and that's fair too. But on the whole I don't think one needs to flee to high end to get good sound and that you can put together nice sounding ultra/budget systems - class T and D amps like the NuForce Icon and DIY electronics, for example, spring to mind. Maggies are now available for $300 and less used. If you like full rangers you can DIY them for around $100. Ebay has some real gems.

That's the precise point - on one hand you hand you can't expect a $100 computer speaker to run with a good bang-for-the-buck $1k speaker (same thing with headphones). On the other hand you can find great budget systems that sound better than mass-market stuff (one of the head-fi axioms that also applies to speakers).

(One exception to all this would be in the vinyl discussions and recommendations. It does seem to me that there are a lot of threads about people getting into vinyl because they are often after a good speaker experience and being recommended great bang-for-the-buck vintage tables.)

Found the original "Are Head-fiers Speaker dumb" thread where Aman explains it better than me.

One other theory is that maybe since most folks are doing their primary listening via headphones, there's a disproportionate number of folks are just looking for them looking for the speaker equivalent of the Koss 35 - so there's just a gravitational pull.

Still very interested whether anything has changed since then or where it's going. As Geekchic points out maybe it's an increasing influence from computer audio thing. But I've heard some great computer based headphone and speaker system and do a lot of my own listen to both headphones and speakers using WAV (and personally toying with the idea of trying an ipod and the Wadia transport).

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agnostic /img/forum/go_quote.gif 1. This is not a speaker forum.

Exactly!
There are a reason why we are here. Mainly because we enjoy headphones...

So no wonder we talk more loudly about headphones than speakers.

 

[bigshot]

Being an audiophile doesn't mean going out and buying the fanciest and most expensive. It means putting together the best sounding system. That's as important to a small system for an office as it is a big system for a living room. I have no problem with discussing inexpensive speaker systems, but I do believe that recommending speakers by brand and model to a person you've never met before in the flesh is completely absurd. Better to help the person put together the resources and game plan for going out and doing listening comparisons for himself and deciding what fits his situation best.

Speakers are the most important aspect of sound reproduction. Music isn't designed to be played on headphones. You won't find an engineer mixing a recording wearing cans. Every component in an audio system is only as good as the speakers it is being played on. That can't be overemphasized.

Headphones are great for situations where speakers aren't convenient... in small dorm rooms, in shared living spaces or apartments, etc... But headphones don't replace speakers.

See ya
Steve