You’re telling me my speakers are no good?

Seeing the many comments on speakers prompts me to post an opinion that offers another perspective on the subject. The simple truth is there is no perfect set of speakers. The reason for this is there are to many variables in their use.

The first and most important is the human ear; it being a non-linear device no speaker will sound the same to any two listeners. Luckily for us most of the people we play for, whether it’s for our own pleasure, or the pleasure of hundreds, don’t listen to see how good our speakers are, they listen to our music.

Another variable is the setting. Sounds differ depending on the acoustics of the space we’re playing in. I’d venture a guess that not many of us are performing in a full-blown concert hall. Most of us that play for others have to compete with talking, dancing, or other background noises. This fact alone makes the kind of speakers we’re using irrelevant.

Speaker output is another variable. Much is said about how many Watts our speaker can handle. Reality is not how much sound our speakers can handle but how much our listeners can handle. Everyone that’s ever played where there’s a large number of people and lots of noise have experienced complaints from those closest to the speakers that “the music is to loud” while those in the back of the room are complaining “we can’t hear the music”.

The list of variable could go on and on. The point of this dissertation is – IF YOU ARE HAPPY WITH YOUR SPEAKERS – DON’T LET THE “EXPERTS” MAKE YOU UNHAPPY WITH THEM. Remember, if “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” so is “sound in the ear of the listener”.

To learn more about this here’s a couple of links to people that are real experts on the subject
http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/Nonlinear.htm
http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/EARS.htm

RP