Which speaker is best for your amp?

That sounds like "Which car is best for my gasoline?"

Norm Strong

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 16:58:54 -0800, wrote:
Which speaker is best for your amp?

That sounds like "Which car is best for my gasoline?"

Well, ya know, it depends.
What compass direction will the speakers be facing?
What color is the faceplate of the amp?

In article , Silk wrote:

I put it down to too much mis-information on the importance of speakers
when it comes to sound quality. The media often perpetuates the myth.

I blame the way they sometimes base their "myths" sic on their actual
experience. :-)

Mind you, I agree that some of what appears in the magazines does seem like
nonsense at times...

A good source and adequate speakers will always perform better than an
adequate source and "better" speakers.

Alas, there are two snags with your assertion.

1) The terms you use like "good", "adequate" and "perform" as just as
undefined as the "better" you put in quotes. Thus your terms are rather
vague. You don't indicate any limitations or qualifications like "in your
experience" so your assertion is also rather sweeping as you seem to be
saying what everyone else has found to to be the case.

2) You assert that this "always" is the case. Hence for your vague
assertion to be correct it means that not even one case could exist where
an "adequate" source and "better" speakers give a better result.
Hence you'd either need to establish that you have heard every possible
combination, and that they *all* fit your assertion. You'd also need to
satisfy us that we would *all* agree with you.

The problem is that my experience seems to contradict your vague and
sweeping assertion. :-)

FWIW I have tended to find that the best systems I've heard generally
include speakers that cost somewhat more than the source. It is also my
experience that changing the speakers often has a more marked effect than
changing the source, at a given general level of cost/quality. My
experience is that it is worthwhile to spend more on the speakers than on
the source. Since only one counter-example is needed to falsify a claim
about what is *always* the case, it therefore seems to me that your
assertion isn't reliable.

Of course, you may define "adequate" to mean "so poor as to ensure my point
is correct". However by the definitions I'd normally use, I would not agree
with your claim.

Hence I'm afraid I don't agree with your vague and sweeping assertion.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

In article , Silk wrote:
Chris Morriss wrote:

The speakers dominate the sound produced now, just as much as they did
20 years ago.

The logical argument is:

I'm afraid that a set of assertions do not always constitute a "logical
argument".

Nor does "logic" get you very far if your starting points are inappropriate.
:-)

Speakers do not produce any sound of their own;

You mean that your speakers produce no resonant colourations or distortion?
(Sounds at times and frequencies that were not present in the signals
fed to the speaker.) If so, I suspect people here will be interested to
know what speakers you use. :-)

More seriously, I think you will find that speakers usually only
provide an output when given a stimulus by an amplifier. However
much the same should be the case with an amplifier or, say, a
CD player - i.e. they respond to an appropriate input/stimulus.

I would certainly tend to be concerned by, for example, a CD player
that produced a noticable output when no disc was playing, just as
I would by a speaker making sounds when undriven. However in both
cases this has no real relevance to your initial claim in your
previous posting. Given this, I'd suggest that your statement
above isn't really relevant to your assertion in your previous
posting.

they can only do their best to reproduce what is fed to them. Anyway, my
own listening experience tells me I'm right.

By "right" I think you may mean "I think so for the systems I have tried,
and so far as I can perceive". Yet your initial assertion was about what
was *always* the case with no such qualifications.

For all I know you are "right" for situations limited to your own
experience. But my experiences include cases that do not agree
with your assertion. Hence I conclude that your vague and sweeping
initial assertion is incorrect as a general claim about what is
*always* the case.

Quality speakers are always desirable, but they will never make up for
inadequacies elsewhere.

*Never* eh? Another absolute. :-)

So it can *never* be the case that a speaker with a given response
departure from flat corrects for a similar but opposing departure elsewhere
in a specific arrangement. How have you established this *never* can
occur? :-)

However, as above, it isn't clear that your statement here has much
relevance to your initial assertion.

BTW You could just as easily (and perhaps just as irrelevantly) said
that "Quality sources are desireable but they will never make up
for inadequacies elsewhere." One sweeping claim of this kind seems
to me to be much the same as another. The only difference being that
your statement has the appearance of looking like an argument in
favour of your original claim, but my modified one has the opposite
appearance. I doubt either is really relevant, though.


I'm afraid that your statements don't really provide much of a "logical
argument" for your initial statement of personal belief. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html