Do speakers sound how they look?

[KeithR]

I was at a local dealer over the weekend and heard this comment- and honestly, I think it resonated with me (no pun intended)

Are there any particular loudspeakers that don't sound how they "look" - like an aluminum speaker that is warm, or a wood speaker that is cold, or a big speaker that sounds small. Or?

 

[amirm]

Sure. Most of them don't sound the way they look. They sound the way they look because we look at them . Put them behind a curtain and it is amazing how their "character" changes.

 

[JackD201]

You mean like horns that don't sound horny?

Yeah sure plenty. Many small bookshelves that sound deep. etc.

For me, it's the drivers. In the last few years, it has gotten harder to predict what drivers sound like by just looking at diaphragm materials. In the past metal, ceramic, fabric, paper, plastic, even wood all had telltale signatures. In this age of composites, sandwiches and invisible coatings what you see isn't often what a driver diaphragm actually is made up of. Add to that how speaker designers are doing FR and impedance correction on the passive crossovers inside and you will find say a brand using different sets of drivers but sounding very much alike from model to model.

I'm pretty sure a designer who knows what he's doing can make a large speaker sound small. I don't think I've actually come across one yet. LOL. I have come across some mid size speakers that sound small and certainly have come across speakers with lots of woofers that can't get below 40Hz on the mass market.

 

[GaryProtein]

I listen to rock music in a well lit room because speakers sound brighter in a well lit room.

I listen to classical music in dimly lit rooms because I prefer a darker sound for that (especially violins). If the sound is too dark, I shine a light on the tweeters.

Some people use cables, others use tone controls, I use a flashlight for tonal control.

 

[Hi-FiGuy]

Sure. Most of them don't sound the way they look. They sound the way they look because we look at them . Put them behind a curtain and it is amazing how their "character" changes.

Been to a BOSE demo room have you?

 

[KeithR]

I'm pretty sure a designer who knows what he's doing can make a large speaker sound small. I don't think I've actually come across one yet. LOL. I have come across some mid size speakers that sound small and certainly have come across speakers with lots of woofers that can't get below 40Hz on the mass market.

Interesting and well said. One big speaker that was pretty small to me was the Wilson Maxx3- I really didn't hear the bass response I was expecting out of the huge cabinet.

 

[JackD201]

For me the worst offender when it came to all woofers no woof was Triangle Acoustics. I'd seen them b-slapped by small 2-way Sonus', B&Ws, Paradigms and Dynaudios despite having three times the number of same sized woofers. That always made me wonder. What the heck were they using for magnets?

 

[Sharp 1080]

Interesting and well said. One big speaker that was pretty small to me was the Wilson Maxx3- I really didn't hear the bass response I was expecting out of the huge cabinet.

What size was the room? Also and do you remember the seat placement in the room and room treatments if any? Where did you hear them? I know a lot of questions thrown at you. The reason I ask this is my Maxx 3's do the total opposite in my room that is 20'X15'. They replaced Watt Puppy 7's that reproduced good imaging and good bass but nowhere close to what the Maxx 3 outputs into my room and they are capable of sounding like a small monitor with deep bass at times due to 5 hours of setup in my room by the dealer that installed them to get it right. I'm actually to the point where I don't really need to use my Fathom 113 subwoofers with them to accent the low end!

 

[jn229]

Big speakers remind me of big overstuffed chairs. Large speakers have a relaxed easy going sound much like a big ole chair has that relaxing easy going look. The vintage large cab speakers most noticeable positive trait was there relaxed effortless presentation that just lets the music flow out of them. The smaller footprint towers and bookshelves common today have better 'sound' but have a more of a driven sound then a sound that flows. Just my opinion.

 

[TheMadMilkman]

Are there any particular loudspeakers that don't sound how they "look" - like an aluminum speaker that is warm, or a wood speaker that is cold, or a big speaker that sounds small. Or?

This is certainly a good thought exercise about expectation bias. How many times do good speakers get dismissed because of its visual appearance, or its inclusion of a particular material (ie metal tweeters) before the listener even sits down? I know that I'm plenty guilty of dismissing any speaker with a ribbon tweeter based on bad past experiences, even though I know that what I heard with 1 or 2 speakers really doesn't translate over to every other brand.

There are also plenty of audiophiles that claim it takes a very long time to get a handle on how something sounds. Is it possible that the amount of time needed correlates to how long it takes to overcome visual biases? Or is it the time that it takes for the visual biases to overpower any auditory sense?

 

[Bruce B]

This is certainly a good thought exercise about expectation bias. How many times do good speakers get dismissed because of its visual appearance, ?

I love the way the Vivid Giya speakers sound.... just can't stand to look at them!!

 

[rbbert]

Interesting and well said. One big speaker that was pretty small to me was the Wilson Maxx3- I really didn't hear the bass response I was expecting out of the huge cabinet.

Had to be setup. Nick Doshi had these flat to 20 Hz in a hotel room at RAMF 2012, driven by his tube amps, and they sounded fabulous.

 

[TheMadMilkman]

Had to be setup. Nick Doshi had these flat to 20 Hz in a hotel room at RAMF 2012, driven by his tube amps, and they sounded fabulous.

I actually found that demo to be very soulless and flat, and would even say that the speakers sounded "small" relative to what I expected.

I suspect that all of this was due to the recordings being used when I was in the room, however, and not the speakers themselves. I also think the volume was too low, but that may have been on purpose to avoid overloading the room.

I don't recall what the music was. Just what I mentally noted during the demo.

 

[rbbert]

At one point he had a 15ips dub of CSN first album cranked. Now it's true there's no true low bass on that record, but as I said it sounded great; I liked the sound better than in the Alexia's debut room, but as you say it could have been the program material.

 

[Cyclotronguy]

I've sat in the JBL Northridge lab, and experieced the double blind listening test... and observed others reaction in the "hot seat"

There are a number of speakers on a shuttle behind a screen. You sit in the dark and nobody knows what speaker (single speaker not stereo pair) is up as the computer random shuffles first one to the other to "center stage". It is only after the lights come up that you can replay the sequence and see what you just heard.

Speaker sound like they look only when you see them with your own "lying eyes"!