What does our 'best' mean - WBL Rep 04:36:16 12/09/03 (0)

In Reply to: Re: World's Best Speakers? posted by urthere on December 04, 2003 at 18:07:58:

Hi,

'Best' ????

actually a short word to convey a lot more..

First the criteria is 'realism' nothing else(not 'lyrical', musical' or any of those other bywords used to excuse controlled distortion)

Yes it's the best I ever heard by a long way.(shut your eyes and it takes a lot of convincing the performers arent in the room sometimes)

Yes it is also the best EVERYONE who has ever heard them have ever heard. The owners and listeners have a wider variety of taste, music, and experience than I will ever have.

Measurably there is a clear gap on the charts between these loudspeakers and others compared(every type we could get our hands on) in terms of Efficiency, F.R, THD, Phase distortion, Clarity, Definition, Transient Response, Cabinet reverberations etc

'BEST AGAIN

In Reply to: Re: World's Best Speakers? I have doubts. posted by Klaus on December 05, 2003 at 06:49:02:

Hi,

the definition I use at the end of the day is a measure of realism:

using a live/flat recording of natural instruments (vocals, strings, woodwind, brass, glockenspiels, birds and animals etc) you should be able to close your eyes and be convinced that the instruments are in your proximity in an exact place, and sound so real that you can hardly believe (double-take) that it is in fact reproduced!

Before this is done, the loudspeaker has been tested redesigned and retested exhaustively over 2 years in anechoic facilities (B&K), listening lounges, and at retailers to gather a wide range of feedback with varying types of customers and different types of music and recording formats. What I learned was that in spite of devoting a large slice of resources to measurement, the best analysis tool was your own ability to judge if something sounds 'real' or not.

It follows that some sacrifice is made if the loudspeaker is both neutral and fully responsive to changes in level - music distorted and synthetic will sound as thin as it is, music which was previously cluttered and clouded becomes clear and appreciable - this is particularly evident with recordings where there are over a dozen instruments playing simultaneously accross the whole audio bandwidth i.e most classical performances.

Nick

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