I listen to the speakers..... and am secure enough in my personal experience to know whether or not i like what i hear..... and i am picky enough about that to be considered a PITA by some..... if i don;t like what i hear, then i'll dig out the measurement Mic, and take some measurements... and find out more precisely why.....

occasionally i'll do so even if i do like what i hear.... usually when i need to prove a point, or supply someone with reassurance , or to give a definitive comparison when tweaking positioning and alignment....


for the vast majority of people, 7.5 times out of ten, the problems will be to do with the acoustic space , or the placement, and listening position, not the speaker itself, but sometimes it is the speaker..... usually in the budget market.... often to do with poorly designed, or cheaply implemented, ported behaviour artefacts. and cheap nasty amplification.


when spending thousands , there are fewer issues, but some still exist, but these issues, are more points of different design choice, interpretation of what is "desirable"

manufacturers do tend to publish specs, but they also like to play the game of marketing, so publish them in their own unique way, which makes it harder to compare A with B..... unless you understand the spec , and can interpret the data based on the given parameters it's usually meaningless.....

what is "good"? in my view?

neutral balance, bags of headroom, low distortion, pin point imaging detail , and tight , precise, time domain behaviour...


i've been to the listening rooms of a couple of Hifi reviewers... suffice to say , i was unimpressed, to the point where I couldn't read another review with a straight face.....

how anyone can pontificate on minute tonal differences between bits of equipment, when their room has ±40 dB or more, variances of response, at a range of frequencies, differing hugely with position, even by a few inches.... is entirely beyond me.

Hi Fi market rigour?


yeah right.... pull the other one, it has bells on.

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