QuestionQUESTION: Could you give me a list of the best brand of the loudspeakers? Which one is your favorite? Thanks so much.
ANSWER: I hesitate greatly to give equipment recommendations because there are so many subjective factors involved. Not only that, but the room space, acoustic surfaces of the walls of the playback room, the kind of music you will be listening to, the amplifiers that will drive the speakers and so on are all matters that will have some relation with the speaker performance and sound quality.
There are about 400 brand names representing over 1500 models of speaker systems available to choose from; proof there are many choices and preferences among buyers.
Your budget will have a lot to do with the selection; the number of channels to support in your playback system and the spacing of each speaker with the others will effect the system design.
Finally, the sound you get is for your pleasure. You have heard the old saying "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" . Well, sound quality is in the ears of the listener, too. What may sound terrific to me may not sound at all acceptable to you. Accuracy of reproduction is a myth; the very best of loudspeakers are so far from perfect that it is always a choice of compromises.
The best approach is to study the reviews in mags and online; visit the shops and listen intently; check with friends systems and compare sound quality.
Best for you to choose a few cuts from your favorite music selections to use as reference comparisons. Make sure they represent frequency range and dynamic range that you expect so the speakers you are auditioning will get the full range of signals you want them to reproduce.
For the very best playback systems one must give consideration to a subwoofer; they will add more realism than just about any other thing that can be added for enhancement of sound quality.
There are other matters and explanations worthy of consideration but I have given you some basics to consider.
Please come back to me with more focused questions if you need.
Cleggsan
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QUESTION: Thank you very much for your answer!
I would like to have a further discussion with you. Before we go into the question, I would like to tell why I ask such a vague question--as a freshmen of this business, I have to update my knowledge about the sound system. By the way, I'm a new clerk work in a loudsperker factory which locates on China.
So I try my best to learn the sound system information, especially the loudspeaker. Maybe you could give me some recommentation to show me how can I start my sturdy process.
Anyway, thanks again for your kind reply!
AnswerThe loudspeaker is the weakest link in all of audio systems. Compared to the amplifiers and other components speakers are very much deficient in terms of distortion, accurate frequency response and such. Therefore, it is ever so critical to know the conditions in which the speaker systems will be employed and what is expected of them.
There is much that should be learnt. Acoustics and sound propogation physics, electrical characteristics of speaker components such as voice coil, crossover and impedance designs. Free air resonance of the speaker, q paramters and how they will effect the enclosure design and so forth. Material science, especially for tweeters and midrange is very critical.
I suggest you start with the Harry Olsen text book on loudspeakers.
http://www.amazon.com/Music-Physics-Engineering-Harry-Olson/dp/0486217698
There are other such books as well.
Then, there are many works that are instructive from the AES (Audio Engineering Society). www.aes.org
See:
http://www.aes.org/publications/anth.cfm
for loudspeaker anthologies, for example.
These are all in english - but your command of english seems good.
There are many others to choose from, but these will get you started.
You might find it useful to read some of the consumer literature where the monthly magazines do testing and evaluation of speaker systems. The best are from Japan and England.
Let me stop here and you can ask next question.
Cleggsan
