Becoming a Reviewer: Listening To Speakers, Part 3

There is a difference in how you listen to speakers you plan to review and speakers you are thinking about buying. In this article, I will explain some of these differences.

As a reviewer, my job is to tell the reader what the speaker sounds like, not how much I do or don’t like it. I take this responsibility seriously as I know many of my readers don’t live anywhere near a dealer for the product I am reviewing.

If you are listening to speakers that you are thinking about purchasing, most of what I am going to write about here will be equally true for you. You have to trust your own ears, and you should have an opportunity to hear them in your house with an option to send them back.

Warnings for Listening to Speakers

I want to start with these three warnings about listening to speakers.

Warning #1: Be careful about speakers that wow you right the bat!

Often, the thing that wows you will irritate you over time. For example, the bass may be too prominent or the top-end may be tilted up. Are you going to grow tired of that sound?

Over the years, I have learned to be careful when listening to speakers that wow me right off the bat. This is one of the most important things I can say about reviewing or buying speakers. There are a lot of speakers that sound spectacular all of the time. There is also music that sounds spectacular. Then there is music that is anything but.

In fact, some music is meant to be slow and methodical. I have discovered the speakers that I can love for a long time like My DeVore Fidelity gibbon Super Nines, my Quad 57s, and the Teresonic Ingeniums that I owned for a number of years, to name a few, are speakers that are more like chameleons. By that, I mean they sound like what they are playing; sometimes they are lively, sometimes they are smooth, sometimes they are strident, and sometimes they are spectacular.

Warning #2: Be careful about the bass!

When reviewing, I must remember that some people cannot enjoy the music if the bass doesn’t go down into the 20Hz range. Other people seem to enjoy music just as much with speakers that only go down into the 60Hz range. Still, most people can have a perfect emotional and musically satisfying experience from a speaker into the 40Hz range.

I personally fall into that last group, and I want to tell you why. It is expensive to get those last two octaves of bass because you need a lot more power to get down into the low 30Hz and even more to get down into the low 20Hz range. Not only do you need more power, but you also need a lot of current, and most of all you need a room that can support such bass. Another personal reason I don’t have bass down into the 20s is that if I did the people in my house would be continually at me to “turn that down”.

Here’s one last comment about the bass. Did you hear what I said about speakers needing to be like chameleons? Well, that means if the recording has no bass, then on that recording, your speaker shouldn’t either. Most speakers produce their own warmth and this can be quite euphoric. Once you hear a speaker, however, that can be warm when called on but have no added warmth when not called for, I don’t think you will want the added color of the speakers for warmth.

Warning #3: Be careful about speakers that are the newest and greatest thing!

There’s a shortlist of speakers that come to my mind when I think about speakers that have stood the test of time. These include Ike Altec’s Voice of the Theater speakers, Quad ESLs, Lowthers, Tannoys, and different BBC speakers. Then there are modern speakers that I expect will make that list one day. On the other hand, I could fill a page with speakers that were the best thing going over the last 40 years and that everybody wanted. You probably wouldn’t have heard of most of them. You would probably laugh at the thought of some of them being on such a list. Trust your ears, do your homework, and be careful not to fall for the latest fad. As a reviewer, I try to be very careful not to promote fads.

So What Am I Listening For?

When I review a pair of speakers, I make sure I listen to it with more than one amp. I will not accept a speaker for review if I do not have access to an amp I feel will work well with the speaker.

As good as my system sounds ninety percent of the time, I still enjoy live music significantly more than the best audio systems I have ever heard. So, I am listening to the speaker’s potential to let my system transcend the electronic listening experience.

Sounds Like Music

I am also listening for the speaker’s ability to convey an emotional experience before I begin to listen for auditory abilities. The question isn’t can the speaker allow me to hear what the music sounds like in a live performance. I want to know if the speaker can provide an emotional experience close to what I would have experienced had I been there in person.

I think of this quality as the ability of a speaker to allow my system to sound more alive or more like real music. This should never be confused with saying that a component sounds musical. Somehow the word “musical” has come to mean almost the opposite of alive. It most often means warm and forgiving.

Now live music sometimes is warm, and sometimes is quite biting and aggressive. Even a non-amplified trumpet can run the range from warm to biting, even strident at times. A speaker that sounds like music will be able to reproduce all of those sounds and sound alive while doing it. A speaker like this will breathe life into a room.

Live Music and Listening to Speakers

Many people are not familiar with what live music sounds like. This results in systems that are overly warm because the owner thinks any bright or straightened sound must be wrong. This tells me that they seldom hear live music. For example, when a jazz trumpet player steps forward during his solo and puts the bell of the trumpet right over the mic, it cuts right through everything, including your ears. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but it’s still how the live music sounded. And if you artificially compensate for it, the music will sound lifeless. What often happens is that in an attempt to compensate for momentary irritations on the recording or in the performance, we end up with a sound that is powerful, full-bodied, and still somehow not at all emotionally involving.

There are several ways to choose your system. You can buy what the reviewers or dealers tell you is the best, you can buy a system that is very polite and always sounds nice, or you can be bold and go for a system that sounds very lifelike. If you go for the latter, sometimes you will hear the irritations on the recording. Be careful, though, you don’t want a speaker that is so revealing that you can’t enjoy the music you love.

By now, you know the approach I prefer, but you have to choose for yourself. After all, you are the one who has to listen to your system. As a reviewer, it’s my job to tell you how the speaker sounds so that you can choose what you prefer.

Ask Yourself the Right Questions

Let me encourage you to at least ask yourself the right questions when you are listening to speakers. Don’t ask how deep does the bass go, how deep and wide is the soundstage, or how extended is the treble. Instead, ask if it is moving, and does it draws me in and make me want to put down what I’m doing? Does it sound great from other rooms in the house? Does it make me want to cry or dance?

These are the questions that matter, in my opinion. Just last night Becky and I sat down to enjoy a recording of the musical Chicago. Over and over again, we laughed out loud and sometimes even sang along. When it was over, we commented on how much fun it was to listen. I think this is the reason to have a home audio system.

Stay tuned! The next article in this series will compare two very good speakers that have very different designs.

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