The subject of loudspeakers in home audio is so vast it's almost overwhelming. So I'm going to do a series about loudspeakers, starting with the small ones intended to be mounted on stands. A lot of musical magic comes naturally to small speakers that is more difficult to attain in large ones. They used to be called bookshelf speakers, but hardly any of them sound their best on a bookshelf. Back in the '60s and '70s, speakers really were designed to sit on bookshelves, and the drivers were oriented on the baffles for horizontal positioning.
However, things have changed since the '80s. Most small speakers are smaller than they were in the '70s. Back then a small bookshelf speaker might be 19-20" on its longest dimension. These days a stand-mounted speaker that size is rare. Most stand-mounted speakers are 7-9" wide by 10-15" tall, and vary from 8 to 15" in depth depending on how much bass capability they're trying to cram in there.
So what are the advantages of small speakers?
Purity of sound
Most small speakers are simple affairs, with a 4-7" woofer and a 1" tweeter, with a single, simple crossover. Shorter signal paths and simpler crossovers make for a better signal transfer with more clarity and realism.
Imaging
Small speakers have small front baffles. This enables the woofer and tweeter to radiate their sound into free space, reducing the amount of reflection and diffusion off the front baffle that smears the sound. This free radiation improves dispersion as well, making it possible for these little speakers to fill a room surprisingly well because of their unimpeded dispersion. Mini-monitors pretty much represent best-in-class for creating a spookily realistic 3-dimensional sonic hologram out of the simple left/right stereo signal feed.
Clarity
With the assumption that any serious speaker has quality drivers that can recreate a linear approximation of the signal it's fed, the big enemy of quality speaker sound is cabinet resonances. Here's where a little speaker has an advantage. When you have a 42" tall floorstanding speaker, you have large enclosure panels that vibrate with all that sound in the enclosure. Most quality speakers are braced, some very much so, but the bigger the enclosure, the greater the potential for cabinet resonances. Think about it: if you make an enclosure that's 8"x12"x10" of thick MDF and brace it besides, there's very little undamped panel space that can resonate. The less resonance, the more pure signal you hear, and the more realistic it sounds.
If you haven't listened to serious small speakers in awhile, you're in for a surprise. So much has happened in speaker development in the past decade.
First of all, the drivers themselves are much improved. They have wider ranges, higher power handling, higher sensitivity, higher excursion. These characteristics give them more dynamic range and more realistic sound.
Second, there have been great advances in how to get more sound and deeper bass out of smaller boxes. Many of the stand-mount speakers today have a port on the rear of the enclosure. You shouldn't put this configuration on a bookshelf, but if you put it on a stand and position it within a foot or two of the wall behind it, the port output gets reinforced by the room boundary and gives you as much as another octave of bass.
What are some examples of speakers I'm talking about? I'm talking about speakers in the $300-1000 range, particularly speakers such as the PSB Image B5 and Image B6 at $450 and $550, respectively. Both can make about 89 dB (at 1 meter) from 1 watt input and handle up to 150 watts, making for substantial peaks of 110 dB, and have bass that reaches down to around 50 Hz.
There are many others in the same price range from reputable makers such as Paradigm, Mordaunt-Short, Cambridge Audio of England, Monitor Audio, Focal of France, and Energy and Totem Acoustic of Canada. And if you're willing to up the ante to $800-1200, you can get some speakers that will make your jaw drop, such as the Dynaudio Excite X12:
To do these speakers justice, you really need to pony up for some decent speaker stands to put the tweeters at the proper listening height and to isolate the enclosures from the floor and the room. If you're wondering why not just get the floorstanding version and spend the money on a bigger speaker instead, bear in mind that you'll likely lose some of that minimonitor magic where it comes to lower panel resonances and small-baffle clarity and imaging.
Plus, you'll find that the small floorstanding speaker will benefit from a subwoofer anyway, so you might as well get the advantages of a stand-mounted mini and let the sub(s) do the rest.
Speaking of which, the next installment will be about subwoofers. This may sound a little crazy, but bear in mind that I've been assembling, evaluating, and tweaking systems for 40 years now, and my current philosophy is that--if you're interested in true full-range sound reproduction--you should start with the subwoofer. I'll explain that and more in the next thread in a week or two.
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JohnnyB
The subject of loudspeakers in home audio is so vast it's almost overwhelming. So I'm going to do a series about loudspeakers, starting with the small ones intended to be mounted on stands. A lot of musical magic comes naturally to small speakers that is more difficult to attain in large ones. They used to be called bookshelf speakers, but hardly any of them sound their best on a bookshelf. Back in the '60s and '70s, speakers really were designed to sit on bookshelves, and the drivers were oriented on the baffles for horizontal positioning.
However, things have changed since the '80s. Most small speakers are smaller than they were in the '70s. Back then a small bookshelf speaker might be 19-20" on its longest dimension. These days a stand-mounted speaker that size is rare. Most stand-mounted speakers are 7-9" wide by 10-15" tall, and vary from 8 to 15" in depth depending on how much bass capability they're trying to cram in there.
So what are the advantages of small speakers?
Purity of sound
Most small speakers are simple affairs, with a 4-7" woofer and a 1" tweeter, with a single, simple crossover. Shorter signal paths and simpler crossovers make for a better signal transfer with more clarity and realism.
Imaging
Small speakers have small front baffles. This enables the woofer and tweeter to radiate their sound into free space, reducing the amount of reflection and diffusion off the front baffle that smears the sound. This free radiation improves dispersion as well, making it possible for these little speakers to fill a room surprisingly well because of their unimpeded dispersion. Mini-monitors pretty much represent best-in-class for creating a spookily realistic 3-dimensional sonic hologram out of the simple left/right stereo signal feed.
Clarity
With the assumption that any serious speaker has quality drivers that can recreate a linear approximation of the signal it's fed, the big enemy of quality speaker sound is cabinet resonances. Here's where a little speaker has an advantage. When you have a 42" tall floorstanding speaker, you have large enclosure panels that vibrate with all that sound in the enclosure. Most quality speakers are braced, some very much so, but the bigger the enclosure, the greater the potential for cabinet resonances. Think about it: if you make an enclosure that's 8"x12"x10" of thick MDF and brace it besides, there's very little undamped panel space that can resonate. The less resonance, the more pure signal you hear, and the more realistic it sounds.
If you haven't listened to serious small speakers in awhile, you're in for a surprise. So much has happened in speaker development in the past decade.
First of all, the drivers themselves are much improved. They have wider ranges, higher power handling, higher sensitivity, higher excursion. These characteristics give them more dynamic range and more realistic sound.
Second, there have been great advances in how to get more sound and deeper bass out of smaller boxes. Many of the stand-mount speakers today have a port on the rear of the enclosure. You shouldn't put this configuration on a bookshelf, but if you put it on a stand and position it within a foot or two of the wall behind it, the port output gets reinforced by the room boundary and gives you as much as another octave of bass.
What are some examples of speakers I'm talking about? I'm talking about speakers in the $300-1000 range, particularly speakers such as the PSB Image B5 and Image B6 at $450 and $550, respectively. Both can make about 89 dB (at 1 meter) from 1 watt input and handle up to 150 watts, making for substantial peaks of 110 dB, and have bass that reaches down to around 50 Hz.
There are many others in the same price range from reputable makers such as Paradigm, Mordaunt-Short, Cambridge Audio of England, Monitor Audio, Focal of France, and Energy and Totem Acoustic of Canada. And if you're willing to up the ante to $800-1200, you can get some speakers that will make your jaw drop, such as the Dynaudio Excite X12:
To do these speakers justice, you really need to pony up for some decent speaker stands to put the tweeters at the proper listening height and to isolate the enclosures from the floor and the room. If you're wondering why not just get the floorstanding version and spend the money on a bigger speaker instead, bear in mind that you'll likely lose some of that minimonitor magic where it comes to lower panel resonances and small-baffle clarity and imaging.
Plus, you'll find that the small floorstanding speaker will benefit from a subwoofer anyway, so you might as well get the advantages of a stand-mounted mini and let the sub(s) do the rest.
Speaking of which, the next installment will be about subwoofers. This may sound a little crazy, but bear in mind that I've been assembling, evaluating, and tweaking systems for 40 years now, and my current philosophy is that--if you're interested in true full-range sound reproduction--you should start with the subwoofer. I'll explain that and more in the next thread in a week or two.
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