3 things to listen to evaluate the quality of your conventional loudspeakers!

What to listen to so you can evaluate what are the best conventional loudspeakers for you? Conventional loudspeakers are a matter of personal preference and the weighting that you give to the different listening characteristics that conventional loudspeakers have.

 

The first and maybe even the easiest and the most objective thing to listen for is clarity and detail. It means that everything in the content is being rendered faithfully by conventional loudspeakers. How to figure that out? First, it’s recommended to use the content which you heard before and are familiar with. Try to remember the context of these previous experiences with the content and then play it through the conventional loudspeaker which you are evaluating. Listen for the various instruments, vocals different nuances and details.

 

The second thing you should listen for is imaging or sound staging. That is the conventional loudspeaker’s ability in a stereo pair to render a sense of visual, almost 3D points in space that the different parts of the content come from. This can happen in a home theater environment but it’s more difficult to render in a simple stereo environment. If they do that then you have that sense of soundstage when the music no longer sounds as if it is coming from two boxes in front of you but actually from a three-dimensional sound field that is everywhere in the room.

A more subtle characteristic of truly great speakers is their neutrality which can also be considered as a refinement. What is meant by that can be described by asking a simple question. Does a human voice sound like a human voice or does it sound like a reproduced human voice? Does an instrument, like a trumpet, violin, electric guitar, or acoustic bass sound like that exact instrument in real life? If it does, the speaker is rendering it with neutrality, with a certain refinement and that refinement is so important in making one feel like one is right there with live experience. So, listen for that crispness, that detail typically lies in the higher frequencies. Make sure that it's being rendered in a believable convincing way. Listen

 

for a level of low-frequency response that makes you have that sense of place and impact that is part of the fun of listening to a great music or movie experience. Mid-range is probably 80% of all content. Yet there is the part that we usually take for granted unless we listen for it. Human voice mostly occurs in mid-range, so take some time to make sure that is being rendered in an accurate, believable way.

Another very important part of a performance by conventional loudspeakers or a great listening experience is dynamic range. Dynamic range is the speaker’s ability to rise to musical or cinematic peaks. Meaning, it’s expressed as a ratio between the quietest moment that the conventional loudspeakers can render and the loudest. It's not even about speakers’ ability to play loud. It's an ability to show the contrast between quiet and loud moments.

 

Those were important characteristics recommended for evaluating conventional loudspeakers and you are going to find that if you pay attention to all those characteristics, you won’t make a mistake.