How To Judge Loudspeaker Sound And Accuracy

By Ian Bell February 8, 2005

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“If we are being true to the goal of seeking higher fidelity, then an ideal loudspeaker should have no “sound” at all. In other words, it should be completely transparent, an open door to the musical performance. An accurate speaker’s role is to replicate–precisely–the sounds of musical instruments or voices exactly as they were present in the original source recording. The speaker shouldn’t add any sound of its own–it shouldn’t make strings and violins sound screechy or edgy, nor should it artificially add bass emphasis to male singers’ voices so they sound too bassy or “fat” (a common fault of many speakers). “

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