Tag Archives: Loudspeakers

Comparisons Of Some Powered Loudspeakers

Let’s measure some boxes!

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

Over time, I’ve become more and more interested in how different products compare to each other in an objective sense. This is one reason why I put together the The Great, Quantitative, Live-Mic Shootout. What I’m especially intrigued about right now is loudspeakers – especially those that come packaged with their own internal amplification and DSP. Being able to quantify value for money in regards to these units seems like a nifty exercise, especially as there seems to be a significant amount of performance available at relatively low cost.

Over time, I’ve used a variety of powered loudspeakers in my work, and I have on hand a few different models. That’s why I tested what I tested – they were conveniently within reach!

Testing Notes

1) The measurement mic and loudspeaker under test were set up to mimic a situation where the listener was using the loudspeaker as a stage monitor.

2) A 1-second, looping, logarithmic sweep was used to determine the drive level where the loudspeaker’s electronics reached maximum output (meaning that a peak/ limit/ clip indicator clearly illuminated for roughly half a second).

3) Measurements underwent 1/6th octave smoothing for the sake of readability.

4) These comparisons are mostly concerned with a “music-critical band,” which I define as the range from 75 Hz to 10,000 Hz. This definition is based on the idea that the information required for both creating music live and enjoying reproduced sound is mostly contained within that passband.

5) “Volume” is the number of cubic inches contained within a rectangular prism just large enough to enclose the loudspeaker. (In other words, how big of a box just fits around the loudspeaker.)

6) “Flatness Deviation” is the difference in SPL between the lowest recorded level and highest recorded level in the music-critical band. A lower flatness deviation number indicates greater accuracy.

6) Similarly to #5, “Phase Flatness Deviation” is the difference between the highest phase and lowest phase degrees recorded in the music-critical band. (The phase trace is a generated, minimum-phase graph).

8) Distortion is the measured THD % at 1 kHz.

9) When available, in-box processing was set to be as minimal as possible (i.e., flat EQ).

Test Results And Comments (In Order Of Price)

Alto TS312

Acquisition Cost: $299
Volume: 4565 in^3
Mass: 36 lbs
Magnitude And Phase:
Flatness Deviation: 12 dB
Phase Flatness Deviation: 166 degrees
Peak SPL: 119.6 dB
Distortion @ 1 kHz: 1.1%
Comments: Good bang vs. buck ratio. Highly compact, competitive weight. Surprisingly decent performer, with respectable output and distortion characteristics. Lacks the “super-tuned” flatness of a Yamaha DBR, and not as clean as the JBL Eon. Simplified back panel lacks features, but also is hard to set incorrectly. Would have liked a “thru” option, but the push-button ability to lift signal ground is nice to have.

Peavey PVXP12

Acquisition Cost: $399
Volume: 5917 in^3
Mass: 43 lbs
Magnitude And Phase:
Flatness Deviation: 14 dB
Phase Flatness Deviation: 230 degrees
Peak SPL: 123.8 dB
Distortion @ 1 kHz: 1.61%
Comments: High output at limit, but the manufacturer allows for rather more distortion compared to other products. Not factory-tuned quite as flat as other boxes, with an output peak that reads well as a “single number” performance metric…but also sits in a frequency range that tends to be irritating at high volume and troublesome for feedback. The enclosure is hefty and bulky in comparison to similar offerings.

JBL Eon 612

Acquisition Cost: $449
Volume: 4970 in^3
Mass: 33 lbs
Magnitude And Phase:
Flatness Deviation: 11 dB
Phase Flatness Deviation: 145 degrees
Peak SPL: 114.3 dB
Distortion @ 1 kHz: 0.596%
Comments: Relatively low output, but also tuned to a more more flat solution than some (and with rather lower distortion). Has some compactness and weight advantages. Lots of digital bells and whistles, but the utility of the features varies widely across different user needs. (For instance, I would prefer trading more power and an even flatter tuning for the Bluetooth control connectivity.) Not particularly enamored of the “boot-up” time required for all the electronics to register as ready for operation.

Yamaha DBR 12

Acquisition Cost: $499
Volume: 4805 in^3
Mass: 34.8 lbs
Magnitude And Phase:
Flatness Deviation: 10.6 dB
Phase Flatness Deviation: 180 degrees
Peak SPL: 119.5 dB
Distortion @ 1 kHz: 0.606%
Comments: Good output at low distortion. Compact box in comparison to others. Competitive in terms of weight. Slightly more expensive than other offerings, commensurate with its improved performance. Measures very well in the “intelligibility zone” of its frequency response. Very pleased with the simple and robust selector switches for most operations.


Delayed Response

My plan worked – and much more smoothly than I was anticipating.

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The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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This past Saturday, I implemented my plan for delay speakers at IAMA’s Bluegrass Night. I can report the following:

1) The plan basically worked as expected, with a few caveats. I ended up setting the delays at around the 70-foot mark rather than 80, because 80 felt like it was a little too far back. (There were also some handy trees at 70 feet that worked as natural barricades for the delay stands.) I just “eyeballed” (ear-canaled?) the delay-speaker sound level.

2) Switching out the time-correction on the delays had a very interesting effect. They were loud enough, and close enough to the main PA that de-aligning them didn’t sound like a total mess. The extra volume tended to mask some of the “slap” from the propagation delay. However, when all was time-aligned with the main rig it seemed that the two setups blended into one another nicely. With the correction bypassed, my brain instantly “localized” the delay speakers as a sound source. In some cases the effect was fairly subtle, but when listening to playback that had strong timing cues the result was very noticeable.

3) I’m not sure if it was really the fault of the delays, or if it was more to do with my mix position overall, but I did get the sensation that achieving clarity/ intelligibility in the mix was a touch challenging.

4) I must have guessed right about the level for the delay speakers, because nobody complained at me about the overall mix being too hot or too quiet.

5) What I might do differently on my next attempt would be to set up the delays as another full PA with subwoofers. My decision to cluster all of my subs at the front of the stage seemed basically okay, but I also got a bit of a sense that it would have been better to have more bottom-end support for the crowd sitting further back.

Not bad for a first try, I’d say.


A Plan For Delays

I think this should probably work. Maybe.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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Last year, I did a show at Gallivan Plaza that really ought to have had delays, but didn’t. As a result, the folks sitting on the upper tiers of lawn didn’t get quite as much volume as they would have liked. This year, I intend to try to fix that problem. Of course, deploying delays is NOT as simple as saying “we’ll just deploy delays.” There’s a bit of doing involved, and I figured I would set out my mental process here, before actually having a go.

Then, after all is said and done, we can review. Exciting, no?

So, here’s the idea:

A) Set primary FOH as a “double-hung” system. Cluster the subs down center, prep to put vocals through the inner pair of full-range boxes, and prep to send everything else to the outer pair. Drive the main PA with L/R output.

B) Have the FOH tent sit on the concrete pad about 60 feet from the stage.

C) At roughly an 80 foot distance, place the delays. The PA SPL in full-space at that point is expected to be down about 28 dB from the close-range (3 feet/ 1 meter) SPL.

D) Place a mic directly in front of one side of the main PA, and another mic in the center of the audience space, at the 80-foot line. (The propagation time to the delays will be slightly different depending on where people sit, so a center position should be a decent compromise.) Using both mics, record an impulse being reproduced only by the main PA. Analyze the recording to find the delay between the mics.

E) Send L/R to Matrix 1, assign Matrix 1 to an output, then apply the measured delay to that output. Connect the output to the delays. Also, consider blending the subwoofer feed into Matrix 1 if necessary.

F) Set an initial drive level to the delays so that their SPL level is +6 dB when compared to the output of the main PA. The added volume should help mask phase errors with the delays for listeners in front of the delay speakers, due to the contribution from the main PA being of much reduced significance…but it may also be possible that the added volume will be a problem for people sitting between the delays and the main PA. “Seasoning to taste” will be necessary. (For people sitting between the main PA and the delays, the time correction actually makes the delays seem to be MORE out of alignment than less, so the delays being more audible is a problem.)

So, there you go! I’ll let everybody know how this works. Or how it doesn’t.


Tuning A VerTec System

You can do a lot by simply treating it like everything else you’ve worked on.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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I’m sorry that I haven’t been around much lately – I’ve been busy. Very busy. So busy that I’ve been saying “No” to things a lot.

One element of my busyness has been being turned loose on a VERY classy room in Park City. For the moment, I won’t name it here, although you may have heard of it. (Not naming it here might be a little ridiculous, actually. Anybody can get on my Facebook page and see what I’m doing. Well, anyway…) It’s a little too big to classify as a small venue in my own personal taxonomy, but hey, as we’re all learning, many of the lessons in this business scale up and down.

A task I was allowed to undertake was re-tuning the installed VerTec system. Some big complaints about it were an overabundance of “honk” and “boom,” and the hope was that I could do something to alleviate those problems. I believe I have mostly succeeded in making the rig better, and it was most definitely not an exotic process. I slapped a measurement mic in front of the FOH mix position, ran Room EQ Wizard, and got to work. The measurement traces confirmed what could be heard: The system was very heavy on the midrange, with some troublesome peaks in the subwoofer zone. After a bit of doing, we are where we are now, which is a much flatter place.

The main key, I can say, was to get over my own intimidation. VerTec, or really any similar system, looks hairy because of all the boxes involved. The thing to remember, though, is that for any given coverage zone the boxes are meant to combine into one big source. If you’re going to fret over something, fret over each overall zone of coverage, not the individual array elements. Pick your battles. As Bob McCarthy might say, decide what to tune for and ignore the rest. In my case, I had it pretty easy, because I chose to tune for the main room and not worry specifically about the boxes angled to hit people standing near the hangs. I didn’t have any outfills, infills, or other such coverage areas to consider.

A barrier that I encountered was that we’re locked out of part of the system management processor. With that being the case, I didn’t have the ability to adjust individual bandpass input or output levels. I did have EQ access, though, so that’s what I did all my work with. Was that an ideal situation? No, but what I’ve discovered over the years is that getting the basic magnitude response of a system to behave is the primary battle. I’m not saying other things don’t matter here. I’m not saying that adjusting bandpass gain by way of an EQ isn’t a kludge. I’m not recommending that, but I am saying that you might have to do it sometime, and it won’t ruin your life. Do what you can with the tools you have.

In the end, even with an imperfect approach, the system’s listenability has improved. We seem to be getting compliments on the sound in the room at a regular pace now. I’m certainly looking forward to next spring, when I plan to do another tuning that will start with tweaking amplifier gains first, but for now we seem to be in business.


Gig Log: Muralfest (May 19, 2018)

Expected and unexpected coolness all around.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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Job Type: Annual community event.

Venue: The South Salt Lake Art Factory parking lot.

Load-in: Art Factory events are great, because you can drive a van-o-gear right up to the very spot the stage will be in. I can’t think of any reasonable way that a load-in could be easier.

Load-out: Especially quick because of Patrick Chase, the A2 on the show. He knows the rig, knows how to stay organized, knows the pack order in the van…I’m not opposed to training people and explaining things, but when the hour is late, an audio human wants the process to go fast. That’s what I got! Oh, and just like load-in, being able to pull the vehicle right up to where all the bits and pieces are sitting is fantasteriffic.

What Went Well

  • Unexpected FOH: The staging company, J&S Productions, wanted to use the show as an opportunity to demo their custom-built PA. I figured that giving it a try wouldn’t hurt, and thankfully, the J&S guys were very happy to have their system tuned flat. Patrick and I got to work half as hard, leave a bunch of gear in the vehicle, and got paid the same. No complaints there.
  • Whistle A Tune: As I mentioned, we got to tune the FOH PA extensively. I also got to tune monitor world to a flat target, which is a rare treat that makes my life much easier when the band is on deck.
  • Pixie And The Partygrass Boys: Working with fun bands is the best. Everybody is there to have a good time, from the stage on out.
  • Bear Shark Duck Snake: Apparently, the key to getting hilarious songs out of bands is to stick them in a van for five hours while denying them access to the radio.
  • Unexpected Job Offers: Jon, the venue manager from OP Rockwell, was on hand to sit in and play some washboard. After load-in, he lays a question on me: Would I want a residency at the very venue that I just mentioned? Well…YEAH! We decide to talk through my scheduling issues to ascertain if all the craziness will be navigable. (Spoiler Alert: I took the job.)
  • Weather: It clouded up at one point, but didn’t rain in any real way. Winds were light. That’s a recipe for a very pleasant outdoor gig.

What Could Have Been Better

  • Whoops, Wrong Knob: Midway through the show, Jon needs some more of the upright bass for better “groove lock-in.” I get on the gas until Jon gives me an approving look. There’s just one problem: I’m SLEDGEHAMMERING Andy (the guitar player) with bass, because I’m confused about my very own monitor layout. Duh. Hold on, let me fix that…

Conclusion

I love it when a plan comes together. I also love it when the plan gets halfway thrown out, and comes together even better than I expected.


The Pro-Audio Guide For People Who Know Nothing About Pro-Audio, Part 7

Amplifiers and loudspeakers bring us to the end of my series for Schwilly Family Musicians.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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“Now that we’ve turned audio into electricity and back again, we’ve reached the end of this series.”


This article is available, for free, right here.


130 dB Disbelief

It’s hard for me to believe that 130 dB is possible from some loudspeaker designs.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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When a manufacturer claims that a loudspeaker system (say, a two-way arrangement in a single, vented enclosure) can create a 130 dB SPL peak at 1 meter with a 1000 watt peak power input, I’m a skeptic. Or rather, I should say that I’m a skeptic about how useful that 130 dB actually is.

What I’m getting at is this: A 1000 watt input is 30 dB above the 1 watt input level. Getting a direct-radiating cone driver to give you 100+ dB SPL of sensitivity in a consistent way is challenging (thought I will not say it’s impossible). There are, of course, plenty of drivers available that will get you over that mark of 100 dB @ 1 watt/ 1 meter, BUT, only with the caveat that the 100+ dB sensitivity zone is confined to a “smallish” peak around 2 kHz. The nice, smooth part of the response that doesn’t need to be tamed is probably between 95 – 97 dB. If you’re lucky, that zone might be just south of 100 dB.

When it comes to useful output, what really matters is what a driver can do with minimal variation across the bandpass it’s meant to reproduce. Peaks in different frequency ranges aren’t helpful for real work – although they do let you claim a higher peak-output number.

My disbelief, then, is rooted in the idea that any “affordable by mortals” loudspeaker model is probably not using an ultra-high performance, super-custom-built cone driver for the low-frequency bandpass. Sure, it might not be a driver that you can get off the shelf, but it’s tough for me to have faith that the very upper edge of loudspeaker performance is being tickled by whatever got bolted into the enclosure.

Now…I could be very wrong about this. In fact, I would prefer to be wrong, because I will always desire an affordable speaker that takes up no space, has no weight, and is infinitely loud from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Anything that gets closer to that impossible goal is a box I can welcome. At the same time, I prefer (and encourage) pessimism when reading manufacturer ratings. Sure, they say the box can make 130 dB peaks, but under what circumstances? Only at 2 kHz? Only when combined with room reflections?

If the numbers you claim are difficult to achieve, I’m going to need more than your word to accept them.


Listening To El Ridiculoso

Playing music over a system that’s been tuned as flat as possible is very illuminating.

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The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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I now have El Ridiculoso all finished and set up at home. Mario put this gorgeous coat of epoxy paint on the boxes, lending them a lightly textured and glossy blackness that I love. After getting all the individual enclosures hooked up, I tuned the system to be as flat as I could get it. (El Ridiculoso’s final form is pretty darn linear from about 40 Hz to 15 kHz, with a good amount of usable information beyond even that.) With my tuning in place, I started doing some listening.

I’ll start off by saying this. Music played over a flat-as-you-can-get-it system is music examined under an electron microscope. It’s an image with the sharpness dialed all the way up. There is no escape from anything, no glossing over of this or that. It’s a sonic reality that plants itself an inch from your face, and then starts waving madly. Music with a lot of “traffic” – a lot happening at once – can almost be an overloading experience for your brain.

If it’s there, you WILL hear it.

You might be surprised at what isn’t there, by the way.

You might expect, for instance, that a modern, “rock-mix” of a band like Rush would have a lot of thundering bottom end. That’s not really the case. Even some pop-dubstep really isn’t that heavy “down there.” Overwhelming LF isn’t what makes the mixes work; What the mix stands or falls on is the absolutely crucial midrange. If you get, say, 250 Hz – 5 kHz wrong, you may as well forget about everything else.

…and that reality feeds into points I’ve been making about live audio for quite a while. It feeds into points that other people have been making for ages: The low end does matter, yes, but not as much as you think it does. Balancing the bottom to the rest of the audio makes for the best overall experience, but the first priority is to get the mids to be musical. There’s no substitute for that, and trying to cover up a debacle in the midrange space with a lot of *BOOM* just makes for annoyance. Real punch is the interplay between LF thud and higher-frequency definition. Clarity is a real thing that you really need, and scooping a mix hollow KILLS clarity.

Maybe a bigger subwoofer pile isn’t what you need. Maybe some more time sorting out the firestorm of aural data that lives above the bass range is time better spent.


The Turbosound Milan M12

A nice box, but flawed.

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The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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When I was adding onto my system last year, I chose Turbosound Milan as the product line for FOH. Since putting those boxes into service, my feelings have been mixed. The most mixed of those feelings have been reserved for the mid-highs I chose, designated as “M12” by the manufacturer.

I do like the compact nature of the package. Other powered 12s that I carry are similar in weight, but inefficient in their use of bulk. The Milans chew up less space, and yes, they have a monitor-angle on both sides. You can properly book-match a pair of the little darlings, which is something I appreciate.

I also like the overall fit and finish. Yes, they’re plastic boxes, but it’s the kind of plastic that can take some wear gracefully. The controls and connection points seem to be reasonably well-engineered, with slide switches that clearly indicate where they’re set. (Push-toggles are fine if they unambiguously show their state, but plenty of them don’t – so, kudos to Turbosound on this front.) I often work with other boxes that really are just fine…but feel “cheap” when it comes to XLR connectors and back-panel interaction. The Milans are a definite upgrade there.

M12s do seem to be tuned pleasingly at the factory, which is a big help for throw-n-go gigs where you have to make things work out tonally without a lot of prep time. Your mileage may vary, of course, especially since just about anything can be whipped into shape these days.

Also, let’s be honest: My anti-establishment nature has a special place for brands that are less common. Everybody knows JBL, Peavey, EV, Yamaha, and so on, but Turbosound is a loudspeaker marque that’s a little less trafficked in small-format circles. (Turbo’s big-boy boxes are more well known to the folks who work at that level.)

What do I not like? Well…

Milan M12s are a (tiny) bit expensive for what you get – both in money and weight. When JBL marked their Eon 612s down, they really threw the gauntlet at Turbo. Spend $50 less, get a box that has essentially the same performance, and save about 12 lbs.

…and Turbo, geeze, can we please have a real “thru” on the back? Sometimes I just want to chain two boxes together, and I don’t want to have to volume-match them by ear. Especially if I’ve forgotten to do so before the speakers are eight feet in the air already.

But that’s not the biggest thing.

What really put me off with the M12s was how they will audibly distort before they illuminate their clip indicators. It’s not a horribly nasty sound, but its “too obvious” and a little embarrassing. When somebody addresses the crowd at concert level, using a mic that has some low-mid dialed into it, there’s no reason that a loudspeaker of this type should suddenly give the impression of being underpowered. Sure, these units travel with the crowd that peaks under 130 dB SPL @ 1 meter, but so do my Eons and they don’t seem to misbehave when still running “in the green.” I was so unsettled by this quirk of the Turbos that I retired them to moderate-volume-only use – which they are great at, I should mention.

Someone might point out that the Turbosounds could simply dislike my gain structure. I often run powered loudspeakers with the input controls at full-throttle (when it’s practicable), because full-throttle is an easily repeatable setting. Also, I know I can get maximum SPL at around -20 dBFS on my console outputs. I can’t discount the possibility that the M12s fail to handle that kind of use gracefully at the input side, which means that my dislike is user-error. At the same time, though, I have to go back to my JBL Eons; They tolerate being run wide-open without any marked complaint, which is what I expect from a loudspeaker in this price-range.

Milan M12s are good, but they don’t seem to be good enough to spend “more money” on.


What’s Next?

I don’t know, but we’re probably not going to blow the lid off of audio in general.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

Want to use this image for something else? Great! Click it for the link to a high-res or resolution-independent version.

I get extremely suspicious when somebody claims to have solved a fundamental problem in audio. Mostly, this is because all the basic gremlins have been thoroughly killed and dried. It’s also because sonic physics is a system of laws that tolerate zero BS. (When somebody claims that they have a breakthrough technology that sounds great by way of spraying sound like a leaky hose, I know they are full of something brown and stinky.)

Modern audio is what I would definitely call a mature technology. In mature technologies, the bedrock science of the technology’s behavior is very well understood. The apparent breakthroughs, then, come when another technology allows a top-shelf behavior to be made available to the masses, or when it creates an opportunity to make a theoretical idea a reality.

A great example is the two-way, fullrange loudspeaker. They’re better than they have ever been. Anyone who remembers wrestling Peavey SP2 TI boxes is almost tearfully grateful to have small, light, loud enclosures available for a rock-bottom price. Obviously, there have been advances. We’ve figured out how to make loudspeaker drivers more efficient and more reliable. Commercially viable neodymium magnets give us the same field strength for less mass. The constant-directivity horn (and its refined derivatives) have delivered improved pattern control.

These are important developments!

Yet, the unit, as an overall object, would be entirely recognizable to someone magically transported to us from three decades in the past. The rules are the same. You’ve got a cone driver in a box, and a compression driver mated to a horn. The cone driver has certain characteristics which the main box has to be built around. It’s not as though we’ve evolved to exotic, crystalline sound-emitters that work by magic.

The palpable improvements aren’t really to do with audio, in a direct sense. They have to do with miniaturization, computerization, and commoditization. An active loudspeaker in the 21st century is likely to sound better than a 1980s or 1990s unit, not because it’s a completely different technology, but because the manufacturer can design, test, tune, and package the product as a bundle of known (and very carefully controlled) quantities. When a manufacturer ships a passive loudspeaker, there’s a lot that they just can’t know – and can’t even do. Stuff everything into the enclosure, and the situation changes dramatically. You know exactly what the amplifier and the driver are going to do to each other. You know just exactly how much excursion that LF driver will endure, and you can limit the amplifier at exactly the point to get maximum performance without damage. You can use steeper crossover slopes to (maybe) cross that HF driver a little lower, improving linearity in the intelligibility zone. You can precisely line up the drivers in time. You can EQ the whole business within an inch of its life.

Again, that’s not because the basic idea got better. It’s because we can put high-speed computation and high-powered amplification in a small space, for (relatively) cheap. Everything I’ve described above has been possible to do for a long time. It’s just that it wasn’t feasible to package it for the masses. You either had to do it externally and expensively, shipping a large, complicated product package to an educated end user…or just let the customer do whatever, and hope for the best.

I can’t say that I have an angle on what the next big jump will be for audio. I’m even skeptical on whether there will be another major leap. I’m excited for more features to become more affordable, though, so I’ll keep looking for those gear catalogs to arrive in the mail.