Quote Originally Posted by kexodusc
Meh, what's a review? A summary of findings that a few people put on paper that reflects the weightings of the reviewer's personal preferences and listening habbits. Not necessarily your own. Fun to read though.

I find speaker reviews are the worst of any audio equipment simply because there's so much subjectivity involved. With components, there's usually less variance between what I read and what I hear. With speakers, it's all over the map.

I hope nobody relies on speaker reviews for much. Truth is, I know what most of your preferred speakers are and they do not impress me for the money the sell at. Consequently, your reviews wouldn't be helpful to me. Doesn't mean they're bad, it means they don't do what I want them to do. You'd probably feel the same about mine. My favorite commercial speakers remain Focus Audio and I don't think I've ever seen them mentioned by anyone else on this site.

RGA likes dynamics - if he's a heavy listener of classical music and not so much into heavy metal, I could see why. Someone into heavy metal might prefer more boom and sizzle at the expense of added dynamics since that benefit might not be fully realized with the buyer's listening habbits. For my part, imaging, soundstage, transient response, and timbre/accuracy are paramount. I'd gladly sacrifice a bit of dynamic headroom to improve these traits. I've found most speakers worth their salt do enough dynamically for me that any more is not noticed or appreciated, they're already faithfully reproducing an acceptable presentation of what I hear at live performances. I only notice dynamic deficiencies if I'm focused on looking for them, and then I'm not listening to the music. I'd rather a mellotron sound like a mellotron, a sax like a sax, an electric guitar ring through. Vocals be true. Why? Most of the music I listen to doesn't push beyond the dynamic capabilities of most speakers I would consider - so sacrificing these other traits makes the music sound extremely un-like what I hear when I go to live performances. That's what makes me tick. YMMV.

For the record, I've heard ALL of these speakers, and I tend to agree with this review. That's a first. Can't say any of these would be among my recommendations at this price though. I'll pick on the big 2 I see here.

The Paradigm's are not a great value anymore, don't image as well as their smaller counterparts, are basically towered Studio 40's. The price difference maybe isn't so bad if you factor stands. The Studio 100's though are atrocious for the money. (I still own a pair of Studio 40's in my garage, FTR)

I like Dynaudio - but spent some quality time with a friend's Audience 82's and found an internet speaker that cost half as much was its equal or 99% as good. I posted a thread with my impressions a few years ago on this site. The internet speakers looked better, too. Dynaudio's going to have to keep up price wise. They're a quality speaker though and I can say they cut fewer corners than a company like PSB or Paradigm from what I've seen.

My beef with a lot of the industry heavyweight brands is they've lost their value edge and, and rely on brand name to sell at a premium - that's a great, age old business model, but it's also the reason there's so many other brands people are raving about these days. But there's a certain level of comfort that comes with buying popular brand speakers I guess - a lot of mid-fi speaker shoppers don't have a lot of time to invest in the process and just want something decent, not necessarily the best possible.

Klipsch and PSB are both hit-or-miss products to these ears. When they get it right, they do it very well, but there's some models that just make you wonder why they even bother.

Aperion plays it fairly safe, but probably won't ever achieve a mass appeal.

Oh well. Thanks for the link. Always fun to throw my 2 cents out there.
Excellent post.

I think what the article really shows is not that Aperion or Klipsch are better than Paradigm, PSB and Dynaudio but that speaker preferences are totally subjective...

Speakers are designed/voiced to sound a particular way. Totally different design goals and priorities leads to very different sounding speakers. One brand focuses on dynamics and full range capabilities, while another focuses primarily on mid-range accuracy and clarity. Which one is better??? Depends on who you ask...

Some listeners are concerned with only one genre of music and pick the best speakers for that genre, others (like myself) have very wide tastes and need speakers that are essentially all rounders.

IMHO, reviews should be used as helpful guides in determining what products you really should audition before you make a final purchase decision. But You should NEVER buy a product just based on reviews (unless you are convinced that you and the reviewer have the same tastes in gear).