Subjective vs Objective opinions
Reply #124 – 2009-05-24 17:06:30
I think most decent speakers sound 90% the same anyway. A little bass extra bass one one, a slightly humped up midrange on another, some bumped on trebles on a third, etc. So what? All of them are taking an input (music) and putting it out, albeit a little differently. I've rarely heard a speaker that takes in an input and puts out something that doesn't sound like the original at all. If you really want to rigorously approach speaker selection you have to take into account room acoustics, damping, hardware placements, etc. All of which, arguably, isn't automatically going to give me any more enjoyment when I listen to music. As far as buying speakers, I'm in the same boat as you. Years ago I purchased a pair of good headphones and got rid of my speaker rig because of life circumstances. I've found headphone listening to be very enjoyable and got a 2.1 computer speaker setup for those days I want my head to be free. From time to time I think about putting some money down on a nice speaker rig, but I have little incentive since I already have something I find quite satisfactory. This is exactly how I feel about things. Generally speaking, size will matter with the sound a speaker outputs, but systems of similar size and structure basically do sound the same, given the same environment and music. I had to go the headphone route when I was in college dorms and later when I moved into my own apartment just because I didn't want to have the world to have to tolerate my musical choices. I eventually did buy a small 2.1 system from Altec Lansing because I didn't want to always wear headphones yet not blow the house down. It does its job with some equalizer tweaking to minimize bass boominess. Do I enjoy music any less? Nope. There are many more serious things to worry about than to know that my speakers reproduced a cymbal crash perfectly.