Very true...in the end they are your ears.We all have our tastes!
Greg

My approach to speaker building is to build to the room and when that's not possible, the use of systems designed to control directivity are often times the best approach. This could be by use of a dipole and their figure 8 dispersion pattern which tends to reduce early reflections that smear the presentation. It can also be done by use of Horns and/or larger drivers. Another important factor is listening level. If you want to regularly be playing in the 100-110 dB range, it's probably a good idea to either looks for very well designed conventional drivers with good heat sinking abilities (to limit compression) or better yet, go the high efficiency route.

Basically, my answer is that it depends on many things including, room, amplifier, listening levels, etc. One thing I feel has no bearing on it is the music you listen to.

Since picking up the Seeburg speakers and hearing Altec 811 horns through tubes I'm pretty much hooked. The clarity, and presence is hard to describe, but it is what I have been looking for I just didn't know it. I have as of today bought an active X-over and I am going to bi-amp these suckers. I will run the Dared mono blocks through the horns and the Stromberg Carlson w/ quad KT 88's powering the quad of 15" drivers. I get a chill just thinking about it....What can I say you bi-amped guys have inspired me

Once I got my maggies all other speakers seemed very lacking in the mid range. Colored as well. I;m guessing modern maggies with more low and high extension would be my speaker system of choice. I just love the quickness, realism, depth, and breath of this type of speaker. After that I have a think for three ways using soft domes as mids and tweets like ADS speakers. Always sounded right to me. Clear, crisp, articulate but not brittle and harsh.

My first post in this thread was a bit biased at the time. My philosophy is this:

1) Find/Get em
2) Hook em up
3) Listen to em
4) Stack/Store em
5) Rinse & Repeat

Oops forgot to lather . You get the idea.

I have to agree, I will know in a couple of seconds whether I like a set of speakers or not.

they need to be a full range, smooth, but crisp, with a nice sized sound stage, and i'm hooked.

wow, I tried to talk like I knew what i was saying,

elroy

Having designed a few... I've come up with a few "tricks" that seem to make the job easier, and give results that more consistently work:

1) Designing the system for PROPER DYNAMIC BEHAVIOUR. THIS IS JOB ONE. In other words, GOOD TRANSIENT RESPONSE. The system MUST retain all the "leading-edge" energy of the music, in proper balance and level. NO speaker does this perfectly, but SOME do a LOT better than others... and IMHO, this is the MAIN reason why some speakers simply sound more "live" than others!! This requires well-tuned, properly braced, properly damped enclosures, good drivers with linear motor structures (ie, low distortion under high excursion), and as low mass as can be gotten away with, and still have proper damping, propely chosen driver cone materials (to prevent hysteresis "zero-crossing" distorsions, as can be found in many plastic-cone drivers, for one example of problematic areas), well-designed crossovers (limit phase shift and time delays to a minimum), and proper driver placement (as "time-aligned" as possible, so that the drivers all emit sound to the same space, at as close to the same transit time as possible).

2) as dnewma04 mentioned, controlled dispersion. Not beaming... but a slightly "cone shaped" dispersion. The idea is not to "laser" the sound at the user (which is annoying, due to the fact that if you move your head, you lose the image!), but to avoid "spraying" sound on the side walls, the floor and the ceiling. Typically, a 120 degree wide "cone" at the point where the sound is down 6 dB from on-axis in any direction at any frequency, is a good boundary for most rooms.

3) In the same breath... CONSISTENT DISPERSION at all frequencies, in all directions. This is MUCH harder to do... and realistically, the dispersion at 20KHz will never be as much as it is at 200 Hz... and it's virtually impossible to control dispersion below 200 Hz. However... the nice thing is, that reflections in the bass are of such a long wavelength, that they don't usually "call attention" to themselves... so, if you can get consistent (ie, plus or minus 20 degreees from average) dispersion from say, 400 Hz to 10KHz, you're usually going to have good "power response"... which is to say, the balance is going to be inconsequentiallhy different (ie small difference) in any part of the room, compared to on-axis. Above 10KHz, the idea is just to avoid beaming as much as possible, and in the bottom, to just integrate the omni-directional bass with the rest of the spectrum "by ear".

4) The necessity of "tuning the bass by ear", leads to the next credo I've adopted: ADJUSTABLE BASS LEVEL AND BALANCE. This is much easier if the system is BI-AMPED... where the bass driver (200 Hz and below, roughly) is run on a different amp... and even more prefeably, if said amp has a parametric EQ or other adjustablility. Makes a BIG difference!

Of course, this is EXPENSIVE... but there are less costly ways of getting close to the goal. Adjustable enclosures (ie, where you can open or block a port, like Tannoy or late-'70s Marantz speakers), re-weightable passive radiators (where you can add or subtract weight from the passive radiator, like in speakers such as the JBL L220/L222, L77 and such), and even tricks like different height stands, putting the speaker closer or further from the wall or floor, and such. However, it's usually a compromise with the last (moving the speaker)... it's RARE that the best soundstage AND the best bass balance will co-exist at the same point in the room!

5) Also important, but better understood and more universally done than the above... EVEN, smooth frequency response. Not necessarily "ruler flat"... ie, the same SPL at 20KHz as 20 Hz, and everywhere in-between... there's SEVERAL reasons (including the absorbtion characteristics of air, which is MORE absorbant the higher the audible frequency!) that "tilting down" the spectrum (where the bass is verly SLIGHTLY higher than the highs, with a straight but "tilted" line exists between the two extremes, when graphed) can be beneficial. Since absorbtion is non-flat, as you get farther from the source, the more the bass is pronounced, compared to the highs. So, to "simulate" distance from the recorded source (ie, approximating a concert hall position of center-audience, for one example), a slight tilt-down can "duplicate" the tonal balance of longer distances than are available in a typical room...

There are literally millions of possible permutations, just with COMMONLY AVAILABLE parts, of the parameters described above... which is the primary reason why speaker building is still partly described as an "art" as well as a "science"...

Regards,
Gordon.

If they are well built and had for cheap I would snap them up. Space has now become a prob. Reputation is also a factor but I do look for odd types. In fact, if I had to do it again I would forgo the AR-2AX I just bought in favor of the unknown Starks just to have them. If I don't care for them then I can try and sell. Unfortunately, speakers are slow to move and the only set I've sold were some small B&W 202's and they were part of a deal that I traded DCM KX10 for JBL L26. Nothing is really on a must have list so it just happens to be what I come across.

Fortunately, one needn't reinvent the proper curve to create this effect. A few decades back, Brüel & Kjær did a study of psychoacoustics to determine what response curve sounded most natural to listeners (check out the current website, loads of good information regarding loudness contours, measurement, and such). What they discovered matches what you said, so designing a loudspeaker system to the attached curve should be optimal. Shame that most speakers tend to be designed sloping upwards to impress for the short term.

- JP