Scrolling through premium speaker manufacturer websites, it can be difficult to pin down a common thread between competing claims of “high-end”. Exotic membrane materials, linear-phase crossovers, curved enclosures, and even more esoteric factors are claimed by manufacturers to deliver sonic perfection. In this article, we delve into a few key attributes that we believe really make a high-end speaker.
High-end speakers typically feature high-performance drivers (woofers, tweeters, and midrange drivers) designed on solid engineering principles. However, contrary to popular belief (and much marketing), membrane materials themselves are rarely a decisive factor in the sound quality of an expertly-designed speaker (although the ways these materials are used is critical). In fact, the driver’s motor (magnet, voice coil, etc.) and suspension design, though rarely emphasised in marketing materials, tend to play a far more important role in driver linearity, dispersion, and distortion.
Achieving a smooth transition between drivers is essential for quality sound. Through advanced digital signal processing, high-end speakers employ techniques like time alignment, phase optimization, and non-standard crossover slopes to ensure that sound waves from each driver work together to effectively reproduce the signal faithfully, throughout the audible frequency range.
Expert speaker designers fine-tune their speakers through extensive testing and acoustic measurement. Combined with software optimisation, this ensures that driver placement, crossover design, and waveguide and cabinet geometry all work together to optimise not only the speaker's direct (on-axis) tonal balance, but also its dispersion pattern (radiation of sound into the three dimensions of space). This ensures that in-room reflections (which in fact account for the majority of the sound arriving at the listener) are as faithful to the original signal as the first (direct) wavefront to arrive at the listener’s ears.
The speaker enclosure's build quality is critical for minimising rattle, resonance, and coloration. High-end speakers use wood-based, aluminium, or composite materials to create rigid and acoustically inert enclosures. Curvilinear surfaces and edges help minimise and spread diffraction effects, ensuring the speaker’s tonal balance, both in the direction of the listener and throughout the rest of the room, is smooth and linear.
Having said all that, sound quality in any real room depends on more than just the engineering and craftsmanship of the speakers. An ill-chosen or poorly set–up high-end system in an acoustically difficult environment will not sound right, no matter what. See our article on room acoustics for further information.
