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DESIGNER'S RANT
Despite the dramatic improvements in virtually every link of the audio chain, there is still widespread abuse of the buying public and contempt for the laws of physics. Or let’s just say, some people believe their products exist in a plane above natural law.
On one hand, how can people make such grossly flawed products and even more cynical, vacuous claims for them and on the other hand, how can people buy them? Do they deserve each other?
Today, thankfully, marketing departments don’t write all of the specifications. Specs now have some integrity in many product areas. Mostly that is. In the area of the industry that used to be called “cutting edge” but which is now called “high end”, it is still the wild west and Bagdad-after-dark all at once.
I used to design mass market gear and I know the engineers are telling the marketing people “You can get rid of this problem and make this a lot better by spending $2.50 here.” “Now let’s see...” ponders the marketing honcho, “... but do we want the 14th layer of hand rubbed lacquer to be gloss or matt?” “Or do I want to go to Maui instead of St. Kitts this February?” “No one is going to listen to these things anyway.” The world of the marketing guru is a complex place.
But it isn’t all the marketing guys. Some of them actually care. The tech guys can be the source of the problem. Self-delusion is a good part of it. Pour your heart and soul into an idea for 2 years and it starts to sound like the second coming even if, in reality, it wouldn’t outperform a 1962 transistor radio. We can see this in audio, the stock market, and every other area of human endeavour. People tend to buy into whatever vehicle they happen to be riding. Call it team effort, mass hysteria, social bonding, unwillingness to rock the boat, not biting the hand, tunnel vision, the quest for the holy grail, whatever.
When it comes to relationships, everyone else has it better than you do but when it comes to your current great idea and your wallet is attached to it, your version of perfection is a worldbeater. Once you are on board, it is tough to walk away from your baby.
A few of the choice irritants out of a crowd of dozens.
Whizzer cones are designed to disperse/radiate the high frequency output (or noise) from the voice coil of a woofer in place of using a tweeter. The first loudspeaker I ever build in the early ‘70s had a whizzer cone. Sounded great. But that was my last whizzer cone speaker. All of my subsequent designs have been better.
Expensive speakers with resonant cabinet walls tuned “to sound like a violin”. What happens when you play jazz? The driver diaphragm should be the only surface making sound. Everything else is noise.
Speaker cables or interconnects that are actually filters. If you have a problem so severe that these actually help you, change something else in your system.
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