Are You Buying The Right Speaker?!

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-21

[00:00:01][music] >> Good evening. Lou Hamilton from Audio Elegance here in Cincinnati, Ohio.

[00:00:10]We are located on Montgomery Road, a couple doors north of the Montgomery Inn, across the street from Montgomery Cyclery.

[00:00:18]And we do work on Instagram, X, Facebook, and I write a monthly blog dealing with some personal stories there with some great people.

[00:00:28]And tonight, what I wanted to address is the simple question, are you buying the right speaker?

[00:00:37]Now, there's a lot of misconceptions about what the right speaker is. There's some people who have to look at a spec sheet and that's life and end right there.

[00:00:47]Um and from my point of view, it's a pile of Okay.

[00:00:53]You have to understand starting out that speakers are fundamentally designed for three locations.

[00:01:02]Out in the room.

[00:01:05]This is what I call a full plane.

[00:01:09]So, we're going to back to basic high school um physics, so to speak. And a full plane means that the speaker has to fill the area in front of it as well as behind it.

[00:01:28]This results in the manufacturer trying to get, you know, a flat frequency response, tailoring the crossover in the driver selection so that the speaker performs admirably in this location.

[00:01:43]So, if you think about it in terms of its sound coming off the speakers, guess what? It begins to wrap around like this.

[00:01:55]Now, there's another little gem and it's the speaker that has to be positioned close to the wall.

[00:02:08]And as you can see, it's not a full plane anymore. That's the reason we call this a half plane.

[00:02:15]Because all it has to do is build off the back wall and fill the area in front of it.

[00:02:25]This requires completely different equalization than what happens to a full plane. And a little later on, I'm going to let you listen to my voice and I don't have bass, but trust me, this really affects bass. All this does I'm basically, you know, 600 650 in hertz, maybe 550.

[00:02:44]But you'll hear what happens from the different locations.

[00:02:48]Now, I would say that 95% of the industry is one of these two designs.

[00:02:56]Then, there is the favorite of some people. We used to sell them. Um what would be called the Heritage series now is the quarter plane speaker.

[00:03:09]And the most famous quarter plane speaker out there is Klipsch.

[00:03:13]Because what he was doing was loading the room so that he would only have to fill a quarter plane.

[00:03:22]And why did Paul do this? Well, it's really quite clever. Because when you're out here typically, the bass driver really has to move a long excursion. And you run the risk of what's known as intermodulation distortion, which is what you hear. You don't hear THD, okay?

[00:03:39]People get hung up on THD. It has to be 10% THD for you to hear it and by then your tweeters are already in flames.

[00:03:46]So, here you don't have to have the driver moving as much because you're building the base particularly off the back wall.

[00:03:56]Klipsch on the other hand said, "Hey, I can make it so that I don't have to move the woofer that much because I'm going to let the room essentially horn loaded."

[00:04:05]And so, if you looked at a K-horn playing it around um let's say 118 120 decibels, you know, you got drivers flying out of these guys. You couldn't even see the woofer move.

[00:04:17]Cuz he horn loaded it and he actually had it coming out sides.

[00:04:22]So, you have three different fundamental designs in speaker position. So, if you're going out to look for speakers, the first thing you got to know is where you're going to put it.

[00:04:36]Because that's going to determine what design parameter you need to follow.

[00:04:43]Now, my favorite one where people really screw things up and if you if it really shows up in home theater is they'll take a subwoofer that's really designed probably around half plane, maybe a little bit of the full, and they wind up putting them in the corner.

[00:05:06]And by God, every time I hear one of these things in a corner, you'd swear they were beating on a you know, a 25-ft diameter marshmallow. There's no definition and it just sounds like crap.

[00:05:17]Um there was once years ago a um triangular shaped subwoofer that was designed for the corner using multiple small drivers.

[00:05:27]They had it right, but nobody wanted to do this cuz it looked weird. They wanted the box.

[00:05:32]So, if you have subwoofers in your system and they're in your corners, get them out of there, please. You'll really appreciate that you'll actually have definition to the bass rather than just this thump.

[00:05:44]Um unless you're really into a stereo and then maybe that's the place for you.

[00:05:48]So, that's that. Now, let's talk about what happens within a room.

[00:05:53]In addition to knowing, you know, what the basic parameters of a speaker is, um the next thing you have to consider, and this is where a good audio shop is involved. This is not something you can find and click and push on the web, is understanding what the acoustical effects of the room are.

[00:06:15]So, based upon its dimensions and shape, the worst being the factor of this, and the ceiling height being two, where these measurements are essentially multiples of each other. This really creates what's known as a standing wave.

[00:06:34]Now, a standing wave is essentially, um an amplification of a particular frequency based upon the size and the shape of the room.

[00:06:43]Um and I'll let you look up standing waves and have some fun with that. I'm not going to get into that tonight.

[00:06:48]Now, what becomes critical is whatever you're buying, you got to live with. It's in your house, okay?

[00:07:02]Some people are fortunate enough to have their own little rooms, their little, you know, cubbyholes, and that's cool.

[00:07:07]But, most people don't.

[00:07:08]So, um one of the common problems with a floor plane design is that they have to have some breathing room to stand out. If you're using the length of the room, you have that luxury.

[00:07:25]And it's not interfering with your general use use of the room.

[00:07:29]However, you start taking something that has to sit out two or three feet on a room that may have, you know, uh 10 to 12 feet, and now you've got something very you know, obtrusive into the room. That's the only way of describing it.

[00:07:47]Um Now, of course, this may have uh consequences and good ones that that don't say that the consequences are wrong of avoiding some um standing wave issues, you know, uh this length use of the room. So, I've had speakers where uh the manufacturer says, you should do this and you place them out like this.

[00:08:10]We try to do everything we can and it doesn't sound quite right in our room.

[00:08:14]The minute we come over to the long wall, wow, it just lights up.

[00:08:20]So, um the the recommendations provided by a manufacturer are generalities.

[00:08:26]They are not absolutes because each room shape, ceiling height is different.

[00:08:33]So, the art of a good dealer is understanding how to play the room.

[00:08:41]And I've talked about this before in going to shows where there are certain um manufacturers who know how to understand the room and they play the room to as a strength.

[00:08:52]And there are others who insist upon having a certain appearance or a certain look and damn the room and if it sounds like crap, it's our equipment is great and the room is at fault.

[00:09:03]And that to me is a very lame excuse.

[00:09:06]You know, they're trying to make a look that doesn't work in the room. Make the system do what it's supposed to do, sound good. If it's all about look, don't bother plugging it in.

[00:09:17]Just have it passive and this is what it looks like because making a poor sonic presentation is worse than no sonic presentation at all.

[00:09:25]So, that's again consideration of placement between corner, quarter plane, half plane, and full plane.

[00:09:34]Now, let's show you what happens to my voice.

[00:09:39]Sorry we have to do a close-up of my ugly mug, but here I am and I'm standing out in the room as a full plane speaker.

[00:09:46]So, my voice has a certain timber uh over the limited frequencies that my voice produces.

[00:09:53]Now, I'm going to go to a half plane mode.

[00:10:00]Here I am half plane. Now, there is some absorption of the reflections of this.

[00:10:04]Ignore that. Notice how my voice has grown a bit deeper and there's not as much to the upper frequency in the limited range that I'm working from.

[00:10:14]And this is a quarter plane.

[00:10:19]Pardon me, that's a half plane. Now, I'm a quarter plane. I'm in a corner and my voice sounds dramatically different.

[00:10:28]But people who know me hear me like this.

[00:10:34]Not this.

[00:10:36]And certainly not this.

[00:10:38]Unless somebody backs me into the corner.

[00:10:41]So, that is an example what happens just to um mid-range based upon location within the same room.

[00:10:51]And so, when again, when you're looking at speakers, you have to consider where these puppies are going to go.

[00:10:58]Um there is no such thing as a perfect loudspeaker. I wish there was because then I wouldn't have to sell any other brand. I'd just have one and it'd make my life a lot simpler.

[00:11:09]But it's not that way at all.

[00:11:11]And um so, hopefully this helps you out in least when you start out speaker shopping, having an idea of what you should be looking for.

[00:11:20]And um you know, if you're looking for a small speaker with you know great performance and the guy walks you over to you know, the um like the ruthless people, the big speaker like this, you know, you know you're not talking to the right person.

[00:11:34]So, have fun. You go listen.