The Problem

The most important thing to keep in mind here is that we are trying to make music come out of loudspeakers. We are literally transcribing music generated by other acoustical sources and regenerating it through loudspeakers, which are also acoustical sources. By design, loudspeakers are supposed to mimic other sounds and have as little character of their own as possible. Nonetheless, a loudspeaker doesn't sound like a piano and in a blind testing situation I doubt that any of us are going to have much trouble distinguishing a piano from, say, a Yamaha NS10. Loudspeakers sound different than other musical instruments and we can all hear the difference.

The reason that music recording works is our well-known "willing suspension of disbelief." We are perfectly content to detect the barely recognizable timbral templates of a piano coming out of a crummy loudspeaker and say, "Hey, I really love the way Oscar plays!" rather than, "Oh Jeez, listen to those GrungeKubes, trying to sound like a piano again!" So, we recording engineers and producers get away with a lot, especially in stereo, an illusion that masks many of the deficiencies of loudspeakers. Nonetheless, it is axiomatic that we need good loudspeakers for the same musical reasons we need good traditional musical instruments: to sound good! However, life ain't easy.

Problem number one, and it's a biggie, is that, acoustically speaking, the loudspeaker includes the room it's in and its performance is inextricably tied to that room and placement.

Problem number two, and it's even bigger, is that no matter how good our loudspeakers may be, we can't control the quality of loudspeaker, sonic environment or the listening level of our listeners, the so-called end-users. Logically speaking, we're screwed! We have no say about the acoustical sonic quality of our music as played back by the folks that count, our fans.