September 2024

The Art Of Loudspeaker Design And Engineering
Loudspeakers are the most mature component of an audio system.
Editorial By Alan Sircom

  Assembling a group of loudspeakers for review has never been too much of a problem. There's a lot of them and there are always more to be had. But more is not necessarily better. The loudspeaker maker's art is a diverse one, involving a skill set that stretches from cramming off-the-shelf drivers and a simple crossover in a wooden cabinet to extensive research by a group of PhDs into every aspect of transducer technology.

Trends in audio may come and go. Formats rise, fall... and sometimes rise again. We've had hollow-state, solid-state, amps on chips, low power, high-power, wide bandwidth and all kinds of front-ends and amplifiers. And, unless you listen on headphones... you are always going to need loudspeakers.

In many ways, loudspeakers are the most mature of all the component parts of an audio system (when Rice and Kellogg laid down the basics of modern loudspeakers almost 100 years ago, the turntable was a wind-up gramophone). The big innovations – it says here – are behind us. This argument has some credence because we are living in a post-Acoustic Suspension world, and most loudspeakers today are built around the parameters laid down in the later years of the 21st Century. But this hides a deeper truth about loudspeakers.

Even if you use a loudspeaker with a rectangular wooden box, paper cone drive units and a soft-dome tweeter (something that wouldn't look out of place more than half a century ago), the technology that goes into the construction of the components, the ability to measure to a degree beyond the science of two or three generations ago, the tolerances and materials science have developed to such an extent that today's loudspeaker design is potentially infinitely better than a model developed 50 or 60 years ago.

That being said, there were wonderful speakers from yesteryear and they remain competitive. Which invites a question... why? If the technology is so far advanced and measurement has shifted the goalposts, is it just nostalgia that keeps the classics popular?

Interestingly, I had a chance to compare old and new recently, listening to a friend's original and restored corner horns with more up-to-date models from the same brand. It wasn't an easy task, logistically speaking. And the difference was striking, in both directions. The best of the 1950s excited the room, had a sense of presence that few loudspeakers today – including the modern version – could reproduce... and it quacked like a duck! The restorer was fine with that, finding the new ones flat and dull by comparison. I couldn't live with the older ones in today's world. Maybe it's what we know shapes what we like.

Alan Sircom, Editor hi-fi+

Subscribe To Hi-Fi+
Click here to subscribe to hi-fi+ magazine.