Lest you think I am a speaker review glutton, my three evaluations just happen to coincide with our annual speaker issue. Some time ago, these manufacturers asked me to review their speakers, which are all significantly different designs. I thought it a good idea to publish all the reviews in one issue.

Along with amplifiers and record/play stand-alone equipment, speakers are great products to review. They are the last stage of the audio chain to reach your ears, and the one of the easiest to discern differences between varying models in the same class from different manufacturers.

Procedures

When I review speakers, I follow a set of typical procedures that does not vary much from review to review. First, I listen to the highest resolution playback material I can find, which includes my own high-bit rate, high sampling rate PCM recordings, and commercial DVD-As and SACDs. PAR technical consultant Tom Jung has made some fine ones that I use for my reference listening.

Next comes the playback equipment. The gear ranges from the high-end Esoteric DV-50 universal player, a Sony DAT player, an Alesis MasterLink with a Benchmark DAC-1 converter, Mac G5 with Lynx PCI converter card, and, yes, folks, a turntable and reel-to-reel half-track for that total analog immersion.

I always use the same basic cables for my speakers, which are either 12-gauge Alpha-Core solid copper conductor or Kimber Cable stranded wire.

I usually do basic measurements of the speaker in my listening room with an AudioControl RTA to get a sense where a speaker's strength and weakness are. On-site measurements are especially useful to check out the bass response. Mind you, my room is not an anechoic chamber but with some minimal treatment it is fairly clean sounding with most speakers that stress accuracy. When I evaluate speakers, I spend a lot of time listening to them, about 30 - 40 hours on average over a six-week period. By the end of the subjective evaluation, I have a thorough, tonal memory of the speaker's characteristics.

From A to B

I have used speaker switch boxes to do blind A/B comparisons, but I seldom have more than one pair of comparable speaker pairs on hand. Thus, long-term listening affords, I believe, a more accurate way for me to review one speaker pair at a time.

In all my listening to speakers, I still believe that the ultimate speakers are still passive because you can select the best amp for the best speaker, and the transparency of the amp cannot be overlooked. But powered speakers are narrowing the gap with each generation. The digital amps are getting better and the electronic crossover improves accuracy. I am sure that one day there will be a powered speaker equal to or better than the high-end passive speaker with a separate amp.

Currently, there are very good powered speakers that range from expensive down to down-right bargains. The JBL LSR6325s and Blue Sky MediaDesk, reviewed in this issue are examples of the latter.

Speaking of speakers, I would like to welcome Tom Nousaine to the pages of PAR. Tom has been doing objective speaker measurements for technical magazines for more than 15 years. His bench tests will accompany select, subjective speaker evaluations in PAR. His precise measurements and analytical observations will offer that bit of extra information to help the end-user make their buying decisions.

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