I've been a fan of Infinity since back in the day when their Overture line came out. I think I was in middle school at the time, though I may have been a freshman. That said, I watched that video while listening with a set of Infinity Beta20's.

Anyway, enough Infinity brand talk, I saw this video where they had the user pick out which frequencies were augmented and I remember doing similar tests/observations with various songs and eq settings around a decade ago.

Too bad I didn't know about this stuff back in the day. I might have been able to get paid to listen to music on high end speakers!

What sounds good is subjective for sure. What my wife likes (relatively no bass) is far different from what I enjoy.

That's very true, just like how some instruments sound better to some than to others. That's why the top tier speakers tend to have voicing adjustments to help suit the individual listener...but I don't feel like taking out a 2nd mortgage in order to get these.

Heck, thinking about it, even some cheapers speakers came with L-pads built in so one could adjust the mid and/or tweeter levels some.

However, a few universals do hold true, ultimately leading to an accurate reproduction of the original source. And it's these that a person can listen for and rule out a "bad" design.

Sean Olive of Harman Int has a blog and has mentioned various things about speaker testing/listening, voicing options in the crossover and nationality, and various other things. It's a good read and that's also where I found out their reference listening room uses JBL LSR6332's along with I forget what (I believe 4) subwoofers for a 7.1*4 setup.
http://seanolive.blogspot.com/

...Wow, I tend to write a lot while bored at work.

I also remember, back in '93, meeting one of the main IASCA competitors from NY (can't remember his name for some reason) and listening to him describe how he designed his center channel in his Acura (not the Speakerworks Acura) by using a 3.5" speaker, a coffee cup and plastic fins to properly tune and disperse the sound waves off the windshield to receive appropriate on-axis response for both the driver and passenger. Some people simply are too smart or have a lot of time on their hands.

Right now I'm trying to learn more about adjusting flux within the motor and how one can flatten BL over a longer throw. Thus I've been reading up on various linear motor technologies. They're all pretty simple really.

I'd love to go checkout a build house, or a R&D facility for companies like JBL, Eminence, Genelec, ect. That would be awesome! Pro Audio just has so much more appeal to me than home audio...even though some of the home audio speakers really are works of art

Martin Logan's place is about 25 miles from me in the neighboring town of Lawrence and those electrostat panels are pretty cool. I'd like to check that place out some time.

BTW, out of my 7300ish posts on NICO, this is the first reply (your reply) that's ever generated an email. Weird

+1

For any 2-channel rig that's running on solid-state amplification and a digital source (i.e. if I'm listening to rock), I like speakers to be pretty bright. I really liked the MB Quart home stuff for awhile for this reason, and ditto on Mission.

Naturally, on analog source/tubes, I think bright speakers sound like poo.

I think that in the long run, my workaround for this, to avoid having to build half a dozen systems, is to have a fairly bright digital rig that's also a HT, and then just do my tube/analog system as a headphone/desk setup. I'm working on piecing the latter together to use as a desk rig at my office right meow.

Much too ambitious for me! Heh, maybe I should question me wanting to complete my electrical engineering degree and venture into chemical engineering.

You can read about the amps here.
SMPS? Blasphemy!

SMPS is nice, and am not partial to either design. Both can be implemented well.

Currently I have a class H amp with a transformer and a class I (uses an iteration of Class B with a type of PWM) amp with SMPS. My class I amp produces more power, less heat, and weighs less...but I have noticed some hiss with it. My class H though has little noise (around 110db S/N).

However, I bought that class I amp to be used with my subwoofers, so noise is not a problem and it's >2.2kW output is greatly appreciated.

So for sub use, it works great; regenerative power so to speak, efficient, and has power factor correction, which means it's immune to line sag (at 130v and 100v, it'll put out the same amount of power)...and that's why I bought it.

Your amps are interesting because it includes the tube aspect, which I'm not on the up and up with tube amp topologies. Have you an idea on a price range for your "300Wx1@8ohm" monoblock?

But, if you ever need a "beta tester"...

How can I make a performance car, cheap? Well, decrease the amount of performance.

Same can be said about that amp. You can make it cheaper by, well, making it cheaper and losing what that amp was supposed to and be. And that's why I can't yet have nice monoblocks.

With those amps, are you geared towards the electrostat crowd?

For example, something like this.