Thoughts about loudspeakers, part one:

 

From a historical point of view much confusion about verbatim fidelity audio reproduction in the context of placement in a playback room has long existed. Amar Bose wrote several technical papers while at MIT on this topic called the SECOND VENUE PROBLEM. The contention was that no matter what the acoustics of the playback room are, they are not the acoustics of the original performance venue, in the case of a playback living room compared to a performance hall really, extremely different. Thus in order to achieve the best, i.e., highest fidelity playback, how should we handle the playback room? Early thoughts were to make it relatively anechoic, or 'echo-less', using room boundary absorbers, heavy drapes, and so on, and a good theoretical, if perhaps not a good aesthetic, case can still  be made for this approach. 

 

High audio fidelity actually began in movie theaters, with the first talkies, and finally in our own time, one of the answers to the second venue problem arrived from this source with the increasing popularity of  Home Theater surround sound and digital multi-channel decoding in tandem with massive computer processing, so that even an average $1000.00 dollar or less 7.1 or 7.2 receiver can be exquisitely matched into a playback room. In addition, many of the sounds in the soundtrack, the Foley work and special effects never existed in the real world anyway, and are computer created or modified in a playback room context: created really for the first time with computer processing for that specific playback room.

 

As the number of  channels requiring transducers/loudspeakers continues to rise, in Dolby ATMOS as many as 36 in a home living room, finding musically accurate and aesthetically friendly location  solutions become ever more important.

 

The other pathway to ultimate high end audio fidelity used some speaker technologies developed for film theaters, such as large corner horns, but more frequently used and uses loudspeaker technologies  developed for high fidelity audio only playback, such as large freestanding planar electrostatic panels or planar magnetic systems, while also including highly refined moving coil cone drivers within exquisite cabinet enclosures. This two channel stereophonic, 'Golden Age' technology is very much alive, and is often pure analogue, with high speed open reel tape and vinyl analogue recordings as playback sources.

 

I think a good case can be made for either approach, and certainly vinyl analogue is one of the fastest growing sectors of the market, while in the US stores like Best Buy and Target are giving up CD sales completely, removing all CD stock from stores.