There are bad speakers. There are speakers that are OK. There are great speakers, and then there are fantastic speakers. The quality of a speaker unit depends on the components and materials used, along with how it's constructed. Most mass-produced speaker units are designed with low-cost components to appeal to a more general market.
Producing sound is relatively straightforward. Pretty much anything can produce sound. Hold a ruler on the edge of a desk, flick it, and it will vibrate producing sound. This is enhanced by the vibrations being transferred to the desk. Speakers use a similar principle, but the enclosure is usually designed to minimise how much it vibrates, allowing the vibrations instead to come from the acoustic drivers only. The design of the enclosure is the most critical factor as it is 'tuned' to work with the acoustic drivers that are chosen for the unit. The best enclosures are those that are assembled by hand because there are too many limiting factors when using mass-produced processes or automation. Assembling an enclosure by hand requires a great deal of skill, but the results are far better, and the unit can last much longer.
The size of a speaker enclosure can introduce challenges. A speaker enclosure that's considered significantly large may require a lot of stiffening to reduce panel resonances. Large speaker enclosures are also heavy, bulky items, needing care during assembly. Equally, smaller enclosures can be challenging as tolerances are tighter, and the sound output is more difficult to tune. It's harder producing lower frequency sound in smaller enclosures as air volume involved is much smaller. Many speaker manufacturers use different techniques to help with this, but it is one of the biggest challenges of speaker design.
The Bass Clef is a speaker system that is assembled and finished by hand. It is considered a compact to medium-sized enclosure with a smart internal design structure. Each unit undergoes various levels of inspection to ensure the sound it produces is impressive and on-par with speaker systems far bigger. Premium materials are selected for the construction of the enclosure, and this can't be compared with a mass-produced speaker system of similar size. Each panel is machined to tight tolerances and assembled carefully to eliminate any unwanted resonances or noise. At every stage of the enclosure construction, various tests are performed to ensure the enclosure meets the high-quality standard that is expected of it. It is then finished with a hard-wearing coat giving it its signature look.
The components that drive the unit are carefully positioned within the unit to ensure vibration and noise are eliminated. They have been carefully selected and tested to ensure longevity, performance and top-quality sound. The optional complimentary stand is made similarly, by hand.
Produce tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of units, and all of a sudden, the processes used in the construction need to change. Making a complete speaker unit by hand at these volumes is not usually viable, so a lot of automation is introduced. Automation requires certain materials and specific designs. That creates some restriction on the overall sound quality the system can produce. Use lower cost acoustic drivers to produce sound, and hey presto, you have a speaker system that works but produces mediocre sound. Sound quality improves at a logarithmic rate with design and construction enhancement. That means that even though sound improvement may be subtle, it will have taken a lot more build enhancement. Just how far do you go with this? The Bass Clef has taken the enhancement to a level that is adequate to be top-class. It could go further, but given the logarithmic scaling between construction quality and sound quality, any further differences would be so small that they are not justified.
