Hard to find a balance in speakers
- Thread starter Martin 52
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Collector3
Active Member
And to confirm I just put on the vinyl The Cure Disintegration, 1st pressing and then the”remaster” on 180 gr heavy weight double vinyl (bla bla). The original pressing sounds fine (as in really good), the remaster hard, loud, unfocused..crappy. Don’t change amp/speaker combination, don’t move house…look at the input and live with lesser quality recordings. rgds
Emcee
Iconoclast
I've never managed to get floor standers or largish ''colored sounding'' stand mounts (e.g. B&W, Buchardt S400) to work in my room. Bass gets unruly and fatigue sets in as soon as volume is slightly turned up.
Of course room treatment and/or correction might have been the best option but I compromised and settled for neutral room friendly stand mounts despite some drawbacks.
Of course room treatment and/or correction might have been the best option but I compromised and settled for neutral room friendly stand mounts despite some drawbacks.
Emcee
Iconoclast
And with others you need some room interaction to reinforce bass or else they can sound thin. I found that with a pair of Proac studio monitors. Pulling them out in the room sucked the life out of them. I suppose this is OK in a studio setting where you want ruler flat response but not for listening to music (IMHO)
Columbo
pfm Member
Ditto. I found the tiny Neats you could plonk them nearly anywhere and they'd sound great, the same for some Dali Opticons. Both have limited bass output and walls and corners help more than hinder. Current speakers pump out much more bass, without correction below 100hz I wouldn't be able to run them in my room, even pulling them as far out as my listening space would allow (nearly a metre!)
The multi-variate puzzle that is audio ... room modes/nodes, room liveliness/dryness, ears, tastes, music choice, source, DAC, amp, speakers, level you listen at, noise floor etc. Change one thing and it effects everything else. But, circling back, think I've become a worshipper at the room-first altar, understanding room limitations can go a long way.
gez
pfm Member
When I read things like this I can't help but conclude that the author expects their system to always produce treble, bass or mids with the same "qualative" performance for all recordings. In other words they're looking for "a sound" rather than actual accuracy.
I say this simply because real instruments vary hugely. Cymbals can be anything such as clangy, edgy, shimmering, warm and mellow for example. Bass guitars can be anything from boomy and wooly to lean with a lot of finger pick sound. If you want your cymbals or bass guitar to always sound a certain way (or narrow variation from it) then you're always going to be disapointed. That's before you even consider how the recording process can even further change the sound of instruments. Never underestimate the potential for recording and mastering to butcher the sound of an instrument. One needs to remember it's humans that make decisions about how the cymbal should end up sounding on the recording, and humans have hugely varying opinions on what sounds good: you only need to hear how different B&W speakers sound from Tannoys for example. There's nothing intrinsic about recording engineers or producers or the artists making the music, all of whom have an input in to how the final recording sounds, that makes them free from bias about what they consider "good sound".
In summary what I'm saying is that if your aim is to never have any recording sound edgy and screechy (for example) then you're going to have to accept the consequence that some recordings will sound very dull. Same goes for bass, if you believe that bass should always be reproduced in a way that all plucked/bowed notes can be heard clearly, then you need to accept that some recordings are going to sound like they have no bass at all. Because bass guitars sometimes can be configured (in combination with the stack in use) to make them just sound like a whole load of grumble muddled bass, and that's how the bassist wants it to sound. or vice verse.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: if your system reproduces trebble that is sometimes sharp and edgy and other times dull and rolled off, then your your system is probably fairly accurately reproducing the recording. Same with bass, if at times it sounds lean and top endy and others just warm and woolly, then the bass reproduction is probably about right. If either the bass or the treble, leans one way or the other and never sounds "too" something to you, then it's not accurate and you have to put up with the consequences that imposes.
Don't believe how different cymbals can sound watch (listen to) this - start at 3:19@
Or this from 9 minutes:
Or this for bass (note that he's playing all the guitars "clean" and Direct Inject (DI) so it's just the native differences of the guitars you're hearing, not the sound of any bass cab or stack):
Richard Lines
pfm Member
Good evening all,
As has been touched on above and many times previously, are you listening to/ hearing the speakers or the interaction with the room??
IMHO you need to deal with the room first either with acoustic treatment and/ or some form of DSP.
Then you know you're listening to the speakers and of course they can only play what the source allows.........
Regards
Richard
As has been touched on above and many times previously, are you listening to/ hearing the speakers or the interaction with the room??
IMHO you need to deal with the room first either with acoustic treatment and/ or some form of DSP.
Then you know you're listening to the speakers and of course they can only play what the source allows.........
Regards
Richard
Hazelberry
sister
I do this with some otherwise nasty sounding recordings. I lose a tiny bit of detail but it rounds the sharp edges off as a benefit.
I have the shop coming out Wednesday bringing the A4 with them to compare the two in my room. They are a lot better than my b&w 704 s,2 I currently have. I find music I couldn't play on the b&w stuff like oasis charlatans ocean colour scene. Are now a lot more tolerable. I know this is music not of the best recording but it's still music I like . Stuff like Norah jones alanis morissette sound amazing
Columbo
pfm Member
Sounds like you're on the right track. Couldn't find measurements of the 704s but there's a couple got the 702 s2 and they look all over the shop, I'd imagine they'd need more careful system matching and setup than most speakers to play nicely. "Attacking sound" and "commercial bass" were some of the phrases used
darrenyeats
pfm Member
To be fair a couple of friends run B&W systems and they sound very fine. And the 801D is one of my lasting hi-fi memories. As usual system and room matching is important.
jobseeker
pfm Member
I was auditioning several quite expensive speakers, but I have a very small room and there is a limit to what can be got out of it. My Luxman 507 Z amp has speaker A/B capability so, in the end, I have squeezed in two pairs of somewhat cheaper speakers than I was first considering - Neat Iota Alpha and Scansonic MB 3.5B. I’m rather enjoying having an alternative choice.
music fiend
life lusting
I must be lucky because I'm really happy with my amp+ speakers+ twin subs combo.
Whenever upgraditis strikes it's source related and never speaker related.
Whenever upgraditis strikes it's source related and never speaker related.
tuga
Legal Alien
You are not alone.
IMHO, all loudspeaker designs are compromised - well at least based upon today's technology.
You pick your compromise, which is typically limited frequency extension - tops or more commonly bottoms - limited dynamics, poor driver integration, or requiring a gazillion watts to drive them!
With all of this in mind, I recommend that you try to sample a loudspeaker with no crossover - or at least a loudspeaker with a very simple first-order crossover.
A crossover-less loudspeaker design will typically have just one driver. The likes of the OMEGA brand are a good example. (Below)
A simple first-order crossover can be found in loudspeakers like the REF 3A de Capo. (Below)
These time-proven designs seem to have a certain inherent rightness to the sound - even at very low volumes - which is a trick that too many new loudspeaker designs seems to miss.
As always, YMMV.
Indeed. I would not touch them with a barge pole
James
Lord of the Erg\o/s
That sounds more like variability of recording quality. The only way to deal with that is tone controls or EQ.
Or you have some room acoustics artefacts going on.
Mike Reed
pfm Member
'Forums are', Mick. Surprised !
Don't think I've had speakers I've been unhappy with and I'm sure I must've slipped up on compatibility a number of times in the early years. Mind you, the 'perfect speaker' is probably non-existent despite being a subjective thing anyway. Amplification and speaker synergy is, however, sth which one can do sth about; maybe it's your Marantz????? However, different sources will sound different and in the case of vinyl, it's up to the record plus arm/cart. alignment.
Of course, humidity, time of year, weather etc. can an also affect vinyl replay at least but do allow for your own changes to s.q. appraisal; ears, mood, health, whatever. If it sounds good sometimes, it's capable of sounding good period so variations in other aspects may be worth thinking about.
In my LP12 days with Naim/Briks, I psyched myself up for the session, only to be so disappointed I reverted to tele. Next time, fine. At the time (early eighties) I wondered about how things could change when nothing HAD changed. Must admit, I haven't had this aural discrepancy for some decades but I've move house a few times since.