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I was lied to...

chartz said:
Mmm. I will never mix hi-fi and TV. Two different worlds!
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I'm not even particularly bothered about TV... a 20" old CRT thing with sound through built in 4" speaker is adequate. Much the same attitude that non audiophiles have towards hi fi I guess... ie that they think a sound bar or blue tooth speaker is perfectly adequate... Yer na that's a sure sign of age that first examples of poor cheap sound gear that come to mind is music centres and stacking systems... and both are probably now only used as props for 70's based TV progs these days!
 
Listened to some pro brands like Amphion, Barefoot (those were impressive), Genelec, Hedd, ATC’s, Lipinski, Geithain (beautiful sounding speaker) and many others. Came close, but they were just missing a bit of the wow factor when closing my eyes. By the way, moving pro you can just forget about what they look like. Hardest part was losing the bling factor of audiophile stuff, which then forced me to focus only on the sound.
 
chartz said:
I for one use a 200 W power amp with large 95 dB speakers.
I rarely go over 10 W in my 40 square metre room.
And that is very loud.
https://cabasse.vraiforum.com/t1244-Essai-Galion-IV-en-1980.htm
Funnily enough, the same amp feeding my ‘57’s will also rarely be used over 10 W. ;)
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The B&W's are prob more like 87-89dB/W but the main point here is that if you had a live band playing there you would soon realise that what you think is very loud is nowhere near realistic levels. My now retired and acting as monoliths at top of stairs KEF Ref 105/3's are about 95dB/W and even my Leak St20 could drive them to what many would consider stupidly loud volumes, but I blew a tweeter (hence they're retired!) using 90WPC to try and achieve what I considered genuinely live levels when I got home, half cut, from an early afternoon pub gig and found all neighbours out and thought "I've just heard within the last ten mins what realistic levels actually are, I've got big efficient speakers and a total of 180W RMS in a small room.... this should be able to do it..." I got up to what seemed similarly but not quite as loud... and it was the loudest I'd ever played the 105/3's.. it was sounding fecking awesome! I didn't actually hear any clipping but after about ten mins the left speaker suddenly sounded like a blanket had been thrown over it and I cursed and cursed in the instant realisation of what had happened...
 
Listening to noise and distortion, whether first,second or third in the chain means listening to less of the music.

First is of course your mains cable and fuse ;)
 
Arkless, you are getting ahead of me and right on track!

Arkless Electronics said:
The B&W's are prob more like 87-89dB/W but the main point here is that if you had a live band playing there you would soon realise that what you think is very loud is nowhere near realistic levels. My now retired and acting as monoliths at top of stairs KEF Ref 105/3's are about 95dB/W and even my Leak St20 could drive them to what many would consider stupidly loud volumes, but I blew a tweeter (hence they're retired!) using 90WPC to try and achieve what I considered genuinely live levels when I got home, half cut, from an early afternoon pub gig and found all neighbours out and thought "I've just heard within the last ten mins what realistic levels actually are, I've got big efficient speakers and a total of 180W RMS in a small room.... this should be able to do it..." I got up to what seemed similarly but not quite as loud... and it was the loudest I'd ever played the 105/3's.. it was sounding fecking awesome! I didn't actually hear any clipping but after about ten mins the left speaker suddenly sounded like a blanket had been thrown over it and I cursed and cursed in the instant realisation of what had happened...
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I do have a drum set and an electric bass in the same room, plus an acoustic piano in another room and you’re right.
I don’t even try :)
As far as TV is concerned there is a Beolab 6000 each side of the 50-incher and it’s plenty enough.
 
What I found with most of the pro audio music speakers was they were really made for near or mid-field listening, were very accurate, but also very analytical. Still closer than regular hifi speakers. I would recommend a listen, especially the big Geithein, Barefoot, and Lipenski. The pro audio guys are a completely different bunch, especially in terms of what’s important to them.
 
I got a pretty good sense of what the pro audio side could offer, so then decided the next terrain would be pro cinema, which was actually very close to the pro audio side. The challenge is that it is practically impossible to demo pro cinema gear. I took a punt and bought 3 JBL 3677’s and figured it would a least give me a sense of what they can do. Wow! Absolutely amazing with movies but that 15 inch woofer and one inch compression driver gave me a sense of that direction with music (Arkless). It was doing things no other speaker had done. It wasn’t very refined, the highs were a bit rolled off, but... so I got three more!
 
I began to do my research to move further in that direction. It does make sense that pro cinema speakers would sound good with movies and music, since soundtrack and dialogue are crucial to the movie experience. I couldn’t quite find the one speaker that I felt would give me everything, so went about creating it from JBL’s pro cinema line. At the end, it is a three way active pair of speakers, using JBL’s 1.5 inch compression driver in a horn, two 15 inch woofers in the top cabinet, and an 18 inch woofer in the bottom cabinet. In putting it all together, this got the closest to a live sound I have ever heard. It was still missing a bit of refinement, so added 4 inch beryllium diaphragms to the compression drivers. They have an efficiency of around 103db/w that easily goes down to 24hz. It has scale, dynamics, and that pressure you get in your chest from live music, four 15 in woofers will do that. Sound stage and imaging, texture and tone are realistic. The imaging doesn’t feel forced or artificial, especially in a treated room. Instruments sound real whether you are in front of it, or you are upstairs, sounding like a band is playing. Previously I found only certain types of music would sound good on my system, but everything sounds great, from my Jazz, to my son’s classical, to my daughters rap music.
 
Power amps were next and even though they are efficient speakers, they love the headroom powerful amps provide. I used JBL’s install Crown amps. Never could I imagine using Crown amps (where are the tubes?). But the amps deliver high current, clean power. Each speaker has about 1200 watts. I’m not asking the power amps to provide a sound or change the sound or give me warmth or better highs or anything else, just clean power.
 
We talked a bit about cables. Everything has been cabled with van damme copper cabling, which I believe cost me £450 for a 100 meters, less than a third of the cost of my tone arm cable. Everything hooked up with £10 xlr cables.
 
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