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What are the world's best speakers to bring the philharmonic into your living room?

For me an essential thing for creating the illusion of listening to an orchestra play is the sense of hall, hall ambience. Space between the instruments, each instrument well located in that space, including the reflections from the hall’s architecture, and of course all the partials in the sound resolved realistically.

In fact the best results I’ve had for that were with quite small speakers - Spendor SP1s with a Krell KSA - that Krell with Quad ESL 63s doesn’t produce the same results (though it is impressive in other ways.)

I wouldn’t be surprised if amp, and room, mattered - the focus on speakers in the thread title is potentially misleading.
 
In most homes, once you get more than just 2m from the speakers, you are hearing more reflected sound from the room than direct sound.

The room is a huge part of the equation.

This is why putting the best components in a room wont give great sound.

Just walk around a hifi show and you’ll hear lots of good equipment sounding bad.
 
I would consider TAD Reference Ones, large 3- or 4-way horns Avantgarde, Cessaro, Tune Audio), large Vivid Giya.
 
Robert Sinden said:
In most homes, once you get more than just 2m from the speakers, you are hearing more reflected sound from the room than direct sound.

The room is a huge part of the equation.

This is why putting the best components in a room wont give great sound.

Just walk around a hifi show and you’ll hear lots of good equipment sounding bad.
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You can overcome that by using narrow dispersion speakers such as horns or ELSs.

But some people, perhaps most people prefer more early reflections because it widens the soundstage and increases the sense of envelopment or immersion.
 
tuga said:
You can overcome that by using narrow dispersion speakers such as horns or ELSs.

But some people, perhaps most people prefer more early reflections because it widens the soundstage and increases the sense of envelopment or immersion.
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And this may well be why I find my little Spendors (SP1) so satisfying even though my ESLs are probably better and certainly have better equipment in the chain. There is a very involving sense of ambience, of space. Of all the speakers I have, the Spendors are the speakers I enjoy the most, and listen too the most.
 
John Phillips said:
From my PoV the question in the title is the wrong question. I doubt the reasonableness of reproducing an orchestra as though it were in my listening room. YMMV, of course but for me, better is creating a credible window onto a performance space (often more as created in the mixing/mastering suite than a real space).

In doing this, something that is often omitted from discussion is preserving the music's dynamic range. Classical music often has peaks 15 dB above the mean level. Electronica perhaps 20 dB. Preserving the frequency response is often uppermost in people's minds but IMHO preserving the dynamics without undue compression is perhaps more important.

John Atkinson measured the true peak level of an orchestra at 108 dB SPL in mid-hall (with special kit, not a standard level meter). Without trying out loudspeakers at home, finding out for sure whether they will do the job cleanly without too much distortion obscuring low-level detail is very difficult. Even when a manufacturer's figures are given (e.g. the Steinway Lyngdorf's 132 dB SPL - but only down to 120 Hz it seems) there's never enough detail of how it's tested to be sure.

Professional studio monitors above a certain size should be capable. For the consumer, the B&O Beolab 90 for example will do around 120 dB SPL over most of the audio range (source: Keith Howard in a HFN article). They should be good at John Atkinson's measured peak. And there are a few others too.

But for sure don't forget preserving the dynamic range.
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How true!

About the concert hall realism, moving the orchestra into your listening room. No I dont think it's ever possible BUT if you imagine you have your own box at the opera/concert hall and the wall with the speakers is the opening out to the hall, it might be possible. And, of course, in real life only the priviledged has their own box, you will be one of them ;-)

My memories of concert hall music is mostly how unstrained and light it sounds, compared to a HiFi. Can't remember hearing much of the fabled 'sound stage', though.

I have a pair of full size JBL 1970's monitors, but they are simply to colored for the job, currently use them as subs. And I have tinnitus anyway, loud is, sadly, not for me anymore.
 
I had a set of B&W 801 in a room that was the former ballroom of the Brazilian consulate. It was incredible with large scale recordings. It is the speaker in combination with the room that delivered it and I don't think I could replicate that sound without the space.
 
Bose 901s are perhaps the most convincing I have heard .And I have owned every type of speaker.They are not especially good speakers but they do exactly what they were designed to do-which is to give a fairly convincing reproduction of the scale,weight and spread of an orchestra.The vast majority of more audiophile speakers fail to do that.
 
RJohan said:
About the concert hall realism, moving the orchestra into your listening room. No I dont think it's ever possible BUT if you imagine you have your own box at the opera/concert hall and the wall with the speakers is the opening out to the hall, it might be possible. And, of course, in real life only the priviledged has their own box, you will be one of them ;-)
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Likewise. For me the benchmark for reproducing a BBC Radio 3 live broadcast (orchestral or otherwise) is to be able to adjust the volume control to convince me that my listening chair is, in effect, somewhere in the hall at a believable and enjoyable position with respect to an audio image that is typically beyond the room. With my current system it's typically somewhat forward of mid-hall. For the RAH it's like having a seat in the arena rather than the stalls.
RJohan said:
My memories of concert hall music is mostly how unstrained and light it sounds, compared to a HiFi. Can't remember hearing much of the fabled 'sound stage', though.
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I entirely agree with "unstrained and light". Some loudspeakers sound uncomfortable to me at audio levels below what I find gives a believable image. If so I can't achieve my benchmark. Possibly they are getting too close to their limits on peak levels - especially for a large orchestra - and messing up the reproduction of low-level detail and instrument separation during the louder passages.
 
Probably the best sound you will ever hear from a domestic speaker system, assuming you have to room to accommodate them...

Omega-1.jpg
 
I've been deliberating on this one for a bit, and I need some more info from the original poster. Wich Philharmonic are we talking about here. They're not all the same. I mean for something like the Royal Concertgebouw I doubt I'd pair them with the same speakers that I'd employ with the New York Philharmonic, as an example. :)
 
IME, Big speakers in a big room with lots of soft furnishings is always the answer to reproducing any live program material accurately and at realistic SPLs and achieving a good simulation of a live event in a domestic environment - it doesn't matter if it's classical, jazz or rock.

Big Harbeths, Kefs, ATC's or Spendors spring immediately to mind as having a reputation for being accurate and having a LOT of dynamic headroom.
 
Indeed, I'm afraid I too feel the posts about the Steinway speakers is erring into the field of advertising. I'm sure they are very good as you say but I also feel that the implied criticism of ATC is unfair.

It is undeniable that ATC produce the world's most respected studio monitors, and they're probably used as main monitors in more studios than anything else because they are so transparent, neutral and accurate. Not only that but artists such as Pink Floyd, Coldplay, Kate Bush, Mark Knopfler, Keith Urban, the Rolling Stones, Enya, Sting - in short a roll call of the greatest recording artists in history use them for recording and mixing their music. On top of that they have been specified for use in major mastering suites and performance spaces such as the Royal Festival Hall and Sydney Opera House, the Royal Opera House, Ronnie Scotts and Sony mastering suites, Electronic Arts. In short they are a world standard for the reproduction of music, chosen by people with almost limitless budgets who simply want the best and have no axe to grind. Small wonder then that their domestic speakers are so extraordinary and unlike anything else at the price. All ATC speakers are voiced to have a similar tonal signature and their domestic range use variants of the same drivers as their professional range. It stands to reason then that if you want to get closest to what the engineer heard in an ATC equipped studio when the album was recorded you use ATC at home.

Here's Blackbird studios in Nashville, Dolby ATMOS done ATC style!!

nashvilles-blackbird-studio-makes-no-small-plans-builds-out-for-dolby-atmos-music-with-15-atc-monitors-6-atc-subwoofers


http://atcloudspeakers.co.uk/2019/1...-music-with-15-atc-monitors-6-atc-subwoofers/

I can't even begin to imagine how fantastic that room must sound!

I'm a huge fan of the band Del Amitri and some of their earlier albums in particular are great recordings. I just learned that their forthcoming album was recorded at a residential studio equipped with ATC main monitors. It will be interesting to hear their first album of new material since 2004 as they are up there with the Beatles as my favourite artists. It will also be interesting to hear it played back on ATC in my lounge, just as it was in the studio control room when it was recorded and mixed.

Birdseed
 
I'm happy with my Tannoys and they do a respectable job of recreating an orchestra, but if I had buckets of money to spare I'd want to try the ginormous MBLs if for no other reason than they look like something out of a sci-fi TV show. Star something I think it's called.

b561f3d84bba8823d75bcec42ab1ab14.jpg



I can't say I recognize the song the Genesis Device is playing, but if it has 5.48 megatonnes of bass it's likely something by Trentmøller.

Joe
 
If you have spent a small (?) fortune on speakers which are intended to radiate sound in all directions... why would you then stand dirty great big cabinets right up by one side of them?

Like, derrrrr...
 
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