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

Most classical music labels' mixing and mastering suites, and most orchestra's control rooms use different iterations of B&W 800s, 801s and 802s.



BIS Records
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Polyhymnia International (former Philips Classics)
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Emil Berliner Studios
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EMI Abbey Road Studios
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Boston Symphony Orchestra hall
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Chicago Symphony Orchestra hall
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Münchner Philharmoniker Gasteig
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marshanp said:
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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If you’d heard these speakers with the bass towers you wouldn’t question the placement. They leave every other speaker you’ve ever heard in the dust.
 
Maybe... but given that low frequencies are not directional, before parting with my cash I would ask the sales person to play them with *one* “bass tower” positioned in the middle, well away from the omnidirectional drivers.

(Something tells me that my available cash does not extend to these leviathans... and I wouldn’t want them in my house, anyway!)
 
Tuga, I spent some time in Abbey Road Studio 2 with those B&W's driven by a brace of Bryston amplifiers and the sound was fantastic.

It's interesting that historically people in the hi-fi world tended to think that speakers that were good for studio mixing and mastering did not make for enjoyable loudspeakers in the home but that view seems to have diminished in recent years and ATC, BMW, Dynaudio and PMC are big players in both fields. Personally I think neutrality and accuracy are equally important in both environments. I have never wanted to have speakers that euphonically colour the sound, just speakers that reproduce what is on the source material as accurately as possible.

Quad were right when they said the goal is a straight wire with infinite gain.

Wish I could figure out how to insert pics as you have managed to do!

Birdseed
 
Joe P said:
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.

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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
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Although impressive, or can be, the trouble with these MBLs is a lot of the sound comes from above the speaker between the speaker and the ceiling, so it gives an unrealistic picture of the sound.
 
G T Audio said:
Although impressive, or can be, the trouble with these MBLs is a lot of the sound comes from above the speaker between the speaker and the ceiling, so it gives an unrealistic picture of the sound.
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I’ve not had the pleasure of listening to their top of the range models, but their smallest and midrange models give a very convincingly realistic picture of the performer making music.
 
I never got the idea of recording a diffuse field with directional mics and then trying to recreate the original sound with omni directional speakers and hoping the extra diffusivity of the speakers made up for the directional capture of the mics.

Intercepting the sound with directional mics and then projecting it back with directional speakers seems so much more obvious given typical Mic placement.

I bet MBL's et al could sound mega with appropriate Mic setup
 
As an experiment recently I compared my MBL126s with my Kef LS50s and the imaging was much more precise with the MBLs.

I think that omnis tend to be lumped together as having a diffuse sound field. In the case of MBLs and German Physiks a diffuse sound field doesn’t describe them at all. Sadly not many people get to hear them in the UK and MBL at shows have a reputation for demonstrating volume over finesse. One proviso is that they do need, in my room at least, careful room positioning to achieve pin point imaging but the listening position is much wider than with other designs. In that respect they are the opposite of Quad 57s and Martin Logans.

The good news is that as well as good imaging one gets what can best be described as a holographic or 3D illusion of the instruments being played in front of one. That of course isn’t right for everyone.
 
tuga said:
Most classical music labels' mixing and mastering suites, and most orchestra's control rooms use different iterations of B&W 800s, 801s and 802s.

WryZ5Ey.jpg

wivjNbH.jpg
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People record major projects with the Yamaha 02R? Bleah. Please tell me these are outdated photos.
 
My local dealer came to our house recently to collect a couple of trade-in items, and I played my system with its Duevel Planets to him. Just for twenty minutes, because he had not heard omnidirectional speakers before. He seemed rather taken aback...

I passed the shop a couple of weeks later, and there in the window were... Duevel Planets :cool:
 
camverton said:
As an experiment recently I compared my MBL126s with my Kef LS50s and the imaging was much more precise with the MBLs.

I think that omnis tend to be lumped together as having a diffuse sound field. In the case of MBLs and German Physiks a diffuse sound field doesn’t describe them at all. Sadly not many people get to hear them in the UK and MBL at shows have a reputation for demonstrating volume over finesse. One proviso is that they do need, in my room at least, careful room positioning to achieve pin point imaging but the listening position is much wider than with other designs. In that respect they are the opposite of Quad 57s and Martin Logans.

The good news is that as well as good imaging one gets what can best be described as a holographic or 3D illusion of the instruments being played in front of one. That of course isn’t right for everyone.
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Experiments I've done tend to concur what you say. My explanation is: With omnis the listener will first get the direct sound from the speaker, then, after a short delay, a myriad of reflected sound coming from every possible direction and therefore being diffuse. Diffuse meaning you cant really hear where the individual sounds are coming from. Omnis will HIDE the acoustics of the living room.
With direct radiators you will get much less reflected sound and to make things even worse, with common placement of the speakers, reflections of (lets say the side walls) will reach the listener from left and right at the excact same time. You will hear much more of the living room and less of whats in the recording.

Sadly, never heard MBL's... At least they can justify the price with their own bespoke technology (instead of buying a bunch of ready made Danish/Norwegian drivers, cooking up a filter, banging tyogether a box from MDF and then letting a over payed car painter blow on a finishing color).
 
Johan, if you read the review I linked to it talks about the precedence effect, a well established acoustic principle, around which the MBL’s are designed. As Camverton said, when placed correctly MBLs localise sound sources very well and my big 101’s do so too, but the sound field produced is more enveloping and akin to what you hear listening to live music than the spot-miked pinpoint placement of conventional speakers. Personally I want to hear the acoustics of the recording space, not the acoustics of the listening room.

Once you are used to hearing this it’s hard to go back. My previous speakers were B&W 800 D2’s, a very fine speaker, but not a patch the MBL’s.
 
I’ve seen many clients in the last few months who are removing B&W 800s series speakers in favour of much smaller sub/sat and in wall combinations and getting far better sound.

While the 800’s are fab speakers they simply don’t sound good in 90% of the rooms I see them in. You can’t put a full range speaker in a regular UK sized room and expect good sound, the bass and mid bass will be hugely exaggerated at some frequencies and will almost disappear at other.

Listen to a piano recording on this type of system and it will be awful.

The question people should be asking is not “what is the best speaker” but what will give the best results in my room. Small speaker with subs may not look as sexy but they will give better results and deliver full range sound at a fraction of the price of full range speakers.
 
Yank said:
People record major projects with the Yamaha 02R? Bleah. Please tell me these are outdated photos.
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They're current, some of them of newly refurbished rooms.

But these are for Classical Music.


Pop/rock and the like is monitored in all sorts of different equipment and sometimes even on headphones.
 
camverton said:
I’ve not had the pleasure of listening to their top of the range models, but their smallest and midrange models give a very convincingly realistic picture of the performer making music.
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The MBL's give a big open sound but its not realistic if you are comparing the sound to how you would hear music in a concert hall. Also you need a big powerful amplifier to drive them.
 
marshanp said:
My local dealer came to our house recently to collect a couple of trade-in items, and I played my system with its Duevel Planets to him. Just for twenty minutes, because he had not heard omnidirectional speakers before. He seemed rather taken aback...

I passed the shop a couple of weeks later, and there in the window were... Duevel Planets :cool:
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It's a bit of a risk. On the one hand audiophiles like to try new stuff but omni listeners, like ESL/dipole and horn, are but a small niche...
 
G T Audio said:
The MBL's give a big open sound but its not realistic if you are comparing the sound to how you would hear music in a concert hall. Also you need a big powerful amplifier to drive them.
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Interesting that your experience is so different. What sort of music do you listen to and what sort of concert hall? Which omnis have you listened to and how have they been set up?
 
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