Audiophile speakers that rock well

Rather than spending $3k on a pair of monitors, perhaps spend half of that (if not more) on a sub (even better, 2 subs). This approach lets you customize the low-end volume and crossover to your room and taste, yet maintain the imaging of great pair of monitors.

To surrender to notion that audiophile speakers can only do rock with just good recordings is not logical or accurate. Yes a lot of them actually can't. Since the genre has a lot of crappy recordings, doesn't mean we can't create systems that breathe some life into them. Yes these recordings can sound good on a boom box or car stereo and sound like hell in an "audiophile setup". However, please do not buy into the notion that you can't have your cake and eat it too. In other words there are components and speakers out there can put some air, separation, depth, and life into these type of recordings. Will it even the score with the good recordings? No way, but it also won't, as many audiophile put it, "expose all the flaws". Who wants a system that exposes flaws in their favorite music or recordings? Again, there is plenty of stuff out there the can bring some life to the poor recordings. Just have to know where to look.

monitor sized speaker
all the audiophile tricks
rock the house
without bleeding my ears
that live feeling

You are describing my Green Mountain Audio Europas. They were the first time- and phase-coherent speaker I ever heard, and also the first to properly recreate an intangible "something" from live shows that I hadn't heard any other speaker do. They have surprisingly little dynamic compression, and they get plenty loud for the hard rock/metal/hard electronic music I often listen to. They pull off the counter-intuitive trick of revealing many recording flaws, while NOT making those flaws intolerable to listen to. They also were the first speaker I ever heard properly reproduce the comb filtering of a distorting multidriver guitar amp.

Unfortunately, the Europa is no longer made, although it will occasionally show up for sale on Agon. GMA is currently making other speakers in your price range, however, all of which share the same time- and phase-coherent design principles of the Europa.

As good as the Europa is, adding a subwoofer to fill out the lower frequency range was still a significant benefit. Unless you're listening in a very small room, I'd recommend that at least demoing a subwoofer in your setup to see how you like it.

www.greenmountainaudio.com

There must be some other speakers out there that fit this requirement - this is a good thread. I hope others offer their suggestions

I agree that book shelf speakers on stands might often just as well give up the space to larger speaker cabinets that sit on or near the the floor. One such speaker was the Celestion Ditton 66 - it might have been a tad colored but it played loud, went deep/low, and cranked out some strong rock and roll.

Other smaller speakers that did well with rock were Yamaha NS1000s, Dahquist DQ10s, and Large Advents; perhaps some of the Vandersteens belong on the list; but again, there must be others - please add yours to this thread.

My sense is that to have strong rock and roll you probably need to get down to around 32Hz (and up to close to 20KHz) +/- 2-3dB; and lower wouldn't hurt. And then of course, you need a good room. To me, there's not much sense in having a hifi system if you can't play good rock n roll - which isn't to say good speakers and a good system shouldn't do well with other types of music - they should - but good rock and roll is requirement. :)

OHM Walsh are still the best for me. And for most other kinds of music as well.

Most everything else sounds merely like hifi speakers in comparison to me until one gets into certain esoteric megabuck systems where few will ever tread.