Good Speakers for Rock and Roll Under 15K

Stuff in your budget worth auditing...

15k - Yamaha NS5000

11k - Borresen X3

But, you will need to put that flea watt power amp away for either speaker and get a pair of Schiit Tyr monoblocks. Those 350 watts will make either speaker kick like a mule.

@stereo5 

This is nonsense. Speakers are not 'voiced' using a certain form of music, not if there is a competent designer involved! They may prefer a certain genre, but that won't influence the design for the reasons I presented earlier.

Inefficient speakers struggle because the have thermal compression associated with the voice coil of the drivers involved.  It hurts them with any form of music so isn't rock specific.

There are specific measurements on speakers that can be tied to great sound for hard rock and metal genres, for example. I recall that this was all beaten to death in a different recent thread. If the designer doesn't ever listen to or care for such genres, his speakers wouldn't measure as such, i.e., would have been voiced differently., i.e., he would have pursued something else in the design space.

I think you might have missed the mark. Truly good or excellent speakers will sound good with any type of music. This of course assumes that the system can provide the needed power, and finesse. Brands that can do this: Dynaudio, Magico, Wilson, Magnepan, Raidho, MBL..

It sure ain’t so...Let us try and explore that a bit

Start here....Play this at about to 90+ to 95 db avg (let the peaks fall where they may) on the MBL, Magnepan, Dyn crapaudio, Harbeth, etc, for starters. You will want to toss all of them in the trash can.

Joe Satriani - Devil Slide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaoQUgwh6kY

Ozzy Osbourne - Desire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-bgU8GzhiE

If you play such tracks on a Schweikert 55, Borresen, JTR, some of the JBL synthesis, some of the higher end PA speakers, etc, you may now feel like hanging on to that speaker...

But, if a dude’s listening to Diana Krappa Krall wailing away at 60db...any wet noodle speaker will work just fine...

When I get home, i will post many, many more tracks that are designed to just expose/kill all the wet noodle speakers out there and determine if your speakers can stand the acid tests or not for certain types of music...might help rehabilitate y’all from the Diana Krapparall @ 60db (playin it safe all day long)...

There is no such thing as truly excellent crap that worked brilliantly for any kind of music.

That is a strange opinion. I have had quite a few speakers, large and small that were very satisfying with every type of music. I don’t know what your yardstick is...a fraternity beer blast?

@roxy54

"Very satisfying" eh?...My yardstick is that I’ve been proficient in playing a couple of instruments for 40+ years (violin, piano...can also slam with a guitar if i have to) and may have a better idea about how artists think, how things sound in real life, etc.

I have owned different kinds of "high end" speakers and know that different kinds of speakers sound better or worse at any price bracket for specific genres of music.

What’s your yardstick? Let me take a wild guess (kinda like how you did about the frat house beer blast n all).

a) 4 to 5 "audiophile" records on repeat all year with emphasis on "female vocals" for listening to your gear? lol (That’s about the extent of your playlist?). If a great artist has a suboptimal (non audiophile) recording, you wouldn’t play it?

b) Dealer/sales dude (watching out for his daily green) for some brand that I dissed for hard rock, etc?

a, b, or both?

@mofojo Big myths die hard. So this does not surprise me- I get pushback on it all the time. But it comes down to something very simple, which is can you find a designer who can say what parameters exactly will favor a certain genre?

I’ve been doing this 45 years and got an engineering degree early on. I know a lot of designers and none of them make any claims to this effect. Since I design amps and preamps I see things a bit differently, thru the eyes of my test equipment. Once that signal is in the amp, the amp does not care what it is, it just amplifies it. I suspect the same thing for speakers- they have no taste, they just move as the amp tells them.

Any tech dude in the manufacturing space seems to think he knows everything there is to know about music (anything he doesn’t know is all one big myth!). Why don’t you have a seat someday and talk to guys like Levinson (too late for the late Schweikert) who actually understands instruments/music? You may gather more insight.

Until then, it is just another case of beating the deadhorse over n over about myths and non-myths.