Good Speakers for Rock and Roll Under 15K


I have nice speakers for acoustics, jazz, vocals, etc. but are not great for rock and roll.  Would welcome any recommendations for speakers that do a great job with classic rock and roll.  I will add some components in my system that might influence thinking:

New Audio Frontiers Tube Preamp, New Audio Frontiers 845 Tube Power Amp, Lampizator Atlantic DAC, Innuos Zenith Streamer, Tchernov cables.

gregjacob

I know this is more than you want to spend, but my Clarisys Planars do Rock & Roll pretty well!

ozzy

I like Marten speakers from Sweden. When auditioning against Dynaudio Heritage Special and YG Tor, the Marten Oscar Duos hit me immediately as better rockin' speakers; I ended up going for the even higher model, the Parker Duo, just because the upper bass/lower mids are amazing with the larger speakers. But I listen to rock and reggae exclusively and for me, these are great. 

Planars are generally not ideal for pop music otherwise take your choice with that budget. I’d be looking at KEF meta or Revel personally were it me.

Just a hair over budget at $16,500 (used pair on here for $8k right now) the JBL 4367 is my favorite rock speaker I have heard to date. Super dynamic with smooth treble that is easy on the ears. Great texture and impact in the bass. They could go lower and I still add subs, but I need full range bass to be happy (a personal thing). I have owned speakers I thought were good for rock but ignorance is bliss and they have been totally eclipsed by the 4367. Not just a rock speaker but simply good. 
 

The treble is also adjustable which makes a much bigger difference than the numbers would indicate. I am down 0.5db on the UHF.  
 

Measurements to back up the good impressions too. 
 

 

After hearing Cornwall III and IV I felt they were really great with R&R. Not so much with other genres, but terrific with rock.

If you want to recreate the sound of an era try mimicking the equipment they used to recreate it.

For rock and roll horns can't be beat. 

Grateful Dead used Altec A7 and Macintosh.  You could recreate the wall of sound with several pairs of Crites Speaker Type CS Style B and still be way under budget.

Klipsch La Scala would be worth looking at

Volti Rival would be another consideration.but a little over 15K

 

B&W (and McIntosh if you want the whole enchilada). I would also assume JBL.

 

So, separate system for rock?

I have spent a lot of time on the subject of different genre. I accidentally optimized for electronic music a long time ago by taking mostly electronic test disks. I realized that I made electronic sound incredible, but made all other genre sound poor.

Ultimately I changed my goal to fidelity to acoustic music (symphonic, acoustical jazz, etc) because it gave me an empirical ruler. All genre got better and better as I upgraded from then on. But you can optimize for a single music type… making it more flashy (as opposed to how it should sound)… but that generally comes at a cost.

For me optimal is to pursue real. This means details are emphasized in proportion to how they sound in the real world… as is bass. So it sounds like real music. Not overemphasis of details and slam such that background details come to the foreground, background instrument become solos, and an artificial slap of bass replaces the nuanced multiple arrival times that are experienced in real venues.

 

 

 

legacy focus: 96db efficiency,high power handling,plays loud, very deep bass response, loves tubes.

 

made in America state of the art drivers, stunning cabinetry.

 

Dave and Troy

Audio Intellect NJ

Legacy dealer