I am a big fan of Monitor Audio. My experience, both in theaters and at home is that with room EQ the difference in speakers won't matter as much as you think.
Get the best L and R speakers you can afford, and let the room EQ handle the differences between the 5 speakers.
THEN if you still feel put out, consider upgrading the center.
Best,
E
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I will have to agree to disagree with Erik here. While many love room correction, I have not had good results with it. I have worked with super high end Dirac Live processors as well as low-cost receivers. In either case, the audio just sounds more natural to me without automated room correction. Manual EQ can be helpful, if you know what you want to do. Since your primary goal is music sound quality, I will agree with Erik on this point to buy the best speakers you can for left/right. Go for at least the Silver 300 model if you can, which has a dedicated and better voiced midrange (very important for music). The Silver 300 shares the same tweeter as the Bronze series, so voicing will not be that different for anything above 3khz (not as bad as combining two separate speaker manufacturers). From a Home Theater / Movie standpoint (which is my primary goal), I feel that matching the voicing of the three front speakers (left/center right) is very critical. Matching the surround speakers is not as important here, but it’s a "nice to have". The absolute most important speaker for home theater is the center channel. That’s what I would upgrade first, then follow the left/right upgrades when I could. |
Hi Aux,
Well, I never said all room correction was good sounding but that it was a good way to match otherwise different speakers.
Personally I use miniDSP and custom settings, and can get seamless sound out of 3 very different models of main speakers, plus the subwoofer. I may be cheating, since I made all 3 of those speakers. :) Different parts and costs but same tonal balance.
YMMV
Best,
E
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Agree with above. Nice choices with speakers and receiver BTW. If music is a priority, get the best front L/R speakers you can afford. I'd listen to the silvers and see if they sound significantly better to you than the bronze. If so, save up your sheckles and get those. As auxinput mentioned they'll obviously have the MA house sound and will probably match just fine with your center (as Erik mentioned YPAO may even help further with this), and the benefits on 2-channel music will likely far outweigh any minor HT discontinuities given your priorities. Best of luck.
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Thank you everyone for your advice, I will definitely be comparing the Bronze 6's against the Silver 300 & maybe even the Silver 500. There is quite a big price difference, so they would need to really blow me away to justify the extra "sheckles" :)
Slightly concerned about mismatching my front speakers if auxinput thinks this is critical for home cinema, whilst music quality is a priority I'm not sure if I would want to sacrifice my home cinema quality too much. Of course... that does justify upgrading the center to a Silver C350 in the future :) I assumed that better front L/R would of improved the home cinema experience, not jeopardize it but it does make sense that the same model speakers work better together. Either way it would sound better then my current set up for home cinema and music would sound even better then with the Bronze 6's.
I sat and played around with my receiver settings for an hour or so today... what a big difference a couple of tweaks can make. The YPAO doesn't work too well for me, it turned my right speaker down so much the left was completely dominant. Whatever it done to the equalizer however appears to of improved the home cinema sound.
I plan to wall mount my TV one day so I can move the center speaker onto my TV unit so it is closer to ear level and more center to the TV. That will probably make a big difference.
Glad to hear your a fan of Monitor Audio @erik_squires , in my opinion the they are the best looking and as I'm British I try to buy British where I can. |
Well, I'll have to rethink my recommendations re: room tuning.
I assumed it was at least as good as I was with an EQ, especially Dirac.
I reiterate though, properly calibrated, I've been able to get a number of different speakers to sound well together. However, in all cases, those were speakers with good tweeters that were very smooth up through the top octave, and had very similar, accurate tonal balances.
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My opinions in matching front channels are really to make the PERFECT home theater. I don't even completely have this in my system. I was previously running B&W HTM2 D2 (with 6" midrange) for center and 805D2 bookshelves (WITHOUT midrange) for left/right. Since I did not have the dedicated midrange in my left/right, I could definitely hear that the midrange tones in the left/right were not as strong as tones coming out of my center. This was most prevalent when music from the left/right speakers was accompanying voices from the center channel. I have recently upgraded to the newer HTM2D3 center channel and it has an even stronger/clearer midrange. Still, the overall sound is really not bad at all and I am generally happy. I recommended the Silver 300 as a minimum because of the dedicated midrange and the fact that music is your priority. I really don't think it will be that bad matching to the Bronze center. The Bronze center will not have as strong/solid midrange voices obviously, but I don't think it will be bad to listen to at all. You might sometimes feel that when people talk they sound feint or far away -- this could give you the upgrade bug to get a Silver C350 center (with its dedicated midrange), but you should be fine for now since music is truly your priority. |
Oh, one thing you could do if you match the Silver 300 with the Bronze midrange is to increase the volume of the center channel by one or two steps in your receiver configuration so that the center channel is "pushing" the vocals a little more to match up with the stronger Silver 300 left/right. |
I'll let my ears guide me then (and my wallet), either way I'll be getting a massive upgrade so I'll be happy for a while... hopefully!
I quite like that idea of getting a pair of Silver 300/500 and then saving up for a Silver C350 as it will give me something to work towards.
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Crutchfield has some Silver 8 and Silver 10 speakers for 15% discount plus free freight shipping. These are the previous generation. The new generation appears to have these improvements: "The highlight of the new Silver series is a completely new version of the company's iconic gold dome tweeter, which has been fine-tuned in the quest for clearer, smoother and distortion-free highs"
"Technical enhancements to the speakers ‘engine’ include beefed up driver magnets, higher efficiency (8 ohms) and improved voice coils that include the patented DCF (dynamic coupling filter) used in the Platinum Series, resulting in purer sound and better power handling at high (SPL) levels." |
In the UK they are doing massive discounts on the Silver 6 & 10, but the 8's seem to have all sold out everywhere in Black Oak.
On three way speakers with a dedicated mid range unit the key selling point always seems to be the dedicated mid range unit. This makes me wonder why would anyone buy a floor stander without a dedicated mid range unit? I could understand if budget was an issue but there are 2 way speakers for thousands, am I missing something? |
I'm going to go out on a limb and theorize that it has to do with weight of the driver cone. The very large woofers (6-1/2" and larger) need to be able to reproduce the very low frequencies. This means they need to push a lot of air. The driver cone structure needs to be very strong and that means thickness and weight. The control/damping of the driver is also affected by the surround. While the driver cone and magnet could reproduce the midrange frequencies, it is going to be hampered by the weight and structure of the cone (moving mass). The midrange drivers are designed to be as light as possible with no restrictions on the higher movement frequencies (i.e. between 300 hz and 4000 hz). The damping of the driver has to be looked at slightly differently as well so that it does not "ring" or break-up in any bad way. |
dan89 I suggest you look at specifications on Monitor Audio's website, mainly the "Recommend Amplifier Requirements" for those different models. The Bronze 2 is 30-100, however the Silver 500 is 80-250. I'm sure that Yamaha receiver works fine with the Bronze 2, but it is not adequate power for the Silver 500. The Yamaha is rated at 80w/ch with 2 channels driven. Using 5 channels will cause that to drop. Found reviews on similar Yamaha receivers and they experienced drops approaching 50%. IMHO, you should upgrade to a more powerful receiver first.
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That makes sense auxinput, thank you for the explanation. That steers me more towards the Silver 300 opposed to the Bronze 6.
@tls49 that is a very good point, my receiver is only just meeting the minimum requirements for the Silver 300 and that's with 2 channels. I don't really want to upgrade my receiver... I haven't really had it that long so it would be difficult explaining that one to the misses. Could I get a separate amplifier to power the floor standers, is that what bi-amping is? |
Dan - normally you could use the pre-outs on a receiver, but your model RX-V481 does not have pre-outs. It is actually a pretty low-end receiver. Like tls49 said, it's rated for 80 watts per channel into 2 channels. When all channels driven, it can drop to something like 40 watts. When your doing a HT movie this can become critical because the receiver can start clipping/distorting the sound because the power supply is not large enough to drive the speakers. This can result in burned out tweeters and damaged voice coils. You could do something like this: https://www.crutchfield.com/p_543ADP12/Russound-ADP-1-2-Speaker-level-to-Line-level-Adapter.html?tp=9070 It's not optimal, but if you really want to continue with your current receiver, it's your only way to add an external amp. There are cheaper speaker-to-rca convertors, but they are usually limited to 50 watts / channel. It's up to you. If you're playing at the level of Monitor Audio Silver, you will probably want to get a more reference receiver or amp anyways. This is not the same thing as bi-amping. |
Dan, your current Yamaha receiver is limited in it's capability. Even though possible, it's not really a good idea to add an amplifier and it alone, is just not powerful enough for some speakers without the risk of damage, as auxinput pointed out. I still say you should upgrade the receiver first or just be happy with the Bronze series of speakers.
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Thank you auxinput & @tls49 , I am going to take your advice and get the Bronze 6 speakers.
In the future I will upgrade the receiver to something more powerful, as it seems to be such a critical element I will get a high end receiver to future proof the system and deliver the speakers what they need. Even with the Bronze series it appears I am only just meeting the minimum requirements.
Thank you all for your help & advice! |
