Using PA Speakers In A Home "Audiophile" Application!

Interesting discussion. Two quick thoughts.

First: Generalizations are only occasionally useful :)

Second: Your own listening habits and hobby goals have a big role in what equipment best serves you. There’s a parallel in the car hobby. People have daily drivers, but also some other car(s) that they drive only on nice days and often spend more time tinkering with it than actually driving it. Ask that person what they expect from the experience…and you’ll get a different answer for the daily driver or the garage queen.

I have powered DXR12 Yammy... dynamics are awesome and electronic music is sublime.This speaker will wake up any recording... down side is the white noise at idle. For a summer-patio rig it cannot be beat. I move alot for work and these high quality PA kit are easier to sell fast for decent money.

@deep_333 My concern would be breakups in the drivers, which cause distortion and harshness. PA stuff mostly does not care about that sort of thing since sound pressure is the main goal. But its a big deal with home audio speakers, where such things can shoot the product down.

My concern would be breakups in the drivers, which cause distortion and harshness. PA stuff mostly does not care about that sort of thing since sound pressure is the main goal. But its a big deal with home audio speakers, where such things can shoot the product down.

@atmasphere , Thanks for the input... I am leaning more towards this 3 way design for reasons mentioned above. It isn’t all that cheap, however...$3000 - 3500 a piece ($6000 - 7000$ for a pair). Nevertheless, since this is 106 db sensitive/possibly running at fractions of a watt for home listening levels...what type of "audiophile grade" home audio amplifier might you recommend?

Other thoughts: I did some searches and found some notes on Benchmark’s website...may be a good fit?

"The Benchmark AHB2 is the only high-powered amplifier that is designed to be noiseless when driving very high-efficiency speakers. The A-weighted signal to noise ratio is 132 dB in stereo mode (135 dB in mono mode). This is 17 to 30 dB quieter than the best competing amplifiers. More importantly, the A-weighted output noise of the AHB2 is -112 dB relative to 2.83 volts. Since speaker voltage sensitivity is measured at 2.83 volts, we can use the sensitivity to calculate the acoustic noise produced by the amplifier-speaker combination. If we select the worst case, an extremely sensitive 110 dB speaker, the acoustic noise will be -2 dB SPL at 1 meter from the speaker. This means that the acoustic noise is 2 dB lower than the threshold of normal hearing. This indicates that the noise produced by the AHB2 should be inaudible in this worst-case example.

In contrast, most high-quality amplifiers produce a noise voltage that is 17 to 30 dB higher than that of the AHB2. When these competing amplifiers are connected to 110 dB speakers the acoustic noise will be 15 dB to 28 dB above the threshold of hearing! The AHB2 may be the only power amplifier that is capable of noise-free operation when driving extremely sensitive speakers."

Small amounts of crossover distortion produced by push-pull transitions in the output stage may translate into audible defects. This is especially true when driving high-sensitivity speakers. High-sensitivity speakers can reveal the shortcomings of traditional class-AB amplifiers. It is not surprising that many people do not like the way high-sensitivity speakers sound when driven from a class-AB amplifier.Benchmark AHB2 1W Distortion Level.

The AHB2 uses a patented feed-forward error correction system to eliminate crossover distortion. This system provides 1st-watt performance that exceeds that of a class-A amplifier"

Might you have any other amplifier suggestions for this "PA experiment", $5000-ish & under?