What is the best HEAVY METAL speaker?

Yeah, but those are gonna need work. Unless you can find a pristine pair. And even so, they would need tlc. It wouldn't be a good idea to set those up and blast them, imo.

Not sure why all the hating on metal, saying you should listen on a boombox, and only with 15" woofers. I'm a huge metalhead myself, mostly death and doom metal, and the music benefits just as substantially by quality gear as any other genre.

I have an Odyssey Lorelei speakers driven by a Pass Labs X150 and a Modwright LS100 Pre.

I do agree with Nrenter saying: "stay away from horn, electrostats and planers" I would look into some of the towers by Axiom audio or Revel, some of the best metal I've heard. Have you decided yet, or made a short list?

One of my best friends, Earl Root (RIP) pretty well founded the metal scene here in the Twin Cities. He turned me on to a lot of metal, some of it excellently recorded.

One thing that came out in spades is if a speaker is really good at classical music, it will be good with metal too. I use the Classic Audio Loudspeakers model T-3, which uses dual 15" woofers and a field-coil powered midrange horn with a real beryllium driver (no breakups in the audio passband- its very smooth and fast). It plays metal great- it can shake the building easily. And it plays classical great too- it can shake the building easily. But it plays delicacy as well. Fields of Nephilim never sounded so good.

Don't listen to much heavy metal these days but what I do have sounds nice on my AR-90s. My Infinities sound nice as well but volume wise it ain't gonna happen.

Surprisingly, I am finding it difficult to find an excellent heavy metal speaker. There are a lot of great speakers out there, but so far I can’t find a speaker that has these qualities:
1(Fast deep Bass, however not too over powering or boomy
2)Treble smooth and accurate that defines the lead guitars accurately without a brash blur of distortion.
3)Treble that lays the drummers symbols on top nicely to the rest of rhythm
4)A midrange that gives the vocals a clean but not harsh edge.
5)Good separation of the different instruments playing in the music
6)Good live sound, if you know what I mean.

I am slowly picking through the different suggestions here on the form and I know there is a lot more than just the speakers to achieve good sounding system. I have been also playing around with my listing room acoustic and narrow down a better sound. I am enjoying my search though, lol.

Mikelavigne those speakers do look impressive!

Not my bag. but what about Cerwin-Vega?

One thing that came out in spades is if a speaker is really good at classical music, it will be good with metal too. I totally agree with you Atmasphere, my speaker's are incredible with classical music, slip a metal music cd in, and the sound performance is indeed as good, I am very glad you posted your impression's here,not many would believe me if I made that statement, cheers.

G'luck with finding an audiophile speaker that does rock/hard rock any justice. I know that common wisdom dictates that a good speaker should handle all sorts of music genre, but its rarely the case. Most audiophiles are into jazz/vocal/acoustics/classical types of well recorded music. As loudspeaker design is inherently involves compromises, the designer most of the time voice the speakers that favors these audiophile favorite genres. Its understandable as most audiophiles listens to these kinds of music. So among the minority of audiophiles that listens to modern rock/heavy metal - the choice is almost non existent. True that if you've loads of cash, you can always buy a megabuck speaker like Mike Lavigne has that can play everything. But, if you have a limited budget, even its close to $20k for your entire system - you are in trouble.

The problem with 99% of the reviews is the reviewer mostly evaluates the speaker/gears with the typical audiophile music genre. Even if a handful of them mention how the gear sounds with every audiophiles favorite rock recording like Dire Straits or Pink Floyd, it doesn't mean anything. Those rock albums are so well recorded that it doesn't give you a clear picture how the gear would sound on typical rock/metal music. Many all time great amp/preamp/speaker fails miserably on rock music, it's not even funny.

HiFi industry is so heavily skewed against rock/metal lovers that it is failing to attract a whole generation of 'would be audiophiles'. I understand that with sub par mastering, there's a limitation of how good it will sound. But trust me, there are many many indie rock albums surprisingly well recorded. I'm not into metal, but I can guess there must be less compressed metal albums too.

Having said all that I've had somewhat good lucks with following two speakers with rock music - PMC AML-1 with a tube preamp and currently Daedalus speakers (I use Athena but Ulysses is more suitable for head bangers as it moves more air). But for metal heads, I guess adding a subwoofer would be must. Some people has mentioned Tannoy. I've never heard them. Please keep the suggestions coming. I'm kinda sick of audiophile music friendly great speakers and gears. Time for a change.

Actually if you are on more of a budget, Audiokinesis makes excellent speakers that fulfill the requirements. The Classic Audio Loudspeaker I mentioned retails for about $33,000...

Something you also want to consider is the interface between the amp and speaker! To get best results, it cannot be an assumption that a large solid state amp will drive all loads properly. It will drive some, and others will be better driven by vacuum tube amps.

I listen to a lot of metal. Some conventional speakers do metal ok, but I think there's a reason they use big horns at rock concerts. The best sounding metal I've ever heard was recorded music (Alice In Chains) coming out of big JBL Horns before an Ozzy concert. Outdoors!

I spend time over at AVSforum. There is a long thread in the speaker forum devoted to a company called JTR. There are quite a few metal heads using his speakers over there. Perhaps, you might take a look. His latest model is the Noesis 215HT. With frequency stats of 18z to 24kh, can handle 2000 watts rms and and has a usable output of 128 dB. I think they would do the job quite nicely. Do a little reading on his line of speakers as well as a company called Seaton.

I think there are metal speakers out there, you just need to shop around. I listen to mostly death metal as I said before. Let me add some more to the Revel and Axiom suggestions I made before.

Tyler accoustics, legacy, vandersteen, von schweikert, swan, usher.

I have personally tried Zu speakers (which like tekton are often suggested for metal/rock), and was not satisfied at all. Full range drivers like that should be avoided at all costs. They don't move enough air/have enough driver displacement to have adequate dynamics for metal.

As others have said, a powerful SS amp is a must, but I for me, adding a tube preamp upstream of my amp made a huge improvement.

Also in my experience, subwoofers are not a must if you have at least 2-3 6.5" woofers or a 1-2 8" woofers.

Lizzard-

back in the 1980's into early 1990's I used Cerwin vega AT-12.
Very nice speaker for Rock/Hard Rock- not quite audiophile though. In addition to my suggestions previously, from CV I moved up to B&W 805 w/ small sub. Still retained the "rock" factor- not a bad speaker for your application at all.
Keep me posted & Happy New Year!

"... if a speaker is really good at classical music, it will be good with metal too."

I kinda disagree. IMHO classical is very a forgiving music genre (from a tonal perspective). I've heard classical well-reproduced on Quads and Maggies and Martin Logans. I've never heard metal well-reproduced on any of those speaker brands.

However, Fields of Nephilim is a good reference. Same with early Husker Du (or any Husker Du, really). Awful engineering. Awful production. But a great metal system will allow those "awful" qualities make sense and not detract from the musical genus.

Call me crazy, but I listen to mostly rock and heavy music on Martin Logan ascents. They sound great to me, and 95db is no problem. That's more then loud enough for me.

"... if a speaker is really good at classical music, it will be good with metal too."

I kinda disagree. IMHO classical is very a forgiving music genre (from a tonal perspective). I've heard classical well-reproduced on Quads and Maggies and Martin Logans. I've never heard metal well-reproduced on any of those speaker brands.

if a speaker system can do full tilt boggie warp 9 orchestral music without limits, it will easily rock your world with Heavy Metal. no worries at all. full on orchestral, or organ, or choral......is the most demanding of any genre. maybe 'big band' might be '1-a' as the second most demanding genre.

and getting full orchestral or big band 'right' was the driving force behind my system and room development. large scale 'rock' or 'heavy metal' performance came along with the ride.

but no one would consider Quads, or Maggies, or Martin Logans to be ideal for full on orchestral if you seek the full effect. the bottom octave or two is lacking, as is the heft and weight in the mid bass/lower mids. certainly those brands have excellent refinement and transparency to offer in the balance of trade-offs. so using those to make your point fails.

OTOH speaker systems that might work for Heavy Metal might not get the refinement to work at full on orchestral.

there is no place to hide with large scale orchestral music. I can tell you that. every small step forward brings you more with Classical as the information will reveal itself more and more. with Heavy Metal since it lacks the textures the improvements in the performance are not as evident (none the less refinement does help the Heavy Metal too).

my system is able to do full on Orchestral......and any Heavy Metal you can throw at it.

Big active ATC or PMC

Holy smokes I bet that does handle anything you throw at it Mike!

I've had 3 friends go out and but ML after hearing mine, and they all listen to rock primarily. Then again, we aren't able to come close to considering your level of system or room so....

The highs are what seem harsh to me on other speakers. I always end up wanting to turn it down, when the opposite should be going on.

The only thing I've heard that I liked better was a set of aerial 20t's connected to all the new Ayre reference stuff. Again, on another level performance and price wise as well.

Anyone who thinks a speaker that is good a classical can't also be good at metal just has not heard how hard a proper classical LP can be on a system.

Speakers and electronics really don't care what the signal is. If they are good at their job they will not be genre-specific. Its really that simple- if a speaker is better at one thing than another, its not a very good speaker.

I have two LPs that can bring most stereos to their knees in no time flat, if realistic volumes are being played. The first is of course Black Sabbath's Paranoid, on the original import white label Vertigo. The sound is astonishing and the bass energy simply saps most systems straightaway. The other LP is The Verdi Requiem, on the RCA Soria series. Play track 2 side 1 at a lifelike level and see if your system can handle the full dynamic range. Most can't.

The speakers I use are the Classic Audio Loudspeakers model T-3, which are 98 db 1 watt/1 meter and 16 ohms. Its very hard to clip a 60 watt amp on them!! I can literally get the building to shake, as the speakers go down to 20Hz. They are revealing and dynamic.

Metal is often compressed- we've mastered several metal LPs in the last couple of years and I have plenty of metal titles in my collection. Death metal in particular tends to be mostly guitar and I'm sorry but its just not that hard to reproduce. The more challenging recordings are usually not Death Metal- one I love to play at shows is Aesma Deava's second album, the Eros of Frigid Beauty (on Root of All Evil). This is a classical metal form, well recorded and very dynamic. Another title which is more Gothic classical metal is Therion's Vovin, which features choir and a string section in addition to the metal band.

Have fun!

Speakers and electronics really don't care what the signal is. If they are good at their job they will not be genre-specific. Its really that simple- if a speaker is better at one thing than another, its not a very good speaker., quote by Atmasphere.
Damn Ralph, you are a mind reader!, here we go again, I agree with you 100% my friend, happy Listening.

In practice, if its truly good at classical its probably also good for heavy metal.

But the technical difference that classical music tends more towards dynamic peaks whereas heavy metal played as intended tends to be more consistently loud. Continuous delivery of power is not the same as delivery of peaks. If the amp can do both whenever called upon with the speakers used at the volume desired, then you are in good shape. Most good quality modern gear matched and set up optimally with those specific goals in mind can probably do the trick. If your amp is even slightly underpowered for the task at hand, and even subtle amounts of clipping occurs maybe not.

Clipping is always public enemy # 1 for good sound, its just that heavy metal, and large scale works of any kind, like big band jazz or classical/orchestral ups the ante.

The boundary between good sounding heavy metal and an ear bleed is a fine one. Keep clipping out of the picture and chances are best for good results.

I listen to a lot of metal. Some conventional speakers do metal ok, but I think there's a reason they use big horns at rock concerts. The best sounding metal I've ever heard was recorded music (Alice In Chains) coming out of big JBL Horns before an Ozzy concert. Outdoors!

And the latest JBL horns do that very well, and are smoother sounding than the JBLs of the 70s.

"if a speaker system can do full tilt boogie warp 9 orchestral music without limits, it will easily rock your world with Heavy Metal. no worries at all. full on orchestral, or organ, or choral......is the most demanding of any genre. maybe 'big band' might be '1-a' as the second most demanding genre."

Well said Mike,...couldn't agree more and would love to hear your system "cut loose" on any of that list.....if a speaker can tackle all the 'big boys' works in orchestral, Japanese taiko drumming on a large scale, pipe organ, and full-on Big Band, you've got yourself a contender for Heavy Metal/Hard Rock to be certain. The only thing that will really vary with Rock/Metal for a given a speaker will depend (IMHO) on the quality of the tweeter and/or super-tweeter in the speaker on those Rock/Metal recordings that were simply laid down "too hot" in the upper frequencies. We all have a few of those poorly done recordings that can make ears bleed. Wish the record companies would learn their lessons once and for all....

To the list of speakers above that do very well with Rock/Metal, I'd add the newer versions of the Legacy FocusHD, SE, AERIS and the new V. I run the gamut across all these genres here and the Focus and AERIS in various generations haven't let me (or the neighbors :-) ) down yet!

To my ears and body nothing handles the heavy metal genre (as others) like pro drivers, i.e. through compression drivers via horns or waveguides and larger diameter bass/midrange units, preferably in addition with a sub (also with larger diameter, 15"+ units).

My recommendation, also to stay within affordability, would be for the Geddes loudspeaker model Abbey (would have preferred the larger Summa model, but I'm not sure whether they're still made), which are in the need of the assistance of a sub. They're to be had both as DIY and pre-assembled, ranging from $1,700 to $3,000 per piece.

http://www.gedlee.com/loudspeakers.htm

These comprises pro drivers from Italian manufacturer B&C, and what's very important here is how they're able to withstand serious beating without breaking a sweat (many others brands of pro driver would do similarly well), hereby providing that elusive but extremely vital aspect of effortlessness to the sound. Moreover they're able to communicate the edge, energy and sheer feeling of power needed, not only for this genre of music, without in any way sounding harsh.

Many an audiophile would disagree on pro drivers not sounding harsh, but well implemented they'll cleanly give you dynamics (both micro and macro) and transient response that would see most typical hifi-speakers crumble into smoke trying to achieve. Hearing cleanly reproduced dynamics and transients approaching live levels might deceive some into thinking it sounds "harsh," simply for the reason that they've never before heard it via any typical hifi-speaker, which are prone to seriously "mute" and lessen the impact of dynamics.

But remember, it's not so much about max. SPL's per se as that feeling of effortlessness, low distortion, ignition, and the sheer area of displacement afforded by the bigger units and horns/waveguides. Heavy metal needs to be felt as well as heard.

I don't agree that speakers that excel at full-scale orchestral will also excel with metal. Especially current metal, highly compressed and recorded digitally. Even during sustained crescendos, metal is full of textures and sharp transients. Not many speaker/amplifier combinations can deliver sustained high sound pressure and also maintain those transients.

I get that you don't agree, but you would be wrong, except for that last bit, which I agree 100% because that just happens to be true of most audio systems.

Orchestral material has plenty of sharp transients. Tell you what- find your self a copy of Das Reingold, on Decca or London ('blue back'), conducted by Sir George Solti. Put on side 6 about halfway through and crank it up as hard as your system will take. Make sure you let it play all the way to the end.

When Donner's hammer creates the Rainbow Bridge- its a bit of a transient :) Its also pretty metal. Norse gods- what can be more metal than that? But hang on till the final fanfare! Many systems just can't play this disk at full whack. You need power in the amps and efficiency in the speakers. That's just the way it is, regardless (for the most part) of the music genre. If you want electronia to sound its best with all the bass impact, you need exactly the same thing. I can't get my own band's records to sound right unless I crank them up too. Some music just needs power, without coloration. Metal is nothing special in that regard.

"That's just the way it is, regardless (for the most part) of the music genre. If you want electronia to sound its best with all the bass impact, you need exactly the same thing."

That is true.

Of course its always hard to define what is good and what isn't. In this case its better to talk about performance in regards to ability to deliver the most challenging musical passages at high volume. You will probably almost pay more for better performance on a larger scale, but what sounds "good" or not is subjective and way more up in the air.

If you are reproducing music only on a small scale and with limited volume, then the world is your oyster. :-)

JBL-LSR 6332?

There seems to be tons of suggestions for "Pro=type" speakers (for lack of a better word), like JBL and Klipsch horn speakers. I've never personally tried this kind of speaker, and am a little reluctant due to the lack of low end production. I'm not really sure how speakers having 12" or even 15" drivers can have such a disappointing low frequency extension. For instance the Klipsch Heresy, an almost universally-loved speaker is listed at 58-20,000 Hz (±3dB). How can this me possible for a 12"? Am I missing something here? I would hate to buy a speaker with a monster driver like that, and huge size overall, and still have to invest $1000 on a SVS or REL subwoofer.

If you do go the way of big fullrange drivers, Emerald Physics is another to check out. http://www.emeraldphysics.com/

Well, I guess classical is only well-reproduced on dynamic cone speakers, because I've never heard metal well-reproduced on anything other than that. It's gonna break the hearts of Quad and Maggie owners that their speakers aren't that good.

The JBL LSR is a good speaker for heavy metal. I know someone who had them, and I heard them before he sold them. He played a Metallica album, and it sounded really good. However, he had subwoofers going at the same time.

Linaeum66 Yes missing something, a basic law of loudspeaker design = Hoffman’s Iron Laws of Speaker Building

1) Bass Extension

2) Efficiency

3) Small Enclosure

The law is that you can only have two of these three

So true, Johnk. I choose #1 and #2. as I know you do.
I have a pair of JBL 4676-A that are waiting for me to find a much larger place.

I am a huge metal and heavy rock fan, among other music vices :) I enjoy Opeth, Entombed, Amorphis, Slayer, Rage Against the Machine, all the way to Norah Jones, KT Tunstall, and Andreas Vollenwieder. Music comes in many flavors, no need to be pidgeon-holed!

I highly suggest a pair of Revel f30s for the budget you have, or a pair of m20s and a pair of good subs, preferably servo (maybe old Velodyne). The nice thing is that you can crank these things way up, they take abuse, but still sound nice. AND parts are still available if you get a little crazy.

For the money invested, you won't beat what you hear.

Hi Koslekt1, check out Volbeat-Hang man's body count, this song rock's, get back to me hear after you listen to this song, tell me what you think of it, crank it up!

Atmasphere, I've been thinking about your always thoughtful comments, and I think you're missing something. I know that you are using the top of the line Classic Audio speaker, which is a design that I've admired several times at RMAF, particularly for small group jazz recordings and vocals. However, I would not regard it as an optimal transducer for digitally recorded, highly compressed metal in its current incarnation. For Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and other 70's metal and hard rock, it would be a nice speaker choice, but certainly not for Meshuggah, Animals As Leaders, and countless other current artists. If you are ever in Tucson, AZ, I'd be glad to show you what I mean.

You named some stuff in my personal collection, and I have Classic Audio Loudspeakers in my living room. They can shake the walls! What's nice about them is that you can play sustained high levels without compression and without straining the amp.

More: In Flames, Skepticism, Therion, Earth, Sunn (and incarnations thereof), Om, Opeth... I don't think anyone would be suggesting that a speaker is good for some metal and not other forms of metal.

Really, all music is composed of combinations of sine waves and transients. Its been shown mathematically that nearly all waveforms can be created by the right combination of sine waves. Its only the human ear/brain system that makes the distinction between various forms of music. The reproducers don't care so long as you stay within their range of linearity. So dynamic range is important, but on this matter metal rarely has the dynamic range of classical, and with peaks of 120 db on stage, classical can be just as loud although usually not at sustained levels.

I'm not sure what you were implying about digitally recorded, but FWIW, when analog technology is used you often get greater dynamic range. This is not because analog as more dynamic range (although it is so close its really not worth arguing about) its because digital recordings tend to have more compression because that is how the industry likes to handle it. Analog is a little more forgiving of overload and so while compression is still likely, its often just not as much.

I run an LP mastering operation and a recording studio BTW, so I see this stuff first-hand.

Atmasphere, Hey, Try listing to avengeged sevenfold- Hail to the King, this song is recorded very decent, Rock's really good, incredible actually, tell me what you think about it, please listen to the whole song with you set-up, should bring a smile to your face, Happy Listening.

Dang! Old school!

atmasphere, actually, they are a new band of about 6 years of being famous, they have a huge fan base, sale out concert's world wide, yes, the music does remind me of old school a little, what did you think of the recording quality?, it's not compressed at all to me.

Yes, I know they are a new band. But they sound a lot like Iron Maiden, except for the vocals. IOW, old school.

I'll have to find an LP to really assess the recording quality. We (my band) were working on a mix of the last part of our 3rd album last night. As usual, we made an analog and also a digital recording. After we were satisfied with the mix (funny how it took 2 hours to mix 2 minutes...) we had to listen to the results on both the analog tape and the digital. Try as might, the digital just does not keep up- the analog sounds smoother and its easier to hear all the instruments.

So when I do an assessment I try to find the vinyl.

Atmasphere, what do you do in the band you play for?

Keyboards: Prophet 5, EML101 and Mellotron.

can you play flight of the bumlebe?, I play board'sas amutuer, vocal's is my fortey, most of my life I was a pro musician, all my money came from being in a band all the way until I moved to bama.

Atmasphere, you play a real Mellotron? Do they still make those? Do you maintain it as well?

I bought the Mellotron used about 13 years ago and rebuilt it with a new motor controller, rebuilt the power supplies and replaced a lot of parts in the audio electronics.

Right now I think I need to replace the audio input connector from the tape heads. The slightest loose connection and it gets noisy.

Mellotrons are still made, the tape sets are still available and the new ones look pretty sweet. You can't play Flight of the Bumblebee on it- it would sound awful!

Here's a short teaser from a recent recording session (click on the reel to reel):

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Thunderbolt-Pagoda/265544360135369

Atmosphere, very cool!

I would think you and the mellotron to be a natural pairing.

Atmasphere, yea, I know, I was saying the bubble bee song on keyboards or piano, my band back in the day played original's, however, for cover tune's we played Dream Theatre, we had a good following, a semi big, on the verge of big time, offered marriage to a model that was the demise of it all for me!, same ole story, the relationship did not go that way, the band parted way's, one guy was from sweden, everyone else was from all over the usa, we were base out of Florida, cheers.

Klipsch Reference Premiere RP-280F speakers.
They have a nice bass response and pretty good mids.