What Speaker are Great for Rock and Roll $5K-20K

The beauty of good electronics is that they are suited for whatever one wants to play or listen to. As for speakers, tell him to look for something that is both efficient and handles a lot of power with multiple woofers. Sean
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Hackmaster brings up a good point. When trying to generate high levels of sustained SPL's, one needs to actually consider the dispersion pattern of the speaker into the distance and not just how loud the speaker will play at one meter. In this case, line arrays, large multiple driver MTM ( Mid - Tweeter - Mid ) type designs ( Dunlavy, Montana, Legacy, etc.. ) or horns are what will hold up best. In order to achieve the same type of SPL into the farfield with drivers arrayed in a more conventional 3 or 4 design, you would literally have to push the hell out of the amp and speakers. The further that you backed away from the speakers, the more noticeable this would become. This has to do with how the sound coming out of the multiple drivers "focus" or "blend together". This is not to say that speakers using a more standard design are not capable of playing loud into the distance, only that the designs previously mentioned are more suited to such requirements. Obviously, one would need a good sized room with adequate listening distance to take advantage of such designs, otherwise one with a smaller room and / or closer seated listening position would be better off with a more conventional design. Sean
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Specific types of "rock" music are FAR more demanding to reproduce than any other type of music. The amps are required to generate a far higher average power level and the speakers are required to dissipate that power. Obviously, using more efficient speakers can help reduce the strain on the amps, which also lessens the power that the speakers have to absorb.

One of the owner's manual for some speakers that i own talks about this stating something to the effect of most music requiring less than 5 watts rms to attain "realistic" listening levels with reasonably efficient speakers being used. They also go on to state that rock music may easily require 10 times that amount of power on an average basis. As such, they caution you to be careful when "jamming" for extended periods of time and start talking about such things as "duty cycle", thermal overload, etc... For the record, the manuals that come with these speakers are 48 pages long !!!

Besides power output and handling requirements, there are no other types of music that cover as wide of a frequency range. Due to electronic keyboards and computer sound generation, some recordings contain MASSIVE amounts of very deep bass while at the same time, include quite a bit of extreme treble. All of this can be taking place at the same time at very great amplitude and intensity. While it is true that some jazz and a bit of blues makes use of "keyboard wizardry", none of that music is played with the same intensity or volume that one typically associates with "live" rock reproduction.

Having said all of that, i think that the most important factors when building a "rock" based music reproduction system boils down to the ability to generate sustained SPL levels and cover the entire audible frequency range without going into compression at any point in time. If you can do that and throw in a good amount of detail, clarity and some form of soundstage with good left to right separation, most "rockers" would be overjoyed. Then again, what my idea of what is "rock" and what you consider to be "rock" might be very different things. Same goes for what is considered "loud". Obviously, there are a LOT of variables involved in different perspectives and what one likes / dislikes and desires out of a music reproduction system. Sean
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