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Best studio monitor for classical music for 500$

Robin L

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Hi Robin, you are completely right. I do not see Bruckner or Mahler satisfactory without low octaves. :)
I don't use my loudspeaker based system much. It's in a small room that's in an apartment. Looks like we're moving soon, then I'll be able to use it again:

IMG_20210428_171627251.jpg


This would work well in a medium or small room. The speakers are a/d/s 400, below the speaker on the right is a small Sonance powered subwoofer. I've got a Yamaha AV receiver in the [mostly obscured] rolling rack on the right. I think the total cost of all that is about $100, I got them from yard sales and thrift shops. The a/d/s speakers are good, haven't heard the Adam speakers, but they have a good chance of being better. If you're in a smaller room, something like this would work out well. The a/d/s 400 speakers have a 6 inch mid-bass and a 1 inch dome tweeter. It was designed to be used with subs, the output of the speakers drops precipitously below 100 hz, so they won't have much overlap with the subs. It's true that there are advantages to smaller drivers under certain conditions, a smaller room would be one of them. The further you get away from a large driver, the easier it is for all the drivers to blend. In any case, it shouldn't be hard to find a small powered sub used and for little money. The Sonance sub goes down to 30hz. It's not earth-shaking, but it does fill out the lower octaves. If you got speakers limited to about 70 hz, this can be helpful. I notice that the Adam self-powered speaker with the 8 inch driver is clean to 40 hz. That might be enough.
 
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Schubert1

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Hi Robin.

Very nice setup for little money. I used some Canton speakers, tower ones, I think Canton Nestor 625. The bass was more than enough, but it was boomy and killed the midrange. Than I decided to go to powered monitor route.:)
 

Robin L

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Hi Robin.

Very nice setup for little money. I used some Canton speakers, tower ones, I think Canton Nestor 625. The bass was more than enough, but it was boomy and killed the midrange. Than I decided to go to powered monitor route.:)
What's good about this set-up is one can adjust the level and crossover point of the sub. In a boomy room you can cut the boomy mid-bass with the sub's level control without losing the bass altogether.
 

mkawa

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for 500eur you may not even need to stretch your budget to do genelec 8020 or 8030s. that tweeter is amazing. on classical music i could not tell difference between 20-30 and 40s
 

mkawa

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pro tip: dealers are able to discount all but SAM products, which have an RRP. you should be able to do better than 500eur. check out your local dealer. online they go by the undiscounted price and have worse service than my local dealer did. i saved something like 100eur equiv by going with my local 3-person pro audio shop. they also let me audition at home and in their listening room as much as i wanted. heck, i even got a multi-hour session with 8351s they had on hand even though i had no interest in spending that much on my computer setup.
 

mkawa

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no problem. i have been listening to a lot of solo violin lately and hilary hahn's latest recording of bach's sonatas and partitas rival my headphones on the genelecs. with this precise recording i couldn't AB between the 8030s and 8040s. i doubt i would be able to abc between the 20s, 30s and 40s with it either. this was obviously without GLM or REW either (as it was in their listening room)
 

Alice of Old Vincennes

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You should spend lot of time with Amir's reviews. Recommendations in this thread all over the map. You want ideas regarding passive monitor. Revel's cheapest monitor does the job.
 
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Schubert1

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Sounds interesting. I found the sound of violin to be very difficult to present properly. Cello and viola tend to be easier I think. Violin on many headphones sounds unnaturally schrill. If I could say so. Brighter than in real life. Happy to hear that Genelec delivers a good presentation. :)
 
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Schubert1

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Hi Alice. Thank you for suggestion. I became interested to becoming a part if this community first and foremost because of Amir's reviews. Highy informative and detailed. :)
 

mkawa

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yes, in grad school one of my classmates was a juliard trained violinist. late nights in the office when he was practicing upstairs could be particularly enjoyable.

i'm not even crazy about this record on my hd800s. my hd600s are the best to do it justice, and classical in general.
 
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Schubert1

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HD600 would also be my pick, if I stayed with headphones. Although, I liked AKG K-501 very much also. But it had weird bass, like K-702.
 
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oboist

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+1 for the suggestion of stretching to the Kali IN-5. I'm a professional classical musician (Juilliard and all that which may or may not mean anything). I recently got a pair of these Kalis and really like them. Also have Genelec 8330 with sub, Neumann KH80, and LSR305. The Kali's almost rival the Genelecs with the sub for clarity and impact of the bass. I love the sound all across the spectrum and the dip switch based boundary correction is effective. There's a wonderful sense of being in a spacious hall when listening from around 1 meter. Also have and very much enjoy the HD600s.
 

LTig

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Thank you mkawa. I might save for a bit to get 8020 which is 720€ at the moment. :)
My wife uses 8020a in her room and they sound amazing, but the lower octaves are missing despite having both speakers very close to the wall, one also close to a corner (which helps due to room gain, but also needs room EQ). If you don't know that a certain piece of music contains low frequency content you'll don't miss it. Bass drums lack slam.

Of course you cannot play loud. Physics cannot be fooled.
 

mkawa

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the 20s are definitely near field.

a mic, positioning and REW can help oodles with LF response, but realistically the 20s are going to -6db corner at ~55hz even with the port placement and signal processing coming together perfectly. as @LTig said, you can't fool physics. a small woofer not going to have as much LF extension as a larger woofer, nor will it produce the same amplitude.

genelec has a great and in standard genelec fashion, incredibly honest page: https://www.genelec.com/correct-monitors
 

stevenswall

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Thanks guys. I would like to ask, how durable are powered speakers? I mean, are built-in amps generally reliable?

You are more likely to blow a driver on a passive speaker than to experience a broken amp section on an active speaker.
 

stevenswall

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Thanks, Stevenswall. Sound like a great piece of advice. Can I ask, why you liked T5V more than Focal?

Plucked instruments sounded more correct. Not sure if it's the narrow vertical dispersion, but there might be less going on with the Adam vs the Focal reflecting off of the mixing bridge when I compared the two.
 
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