Do you need high end speakers for rock and heavy metal?

[sigbergaudio]

I wrote an article with this title, obviously to promote our active speaker systems, so I am putting this in the Desperate dealers forum.

The article can be found here:

https://www.sigbergaudio.com/blogs/news/do-you-need-high-end-loudspeakers-for-rock-and-heavy-metal

But is there perhaps a wider discussion to be found here?

• Why are so many (even expensive) speakers struggling with this genre?
• Do great speakers really "reveal bad recordings", or is it the other way around? Do the recordings reveal bad speakers?
• What makes a speaker work well with rock and metal?

 

[shion_ca]

I wrote an article with this title, obviously to promote our active speaker systems, so I am putting this in the Desperate dealers forum.

The article can be found here:

Do you need high end loudspeakers for rock and heavy metal?

As a direct to consumer manufacturer, we talk to a lot of customers. A story we hear a lot, is the one about loving rock and metal, but struggling to get it to sound right. It just sounds messy and harsh. Are high end loudspeakers simply incompatible with rock?

www.sigbergaudio.no

But is there perhaps a wider discussion to be found here?

• Why are so many (even expensive) speakers struggling with this genre?
• Do great speakers really "reveal bad recordings", or is it the other way around? Do the recordings reveal bad speakers?
• What makes a speaker work well with rock and metal?

There are some coherent heavy rock albums. Tool’s 10,000 days, perfect circle 13th step, our lady Peace (4am), tragically hip (new Orleans s sinking), creed (arms wide open)

 

[Sacha]

It's one of the hardest genres to mix as well IMO, mainly because of distorted guitars which are basically a wall of shaped noise. Plus a lot of stuff going on that is pushing the limits of what an instrument can technically do like hyper fast kick drums, low tunings etc., a lot of layers of crazy vocals and synths etc. depending on the sub-genre, and it's all supposed to be loud, clean and separated as well (sometimes). On the speaker front I'm not sure if it's that different from other genres - neutrality, dynamic capability etc. will allow good productions to shine and bad productions won't.

 

[sigbergaudio]

There are some coherent heavy rock albums. Tool’s 10,000 days, perfect circle 13th step, our lady Peace (4am), tragically hip (new Orleans s sinking), creed (arms wide open)

Part of my point is that with the right setup, there are lots of heavy rock albums that sound more than decent, you don't have to search wide and far to put on something that's bearable (as on some systems).

 

[sigbergaudio]

It's one of the hardest genres to mix as well IMO, mainly because of distorted guitars which are basically a wall of shaped noise. Plus a lot of stuff going on that is pushing the limits of what an instrument can technically do like hyper fast kick drums, low tunings etc., a lot of layers of crazy vocals and synths etc. depending on the sub-genre, and it's all supposed to be loud, clean and separated as well (sometimes).

Agreed, and some metal sub-genres are "worse" than others with regards to both recording style and intensity, and some are even intentionally mixed to sound awful.

On the speaker front I'm not sure if it's that different from other genres - neutrality, dynamic capability etc. will allow good productions to shine and bad productions won't.

Yes, but what we are looking for are systems where even the decent recordings start to sound really good, and even the traditionally poor ones sound okay. The poor recordings should at least not sound WORSE than they do on a cheap / normal stereo, which is suprisingly sometimes the case on some high end systems.

 

[ryanosaur]

Just short of digging into your link, Thorbjörn, the same can be applied to Gaming and HT.
My ultimate answer is that high quality reproduction applies to any sound, not just Mozart or Miles.
Why does Oboe require different treatment than Mahavishnu Orchestra?

 

[sigbergaudio]

Just short of digging into your link, Thorbjörn, the same can be applied to Gaming and HT.
My ultimate answer is that high quality reproduction applies to any sound, not just Mozart or Miles.
Why does Oboe require different treatment than Mahavishnu Orchestra?

I'm not sure I have a perfect answer to that, but personally I've found rock/metal to be among the genres that most often fail to work on especially higher-end speakers. It may be as simple as wrong tonal balance in the bass/midbass combined with too elevated highs to get all that "sparkle" and "resolution". Many simply don't have enough dynamic range / capacity to reproduce it realistically either. Lack of dynamic range may be problematic for a lot of classical music too of course.

 

[Sacha]

Agreed, and some metal sub-genres are "worse" than others with regards to both recording style and intensity, and some are even intentionally mixed to sound awful.



Yes, but what we are looking for are systems where even the decent recordings start to sound really good, and even the traditionally poor ones sound okay. The poor recordings should at least not sound WORSE than they do on a cheap / normal stereo, which is suprisingly sometimes the case on some high end systems.

Interesting! I don't know if I would want that 'enhancing' or homogenization for my work per se; I find speakers that are somewhat 'unforgiving' tend to translate across various types of systems better. These kinds of things are pretty hard to quantify of course. I'd love to hear your speakers some day!

 

[shion_ca]

Agreed, and some metal sub-genres are "worse" than others with regards to both recording style and intensity, and some are even intentionally mixed to sound awful.



Yes, but what we are looking for are systems where even the decent recordings start to sound really good, and even the traditionally poor ones sound okay. The poor recordings should at least not sound WORSE than they do on a cheap / normal stereo, which is suprisingly sometimes the case on some high end systems.

In general, because of my grunge rock up-bringing, I liked vacuum tubes with high watts for this kind of music. I go for more mid range emphasis and laid back highs. Oh stone temple pilots big empty, bush glycerine. Good tracks too…. Nume inch nails hurt.

I go for systems where I can hear the vocals and the highs don’t drive nails into my brain. So not “in your face” systems, but ones that present the soundstage well behind the speakers and have a more tannoy, sort of sound.

 

[DMill]

It’s difficult for me to logically think genre matters much. I admit my knowledge in music for Heavy Metal is limited to popular bands like Black Flag, Motörhead, etc. I’m sure bands like Metallica (who walk the line of Heavy vs. just plan Rock) have resources to produce whatever sound they want in a recording. If the goal is to faithfully reproduce the recording I see no objective reason a “jazzy“ sounding pair of Genelecs can’t play Swedish Death Metal just fine.

 

[MarkS]

I'm not sure I have a perfect answer to that, but personally I've found rock/metal to be among the genres that most often fail to work on especially higher-end speakers. It may be as simple as wrong tonal balance in the bass/midbass combined with too elevated highs to get all that "sparkle" and "resolution". Many simply don't have enough dynamic range / capacity to reproduce it realistically either. Lack of dynamic range may be problematic for a lot of classical music too of course.

I assume "fail to work" means that the sound you get from home speakers does not match the sound you hear at a live rock concert.

It's hard for me to believe that dynamic range is the problem, as most rock is just unremittingly loud.

Home speaker distortion at high volume could be the culprit, but can we really tell speaker distortion from the inherent distortion in most rock without AB comparisons?

Thinking about the giant banks of PA speakers used at live rock concerts and their dispersion, too elevated highs in the home speakers could well be an issue. If this is true, using EQ to cut treble should be a pretty effective fix.

But I suspect the real issue is the literal "wall of sound" from PA speakers. Two point-source (by comparison) home speakers plus room reflections are just not going to emulate this very well, IMO.

 

[DVDdoug]

I'd say you ALWAYS want accurate speakers. The speakers should accurately reproduce the sound, no matter what it is.

Studios don't switch monitors with different genres, but some mastering engineers (and some studio too) specialize in certain genres.

Here's a quote from Floyd Toole's book that might be relevant:

In general, complex productions with broadband, relatively constant spectra aid listeners in finding problems (in listening tests). That notion that "acoustical", especially classical music has inherent superiority was not supported.. Solo instruments and voices appear not to be very helpful...

 

[GD Fan]

I assume "fail to work" means that the sound you get from home speakers does not match the sound you hear at a live rock concert.

It's hard for me to believe that dynamic range is the problem, as most rock is just unremittingly loud.

Home speaker distortion at high volume could be the culprit, but can we really tell speaker distortion from the inherent distortion in most rock without AB comparisons?

Thinking about the giant banks of PA speakers used at live rock concerts and their dispersion, too elevated highs in the home speakers could well be an issue. If this is true, using EQ to cut treble should be a pretty effective fix.

But I suspect the real issue is the literal "wall of sound" from PA speakers. Two point-source (by comparison) home speakers plus room reflections are just not going to emulate this very well, IMO.

I don't know if that's right about dynamic range. The orignal mastering of Death Magnetic is the album most frequently highlighted as the paradigm example of the woes of massive compression in metal. It hurts the ears even at the lowest of volumes.

Perhaps compression makes metal worse than it makes all other genres?

 

[DJNX]

Unlike audio engineering for film, music has little to no standards. Throughout the years, mixing engineers have chosen monitors out of mere trends. Some of those monitors with awful linearity. They have decided, out of thin air, what monitors "work well" with different genres.
"It's rock/metal, so we need to compress the hell out of everything, and go for brightness."
These are dogmas that been repeated with zero science behind it, and we end up with a majority of the genre with brittle, piercing albums, that sound hollow and thin.

And it just takes one or two albums, to prove that we are indeed talking about bad mixes.
Take for example, Rage Against the Machine's debut album, and you are left with no excuse on why the rest of your metal and rock albums sound like crap.

You can also go to other genres, that can be as much of a wall of sound, as further proof on how badly messed up many mixes really are.
Take for example, Prodigy's "Fat of the Land". There is nothing messy about its mixing. It sounds full, powerful and perfectly clear, even during the busiest parts.

So, no. There are no speakers struggling with the genre.
There is no such thing as speakers/monitors going well with a genre. It's myth that will keep hurting the mixing and mastering of myriad albums, until it disappears.

So yes, it's always good neutral speakers revealing bad productions, and there are plenty of those, unfortunately.

 

[MarkS]

I don't know if that's right about dynamic range. The orignal mastering of Death Magnetic is the album most frequently highlighted as the paradigm example of the woes of massive compression in metal. It hurts the ears even at the lowest of volumes.

Perhaps compression makes metal worse than it makes all other genres?

Perhaps, but compression is a problem with recordings, not with speakers.

 

[DWPress]

The better your speakers are and the lower the noise floor of your listening space will reveal the worst studio engineers easily and to much compression is one of the biggest culprits sucking any dynamics out of a mix. Metal, in general, employs a ton of compression and sounds pretty much the same on a phone speaker as a pair of Revels except for the SPL. There are plenty of exceptions of course and the early stuff doesn't suffer as badly - I can turn War Pigs up to 104dB at LP on my system and it sounds sublime - that's good engineering. On the same note, one of my favorite Dylan albums is Desire and it is difficult to get through it on good speakers because of the mix but I can still enjoy it in the car.

 

[polmuaddib]

I don't know about today's heavy metal, but in the 80s and 90s most metal bands that I listened to, Iron Maiden, Queensryche, Metallica etc. had no bass in their recordings or very little of it. Mostly you hear fusion of rhythm guitars with electric bass. Kick drum was never very deep like with electronic music. Rarely any separation in instruments save for solo guitar parts...
Not a very good genre to test speakers, IMHO.
But, I imagine most people listening to metal or punk music are not in it for the quality of recording, but for the energy they offer.

If I wanted to listen to 80s metal today, I wold get some PA speakers and boost the bass region. Something cheap.

So, no, you don't need high end speakers for metal music.

 

[Newman]

I share the view that the more high-energy music output that is required across the full audio bandwidth, the more taxing and demanding is the music of the speakers.

That is why audio demos and hifi shows so often lean towards uncomplicated demo tracks, like ballads, three-piece jazz, etc. Even a full-range 8" single driver speaker can sell itself under such conditions.

That is also why the most demanding test of a speaker is to play dramatic orchestral music. In some ways rock and metal stress the speaker similarly, even more so, but the lack of a neutral reference point counts against them. The whole sound of rock and pop is highly fabricated, with no reference, so the listener has little clue, just from listening to the music itself, whether the speaker is doing a good job of reproduction. The entire sound, even vocals, is make-believe.

And the latter point is exactly why I favour the use of accurate speakers for rock/etc, because there is no other way to feel confident that one is getting the sound that the production team wanted to be heard. Accurate, plus full audio bandwidth, plus high SPL capability.

Oh, and I would have some treble tone control handy. Too many producers of this sort of music have impaired hearing and don't get the treble balance right. It's unpredictable: no speaker is going to cover that without adjustability.

cheers

 

[Blumlein 88]

I mostly have owned ESL panels. Maybe gut wrenching bass wasn't in the cards. Yet I very much enjoyed rock and metal music. Maybe after a time of acclimation one has no issues. The opposite effect were those big old Cerwin-Vegas that could pump out some kind of mid-bass power, but it was so ill defined. Yuck! Later with Soundlabs and powerful amps everything was kosher. I would say Soundlabs and Acoustats were better on rock and metal than Quads of any ilk though I listened with Quads for many hours of enjoyment as well.

I currently use Revel F208s and find rock is just lovely. I would say using JBL LSR 308 speakers just about when it gets loud enough to be good, it doesn't quite measure up. Pairing those with a sub fixes it all up. The odd thing with F208s or the Soundlabs is it gets good at lower sound levels. Rock is probably or was probably made with listening in a car in mind. There was that time when a live Rolling Stones concert broadcast live while traveling cross country ended with my 6x9 hat rack speakers being fried in my 1967 Malibu. Oh well needed an excuse for an upgrade anyway.

 

[StigErik]

• Why are so many (even expensive) speakers struggling with this genre?
• Do great speakers really "reveal bad recordings", or is it the other way around? Do the recordings reveal bad speakers?
• What makes a speaker work well with rock and metal?

1. Then they are not good speakers, and / or poorly integrated in the listening room.
2. I think the latter. The better my own system has become, the list of “bad” records has become shorter and shorter…
3. Needs to be as good as possible on every measurable parameter, like with everything else.

I’m very happy my own system. It sounds great on everything.