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

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.

Sounds good. The question is whether a system where the "highs drive nails into your brain" is actually more accurate than your laidback tube system? I suspect perhaps not. It feels like the audiophile definition of neutral has drifted over to what's actually cold, as in imbalanced towards elevated highs / too little bass.
 
Both the system types you mention are inaccurate in my opinion.

Frequency response is and will remain the most important parameter, and it still amazes me how bad most high end speakers measure in-room.
 
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.

When I say dynamic range, what I mean is ability to play loud without audible compression or distortion. So perhaps dynamic capacity is a term that is more precise.

As most music is "designed" rather than an raw recording of a live event, it's hard to know what is accurate - so one has to go with what sounds more "right" and what is more enjoyable. What makes your body want to move. What makes you want to turn the volume up rather than down.

Some very positive aspects I find in our systems with regards to rock compared to many other systems:
  • The soundstage presentation is wider and the sound feels larger
  • There is better separation between the individual instruments even during busy sections of the track
  • Fuller and more punchy low / low mid
  • Highs that are in your face when they are supposed to be, but never harsh or painful
  • When I put on older rock tracks I remember as relatively poorly recorded, I'm often positively surprised
Is this a truthful representation of the recordings? That's a bit hard to tell, but if I put on what one would typically consider "well recorded" albums, they sound great as well. The highs are not too recessed, and the bass is not too heavy.
 
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.

Your point about the list of bad recordings becoming shorter is what I am realizing too. If you have what you perceive as a great system, but you keep complaining about poor recordings, and records that used to work just fine on a cheaper system, now suddenly is unplayable, perhaps that system isn't that great after all.
 
That is a good point. I stayed away from listening to a lot of music for a long time because it didn’t have that audiophile «don't reveal my system’s flaws” kinda sound. Like the early Beatles records, or Led Zeppelin.
 
I have written it many times but IME there is a bigger difference between the music files/CDs/Lps that are sold than there is between the pieces of equipment we listen on.

Yes, how loud our kit goes without distortion and how deep the bass can go varies but nevertheless I have fabulous sounding recordings played on the same equipment which sounds awful on other recordings.

So how can it be that high end or not speakers are at issue when some recordings sound great and others horrid?

I have only recorded classical music on 2 microphones or a dummy head. IME the microphone positions must be carefully adjusted before the recording (microphone choice and position make the biggest difference IME). The levels set correctly (digital) or appropriate to the music between overload and noise (analogue) any manipulation of the recording afterwards just makes it sound worse.
 
I listen to a lot of Latin jazz, Tropicales, and Caribbean flavored music. If a speaker can play that type of music they can play anything.
Low distortion sub and bass reproduction was how I got the best overall result with a combination of small planars and ribbons.
The room just happened to be the key for me to be able to do that.

My wife was just blasting Metallica, Marilyn Manson and Nine inch Nails. I had to leave, it was blasting. Even Jr. (the rabbit) headed
for his quiet cave. Me and the dog LEFT.
 
Before I was a teenager I mostly listened to classical music. Then I got into heavy rock, followed by progressive rock (which I still listen to a lot, many decades later).

I've had multiple collections of kit over the years. My general experience is that some recordings always sound wonderful; some sound woeful no matter what I listen on, and many sound OK. A really good system let's one understand the recording better, without throwing out the enjoyment of the music. With modern equipment, there's no hiding the fact that 70s rock has no deep bass, so theres no point trying to build a system that creates that bass out of nowhere.
 
Its mostly a mastering thing. There are plenty of rock and metal albums that sound great. Its just that the vast majority is recorded badly and mastered even worse. Its probably the genre that suffers the most from brickwalling.
 
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.

I was just listening to War Pigs and it sounds great but I also find that Dylan album sounds fine and can't fault the mix in particular, tonallity-wise it sounds fairly well-balanced with good separation between instruments and everything in the mix is clearly heard. There are just some elements that's on the brink of sounding a little on the harsh side sometimes, but not really over the top in a way that I feel the need of turning it down.
What is it that make you think it's badly mixed?
 
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.
I share your musical up-bringning roots and extent them to post grunge and neo- progressive rock. I look for the same quality of balanced reproduction in speakers. To that I add the importance of dynamics, in laymen's terms the ability to reproduce paint striping ball to the wall rock and roll.
 
Many times productions of rock music are wrongfully accused of being badly recorded and mixed, but as @Sacha pointed out, rock and metal music is often much more challenging to mix as there is usually much more going on at the same time, as there are usually intensively played instruments that compete for the same frequency range which will unavoidable cause more frequency masking.

The big challenge to avoid some of the frequency masking is to get all the pannings right, sometimes carving out and dedicating certain frequency ranges for different instruments, and get the compression level right for certain sound objects which are usually the kick drum, the bass guitar, and the vocals, as those sound elements often have way too much dynamics to work with everything else in the mix without either getting buried or overwhelm the rest in a crowded mix.

A thing I think most listeners have noticed is that when it comes to a less dense part in an otherwise crowded and dense rock mix, a segment where just one or two of the instruments are played, the individual instruments are often pretty well recorded when heard on their own but right at the moment when all the other instruments come in, it can yet again sound way worse in a way that may make people think it’s badly recorded.



But if we go back to the topic of this thread.
Some loudspeakers just seem to be way better than others at keeping things separated when a music mix gets dense with a lot of frequency overlapping of competing sound elements, that without making a total mess out of everything keeping good separation and layering, and a sense of “calmness” of how everything sounds is somehow kept in check even when the music itself is highly dense and intense. :)
 
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What is the most used "mixing speaker"? NS-10?
 
What is the most used "mixing speaker"? NS-10?

It is very common to have at least, but most have several monitors, and the final tonality of the recording is determined during mastering, where perhaps the NS10 is somewhat less common.
 
It is very common to have at least, but most have several monitors, and the final tonality of the recording is determined during mastering, where perhaps the NS10 is somewhat less common.
Let's not forget the "taste" of the mixing and mastering engineers...so, yeah, it's a mess. :D
 
I think is the opposite,it's the hi-end speakers that have the reputation of been nice to the genre.
All this years when someone states heavy metal as it's genre and asks for suggestion in the usual audiophile sites the answer is always the same:
jbl Everest with SS Mcintosh or Watt-puppies or Aerial Acoustics,etc.

The common denominator is probably lots of uncompressed mid-bass (all "dense" genres need that) and high SLP ability.
Of course there's the other side of Hi-end "esoteric" speakers with a lonely small mid-bass destined to play someone crying with a distant violin at the back.
Well...
 
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I think is the opposite,it's the hi-end speakers that have the reputation of been nice to the genre.
All this years when someone states heavy metal as it's genre and asks for suggestion in the usual audiophile sites the answer is always the same:
jbl Everest with SS Mcintosh or Watt-puppies or Aerial Acoustics,etc.

The common denominator is probably lots of uncompressed mid-bass (all "dense" genres need that) and high SLP ability.
Of course there's the other side of Hi-end "esoteric" speakers with a lonely small mid-bass destined to play someone crying with a distant violin at the back.
Well...

Well, JBL Everest is probably not a bad choice, and not what I would think of as the typical high end speaker? :)
 
Well, JBL Everest is probably not a bad choice, and not what I would think of as the typical high end speaker? :)
Everest is the epitome of the hi end speaker.
Right price to be in the middle price tier (the upper end of it),luxury finish,well made to the last detail,etc.
 
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