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

[Vacceo]

Test for room response and distortion. Can you hear bass drum and snare properly? Is the guitar all over the place and ripping your ears? It's not a "nice" sound to begin with but at loud volume it should be easy to distinguish the recorded distortion from driver saying hello or the reflections becoming overbearing.
There's no deep low end so this is just intense mid - high mid test. The size and placement of the guitar varies greatly between speakers.

@Frank Dernie
Very good point about multiple recordings of classical pieces.

Good choice of track to check if the gear can reproduce a blastbeat! Altars of Madness, Blessed are the Sick and Covenant from Morbid Angel are excelent albums to "overload" speakers and check how they react. Abigor has released very well produced albums with a huge variety of sounds in the different frequencies, they are another good band to test gear.

As I mentioned, my old KEF IQ set (2 IQ7, 2 IQ3, 2 IQ8ds, 1 IQ6c, 4 IQ1) with a pair of PSW 2500 with a bit EQ can keep up with it. You mentioned the trick of being able to distinguish the kick drum from the drum and the stare when everything is hit at the same time (a blastbeat) and I fully agree: if the record has been able to separate the sounds, good speakers should also do the same.

 

[Verig]

@Vacceo Abigor has some really wild mixes.
Hypocrisy - Northwind doesn't sound very taxing at first but some speakers really mess up that 1:55--> drumming.
Covenant has some of that same quality. Quite smooth sound so you can really turn it up.

 

[Vacceo]

@Vacceo Abigor has some really wild mixes.
Hypocrisy - Northwind doesn't sound very taxing at first but some speakers really mess up that 1:55--> drumming.
Covenant has some of that same quality. Quite smooth sound so you can really turn it up.

Fractal Possession is quite an insane record for a Black Metal band, moreso considering when it was released. The industrial elements and added noises fade easily on some speakers, particularly on tracks like The Fire Syndrome or Cold Void Choir.

Totschläger is another of those records that includes so many layers of sound that really reveals speakers that cannot handle stuff like that. Silent Towers, Screaming Tombs or Tartaros Tides are great to see if you´re missing something on the speakers.

 

[Sacha]

What if you combine the orchestra with metal? Beautiful mix by Andy Sneap on this one IMO:

 

[shion_ca]

What do you mean by ‘coherent’?

Ones that don't sound like meaningless walls of noise. Ones where I can distinguish the sounds from each other, and the recording has instruments in a distinct place in the soundstage. Where the instruments sound a reasonable size and volume relative to each other and the vocal. Where my ears don't flutter at the high frequencies and have me running from the room. I'm not talking about near field coherency of sound waves if that's what you are asking.

 

[shion_ca]

To be fair I don't really consider metallic metal... and about the closest I come is heavy rock like Tool (well recorded for the genre in my opinion).

 

[Sokel]

It's sad that a 1968 work like "the Shades of Deep Purple" is so nicely recorded,has depth,it's fairly dynamic,etc and today's work is so much "soopy" and uninteresting .

(yes,I've been a teenager too,I didn't only listen Rachmaninov )

 

[goat76]

Test for room response and distortion. Can you hear bass drum and snare properly? Is the guitar all over the place and ripping your ears? It's not a "nice" sound to begin with but at loud volume it should be easy to distinguish the recorded distortion from driver saying hello or the reflections becoming overbearing.
There's no deep low end so this is just intense mid - high mid test. The size and placement of the guitar varies greatly between speakers.

Unfortunately, this track and the "Zum Kotzen" you mentioned earlier are both completely crushed in mastering, it would have been nice to hear how these mixes sounded before they were mastered as they lack "life" and sound pretty flat. I have no problem hearing the drums and I don't find the guitar to sound particularly harsh in the track "Life's Emblem", they obviously did go for the typical wall of sound for the guitar and it's pretty hard to distinguish a bass guitar in the mix.

The other two tracks you also mentioned, "Charred Remains" and "Feasting on the Blood of the Insane" are not as crushed in the mastering (even if they also are severely reduced in the dynamics) which helps in hearing more of the layering of the instruments. The bass guitar is fairly dominant and forward-sounding in the track "Charred Remains", I like the growly sound but it's also a bit muffled which makes the whole track sound that way. Still, I like the sound of the Autopsy track the most out of your examples, all of them are pretty low-fi recordings/mixes with bad separation between the instruments that compete in the same frequency ranges, so I guess many speakers will have a problem not make a complete mess out of those songs.

 

[Drengur]

No speaker in existence can make one of my favorite albums Death Magnetic sound good. There are of course three versions available in addition to the original mega-compressed release version there is a remastered for iTunes version available, which is slightly better and (sorry Lars) a pirated Guitar Hero version which was a marked improvement. But generally speaking some of my favorite speakers have had no problem with metal.

 

[sq225917]

There's only accurate equipment and less accurate equipment.

Whether we like the sound of how they replay a particular genre is of no consequence if you are in search of avowed accuracy.

That unpopular mixing and mastering exists says nothing about the suitably of a device for a position in the replay chain.

Most metal is likely mixed for radio and midfi, as is most grossly commercial output.

 

[goat76]

There's only accurate equipment and less accurate equipment.

Whether we like the sound of how they replay a particular genre is of no consequence if you are in search of avowed accuracy.

That unpopular mixing and mastering exists says nothing about the suitably of a device for a position in the replay chain.

Most metal is likely mixed for radio and midfi, as is most grossly commercial output.

I think we are all talking about more accurate equipment.

A loudspeaker by itself can never separate layerings and different musical instruments in a stereo recording if the mix doesn't contain such layering and separation to begin with. So if a certain loudspeaker can separate those nuances better than another loudspeaker, it’s simply the more accurate speaker for that particular task.

 

[sq225917]

Stereo is a studio construct, all we cam do is reproduce it, or not

 

[Verig]

, so I guess many speakers will have a problem not make a complete mess out of those songs.

Yes.

Edit: I listen to a lot of lo-fi stuff and if speakers can handle these they can handle pretty much everything.

 

[Verig]

There's only accurate equipment and less accurate equipment.

Whether we like the sound of how they replay a particular genre is of no consequence if you are in search of avowed accuracy.

That unpopular mixing and mastering exists says nothing about the suitably of a device for a position in the replay chain.

Most metal is likely mixed for radio and midfi, as is most grossly commercial output.

Accuracy is not really a factor for me. I could just buy coaxial Genelecs and be done with it if I wanted.
These mixes I posted are very telling how a speaker handles itself. They serve an objective goal. Speakers that can't handle congestion or a bit wilder recorded distortion will have problems with other genres too, metal just happens to have the components to test this easily. Slight inaccuracies in FR are not that important, this is more about power handling and driver integration.

 

[dweeeeb2]

No speaker in existence can make one of my favorite albums Death Magnetic sound good. There are of course three versions available in addition to the original mega-compressed release version there is a remastered for iTunes version available, which is slightly better and (sorry Lars) a pirated Guitar Hero version which was a marked improvement. But generally speaking some of my favorite speakers have had no problem with metal.

Ha, I bought three copies of that album hoping to find a better one….

I think the room has a lot to do with it. I find almost all metal music much “easier” to listen to on iems. It doesn’t have the same visceral impact but they have infinitely more clarity to seperate the instruments and vocals.

 

[StigErik]

I’ve got the pirated GH3 version of Death Magnetic. Nothing wrong with that. Master of puppets sounds worse in my opinion.

 

[Tell]

If you have good and properly set up speakers then any music should sound good as long as it's mixed and mastered properly, and that includes rock.

Problem with rock though is that it for some unclear reason often lacks bass (or maybe lacked, haven't really listened to any modern rock except for Rammstein), which is probably why you often hear people seeking bass heavy speakers for rock, they need to compensate for the lack of it in the mix/master.

 

[Mart68]

Do we have examples of rock recordings that genuinely lack bass?

Off the top of my head I can think of a couple that I used to think lacked bass until I got proper speakers and amplifier:

Oasis - 'Definitely Maybe'
Georgia Satellites - 'In The Land Of Salvation And Sin'

 

[sigbergaudio]

Do we have examples of rock recordings that genuinely lack bass?

Off the top of my head I can think of a couple that I used to think lacked bass until I got proper speakers and amplifier:

Oasis - 'Definitely Maybe'
Georgia Satellites - 'In The Land Of Salvation And Sin'

This is a pretty famous example I guess

The dark reason why Metallica made an album with no bass

Highlighting the real reason why Metallica didn't include any bass on their fourth album '...And Justice For All' following the death of Cliff Burton in 1986.

faroutmagazine.co.uk

But I agree, there are perhaps fewer than one would first think. And some are actually just recorded with higher dynamic range / less compression (if you can avoid the remasters), so the bass appears if you turn up the volume a bit.

 

[Sokel]

Maybe the reason is what Lemmy said,"a rock band has a singer,a guitar player,a drummer and a guy we found around the corner"

Don't underestimate egos,remember the battles at Rainbow recordings.

(yes,not only I was not listening strictly to Ravel but I was informed about the other genres too )