Home HiFi: 3-Way VS 2-Way Bookshelf Speakers? (+Recommendations)

[Mort]

Very friendly community here, I see.

Community here is great. It's a weird flex is all. If you are genuine, you'll get a lot out of this forum.

 

[kemmler3D]

I'll look into room modes, thanks. Smaller bass drivers(under 8") definitely work better in my current room, but as far as smooth falloff VS sharp falloff VS dipped falloff, I'm not quite sure.

As others have mentioned, the real problem is room modes. Bigger drivers produce lower / louder bass, which interacts with the modes where smaller drivers might not be able to. But the modes are there regardless of what speaker you use, and in fact even if you were just playing an instrument in the room, they'd be there.

"A speaker that doesn't interact with my room modes" is unfortunately just "A speaker that lacks bass output". There is no special trick or tuning or radiation pattern that lets speakers dodge modes. If this sounds questionable, consider the fact that the wavelengths in question are larger than your whole room for the most part. It's like trying to aim a grenade to miss certain things in the vicinity... doesn't work like that.

KEF and some other manufacturers do tune their speakers with a few dB shelf down, below 100hz or so. This helps their speakers sound less boomy in typical rooms, without EQ. But it doesn't eliminate modes, just compensates for typical room gain and lowers the amplitude of any modes present proportionally. If you are dead-set against EQ or find it too much hassle, I would recommend looking for a speaker that's tuned that way.

Some people aren't EQ geniuses. And I don't have forever to screw around with EQ when listening to several speakers that have short return/refund windows. I'm not a studio, and don't have studio capabilities.

I hear you on this. If you haven't done it before, it probably seems like a huge process. Modern EQ software can do all of the hard work for you, though.

If you are using a computer for playback, you can get EQ for free on Windows via EQAPO / Peace EQ and on Mac you can buy SoundSource, I think it has a free demo though.

Basically if you have a measurement mic, you can use REW (room EQ wizard) to measure the room modes, and it generates an EQ curve to flatten out the peaks / troughs those modes create. Then you just copy / paste those settings into the EQ app.

There are other apps that use your phone's mic for a less-precise-but-still-useful approach.

But realistically you can get started doing it by ear, anyone with 10 minutes can knock down the big modes in their room with no prior skills or knowledge:

1. Install an EQ app on your computer. Set it up and verify that it's working by messing with some controls.

2. Use a tone generator like this: https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/

3. Starting from about 20hz, slowly raise the frequency until the sound gets much louder. That's a mode.

4. Take note of the frequency and create a new Peaking Filter in your EQ app. Set the frequency to the one in question. Leave the Q alone for now*. Lower the gain by 2dB at a time.

5. Sweep the tone generator back and forth and see if the volume sounds constant as you sweep it. If not, go back to step 4. A typical mode can be 5-10dB louder than the baseline or more.

6. Repeat steps 3-5, once you fix one peak, you may find there are more, up to about 300hz. Create one filter for each peak.

7. Once you can sweep from 20hz to about 250-300hz without hearing any big peaks, you're done**. You can expect to find several prominent modes, it would be surprising if you find less than 3-5.

Doing it by ear isn't perfect but it's still better than no correction, and it will give you a chance to get familiar with the tools and decide if you want to invest in a mic, etc.

If you do invest in a mic you can do a really accurate correction in about 2 minutes once you've got everything set up.

I cannot recommend EQing for room correction enough, it's the audio equivalent of getting a first class upgrade for free or almost free. Getting rid of the peaks has a more comprehensive subjective effect than you would expect. Bass is tighter and more solid, but getting rid of the peaks also makes the mids sound clearer, and the tight bass makes everything sound a bit more dynamic, too.

*Q is the width of the filter. High Q = narrow. If you notice that the filter is affecting frequencies you don't want it to, raise the Q a little. If you notice that it's not affecting all the frequencies you need it to, lower it a little.

**Troughs / dips are considered harder to correct because you have to use a disproportionate amount of gain to fix them, which stresses your speakers. Only try to add filters for dips if you are sure your speakers have the headroom. Because dips result from sound bouncing and cancelling itself out, +3dB may not even raise the net volume, because after all, 3 - 3 = 0.

edit: Also, if you want a little more or less treble or bass, EQ does work quite well. Add a low or high shelf and try 2-3dB starting at 120hz for bass or 3-5khz for treble. Adjust to taste. Much cheaper than new speakers... and if you are in the market for new speakers, a good way to get a rough sense of different tunings without having to actually buy the dang speakers.

 

[Ktacos]

Some people aren't EQ geniuses. And I don't have forever to screw around with EQ when listening to several speakers that have short return/refund windows. I'm not a studio, and don't have studio capabilities.

You don't even have to know how use EQ, you can just use an automated correction suite. Measuring an audio system is not limited to studios at all, very, very commonly done in the home.

I don't think you are quite understanding that what you are after cannot simply be bought. You can buy a speaker that on paper would tick all your boxes. Once you put it in a room, it's going to need EQ. It doesn't matter what you buy, you are going to need EQ to tune it to your preference. If you can't muster that you're going to be endlessly buying speakers and being disappointed. Really need to shift ones focus from "what can I buy" to "what are my spaces problems and how can I fix them" because again, it doesn't matter what you buy, it's all going to victim to room interaction.

 

[tw 2022]

Of course, with this being ASR I've never measured anything. I simply look at measurements other people did, then buy based off other people's reviews.

I don't really do reviews, since they are such a particular thing. I just tell you what I hear. No evidence. No review. A comparison, yes. (And apparently I'm wrong about all of it. Oh well)

the beautiful part of subjective comps is : you literally can't be wrong , but you may not hear them anything like someone in a different room with different set up and gear...

 

[tw 2022]

Community here is great. It's a weird flex is all. If you are genuine, you'll get a lot out of this forum.

you can learn *a lot* between this forum , avs and Erin... I think the op is actually on the right path: if he pays heed to learning as the goal...some do , and others get a bit show-off-ish....

 

[RexrothPigeon]

When I do my upgrade shootouts, I listen to all the candidates at the same time, in the same place, so I know for sure I'm choosing the best sounding thing.

I just tell you what I hear.

There's nothing wrong with preferring listening to measurements--but if you want to do that, you have to make sure you're actually listening, something that is categorically impossible the way you're trying to go about it.

If you are not doing these "shootouts" double-blind under controlled test conditions, then you are not evaluating the speakers based on sound, full stop. People, including you, including me, are intractably ocularcentric and riven with biases that we cannot escape unless we completely disable them.

 

[kemmler3D]

People, including you, including me, are intractably ocularcentric and riven with biases that we cannot escape unless we completely disable them.

+1 to this. It's hard to emphasize enough how convincing and ubiquitous placebo effect is. When you read about people being susceptible to cognitive bias in their hearing, you usually think 1) well, that's them, I'm a serious listener, not weak-minded like that, and 2) you imagine the heard differences being somehow ephemeral, vague, shifty and uncertain.

Both of those thoughts are very wrong. It has nothing to do with listening experience or intellect or strength of character or any of that, and things you hear due to placebo effect are surprisingly convincing. You really do hear the differences, they are in a sense real, and they certainly feel real, it's just that you're not hearing them for the reasons you think you are.

I know this in part because I've spent enough time tweaking EQs and filters to have accidentally tweaked a filter that was inactive, but heard changes anyway. Yes, the changes were smaller than expected, but they were certainly not zero! Noticing this immediately humbles you and changes your perspective, but unfortunately you can't have this experience on purpose. It might bear mentioning that this happened at work, during a time where I was doing a lot of critical listening on the clock, so I was as sharp as ever.

It is like catching a trusted employee stealing. Your confidence in them is never the same, and you would not have believed anyone that told you before you saw it...

I wish I could convey this experience to everyone, because we all listen with brains and ears, and the overwhelming majority of our brains work that way. You can trust your ears, but only to an extent. It pays to reduce variables if you're trying to pin down smaller differences.

 

[Chanur]

BMR Towers are insanely good. Cannot imagine the BMR Monitors are not incredible too.