Is my preferred genre incompatible with hifi speakers?

[Zenheiser]

Hello all,

I hope my question is not regarded as too off, but...I will just give it a try.

Due to being a consultant and therefore travelling a lot, I did not own loudspeakers for the last ~13 years. I am a huge fan of very, very technical metal (Archspire, Psycroptic, etc.) and listened to that kind of music with my beloved headphone companion Beyerdynamic DT1350.

(sorry already if this is just noise for you, but I just love it).

I chose this pair of headphones back in the days as it was pretty much the only headphone in the shop that allowed me to not only enjoy a song itself, but to easily follow any instrument in the mix separately and, most importantly, effortlessly. I want to only focus on the drums? No problem. I want to listen to the bass only? Easy. Vocals only? Swap between them? Enjoy just the attack of the snare, identify the string gauge on the guitar (just kidding) - what I want to say is: that`s the way I like to enjoy music on my headphones: absolute precision, still easy listening. Btw: I only listened to flac- or WAV-files.

Now my personal circumstances have changed and I wanted to invest in a nice hifi setup for my home. I did a lot of research on this forum regarding amps and speakers which might fit my requirements and sound preferences and then went to the local expert shop to have a listening session in their test chamb.., uh, tastefully, obviously geometrically perfect and elegant listening room. They had various speakers from Elac (Vela Something), Fischer&Fischer, Quadral and KEF in various price ranges and presented them to me with some random classical music, Blues, Jazz, Orchestra etc. Although all of the speakers sounded different, but all exceptionally great, I quickly noticed, that I really somehow disliked low frequencies. For some of the smaller speakers, the shop owner recommended the addition of a subwoofer, but the moment he turned it on to present the difference and smiled to me as if he wanted to suggest that the music was now more even enjoyable, to me everything suddenly really sounded meh and was just...a mess and no pleasure anymore. Like a layer of discomfort. A distraction. It added volume, but reduced the overall precision. It is hard to explain, but I really, really did not like the sound, independent of the price tag of the equipment he switched on and off.

Now to the actual problem: as I know my musical taste is not really mainstream or mass compatible, it took a while for me to hesitantly ask if I could play some of my own music. No problem, he said. But there was a problem: all songs sounded shite. At first I could not really understand what it was, as all speakers were somehow great before, but then I realized, that I was lacking the ability to effortlessly(!) follow each instrument. The song itself was there, yes, but a good amount of the separation was gone. I could no longer follow each instrument with ease, but had to focus very intensely, making listening a physical excercise, not a pleasure. I had my DT 1350s with me, listend to the same song again to make sure I wasnt having a bad day, but: absolutely different experience.

So I left the shop (without speakers, of course).

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a huge professional audio shop in the next big town with my brother, who was looking for guitar equipment. They had a listening room with loudspeakers and I could connect my phone to them.

Huge surprise for me: every speaker in this room was better than anything I listened to before in the hifi shop. And not by a small amount. By lightyears. I spent almost 60 minutes in there, swapping back and forth from pair to pair, enjoying my music in a way I did not think it was possible with speakers at all. I could hear the same details as with my headphones and was able to follow the individual components of each song absolutely effortless. The best part was: even when I was 2-3 meters away from the speakers, running around, and definitely not in a perfect listening position, the experience was still way better than with any of the $$$$$$-equipment at the hifi shop. I am not talking about a slight difference, but another world.

I narrowed my preference down to:

Neumann KH 120A
Genelec 8040
Adam Audio A7V (not as clean as the aforementioned, but overall...a bit more fun)

I tried some electronic music afterwards and even that sounded better than any of the huge tower speakers in the hifi shop.

So I am actually asking myself three questions now:

1. Did I "ruin" my listening preferences with my headphones over the last 13 years and/or
2. Is the music I am listening to generally "incompatible" with hifi equipment?
3. Is there any drawback in using one of the aforementioned speakers in my living room?

Also perhaps someone here can shed a bit of light into my experience and why it is the way it is?

 

[Elkerton]

Your first 2 preferences, the Neumanns and the Genelecs, are good. The 'bit more fun' of the Adams might pall on you after a while. Your main concern with them would be whether they would play loudly enough in your living space.

It's hard to say why the sounds at the hi-fi dealer were so unsatisfying, though some of those brands, like KEF, make Very fine products. It could be the room, or how the speakers were positioned, or the electronics. The professional monitors you heard had amps and some DSP built in, so could/should sound better than most passive designs. Too, if you were listening to the monitors in the near field, they would sound more like headphones, more detailed than if you were listening from afar, that is 2m or more.

Check out www.spinorama.org You may have to spend some time learning to read measurements, but they are reliable in determining sound quality.

 

[obsessive9119]

I like metal too, and I find it particularly revealing if I've messed up the EQ settings or sub integration. I have a playlist that I use to test headphone/speaker/EQ setups and the first 3 tracks are pretty easy going (Fleetwood Mac, Daft Punk, Radiohead) but the 4th is Blood Incantation. There have been plenty of times that I've thought things sounded OK, until I got to that track and it sounded like a mess. But once I get things sorted, it sounds great. (I'm mostly using KEF LS50 Metas with a sub, FWIW).

In the hifi dealer, it sounds like they just turned a sub on when you were listening to different sets of speakers. That almost certainly means the sub wasn't set up properly for the particular speakers, which can sound like crap. So no, you haven't ruined your ears with headphones, and your tastes aren't incompatible with Hi Fi. Neumann and Genelec seem well regarded, not sure about Adam.

 

[Ellebob]

I think your difference is the room. With headphones you are hearing the direct sound with speakers you're hearing the combination of direct and reflected sound. Sometimes reflections add to the pleasure other times it can be detrimental. Room treatments can be one of the biggest differences in sound in a room. The sub was probably not integrated well and usually if you want to listen in multiple areas and have consistent bass, you need two or more subs.

 

[Doenerkunde]

So your main problem was the bass range. With headphones you don't experience this problem at all. At the hifi store with big tower speakers you really didn't like the sound. At the pro audio store with compact monitors it was much better.

I'd bet money it's the room thats the problem here. The bigger the listening distance the bigger the ratio between indirect (reflected) and direct sound reaching your ears becomes. With headphones the room has no influence whatsoever and this is your benchmark. In-room dips and peaks occur due to relections arriving at your ear in phase (peaks) or out of phase (dips) relative to the main signal.

One thing this forum tought me is that most, if not all, perceived differences in sound (faster, tighter, fuller, warmer, airy, detailed etc) boil down to amplitude. Tonality (how loud different frequency bands are in relation to each other) really is king.

So my guess is that the room of pro audio store did not add as many or as severe dips and peaks as the room of the Hifi store (maybe because of a smaller listening distance or the position of the speakers or the dimensions of the room). In your own room this differences probably would be smaller. This forum is a big proponent of in-room measurements and parametric equalizing to counteract said dips and peaks in your room at your listening position.

 

[Defi]

I listen to a lot of lo-fi black metal and believe it or not, better speakers still make the experience much more enjoyable. So no, nothing is incompatible.

I don't know why this myth of "better speakers make bad recordings sound worse" thing gets perpetuated. That has just not been my experience at all. Unless someone's definition of bad recording is different than mine. I believe a lot of production in my world is a stylistic choice, and most metal bands that are bigger tend to put all their music through the same machine and it comes out sounding well... the same. Anyway, I digress. As usual.

If my avatar is unrecognizable it's a very dense album with a guitarist that has an inimicable style. I love the production. As I have gone through better and better listening setups I have been able to hear more and more of what is actually going on. I find that very rewarding. I feel my stereo setup is incredibly close to headphone clarity now--I actually listened to a song off this aforementioned album the other day and finally heard this one guitar part that I was not sure about for almost 15 years now!--and I STILL haven't implemented any DSP yet. But that clarity takes room setup, it will not happen the first time you just place speakers randomly in a room (or hear them in a showroom). On your journey you should encounter the same thing in tech death.

In MY opinion, if this is the style of music you like, you will be the type of person that benefits from room treatment.

Edit: Btw I use Revel f226Be speakers currently. I would expect KEF to be able to resolve similarly, though have not heard them and am not sure which models you listened to. But I also have Polk L800 and they too had a lot of detail in my room. This is to say, you absolutely don't need studio monitors for that. At the same time, studio monitors are absolutely a great choice!

 

[a|F]

No budget mentioned and these speakers are probably beyond, but they're designed by metal head Nordics.

The answer to your thread title question is no.

Yes headphones > near field > living room.

After choosing the best speaker for your application and budget, room interactions drive the experience.

 

[Robin L]

1. Did I "ruin" my listening preferences with my headphones over the last 13 years and/or

No

2. Is the music I am listening to generally "incompatible" with hifi equipment?

No

3. Is there any drawback in using one of the aforementioned speakers in my living room?

None, unless your room is significantly larger, then you might need larger versions of these three really excellent speakers. Either that or room treatment, my listening space is small, I sit close to the speakers, so I'm don't have issues with room interaction as much as most people.

Also perhaps someone here can shed a bit of light into my experience and why it is the way it is?

I'm a classical music fan with lots of experience recording concerts of same. I have found that music that's densely textured and at times very loud is the hardest to record and reproduce. You, fortunately, lucked into hearing some of the best studio monitors. I listened to a minute of your sonic example—I'm metal-adverse, sorry—and the sort of music you like is harder to reproduce than the sort of music considered "audiophile"—"audiophile" usually means the recording sounds "nice" but is not challenging. There are exceptions, like early Telarc recordings that blew up speaker cones due to extreme bass and dynamics. I'm a big fan of the music of Anton Bruckner; his music presents some of the same playback issues as metal. In spite of my allergy to gargling lead vocals (reminds me too much of my cat yowling in the hallway) your example sounds like a pretty good production of its type.

I've got some cheapskate audio going on, streaming from an acer laptop to a Topping E30 DAC, then Topping L30 headphone amp into the amazing $25 7Hz x Crinacle Zero:2 IEMs. You might want to check out these IEMs, amazing how little distortion they add.

7Hz x Crinacle Zero:2 IEM Review

This is a review, listening tests, EQ and detailed measurements of the 7Hz x Crinacle Zero:2 IEM. It was kindly donated to me by a member and costs US $24.99. The cable is soft and longer than typical which I like. They take fair amount of effort to push it but then they make a reassuring...

www.audiosciencereview.com

In any case, Amir reviewed an iteration of the Neumann KH 120 monitor. It performs exceptionally well down to 40 hz. If you want more, you'll need a sub.

Neumann KH120 II Monitor Review

This is a review, detailed measurements and listening tests/EQ of Neumann KH120 MKII DSP active monitor (speaker). It is on kind loan from the company and costs US $999 each. I love the form factor for desktop use. It is not too deep or unwieldly as some larger configurations can be: Back...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[bothu]

Dear Zenheiser. My advise for a god sound is to listen in the near field of speakers. That is the nearest you can come headphone-sound.
I have big speakers in my living room and small speakers in my office room. Listening to complex music in the far field will smear out the sound.
I prefer the near field speakers when listening concentrated.

He he ... when i was young I listened to music quite similar to your taste the band was from France named MAGMA.

Here is a picture from my near field system. Speakers are homemade with some digital filtering applied.

Best wishes from Bo Thunér in Sweden.

 

[kemmler3D]

My guess is that because you are listening to fast details in the music, any increase in decay time and indirect sound will tend to be a problem for you. No wonder that more bass sounds worse to you in that case, it has the longest decay time in most rooms. Also no wonder that you liked nearfield speakers.

You will want a high ratio of direct and indirect sound and a low decay time, along with a flat frequency response, to get closer to the level of detail you hear from headphones. The 8030 and KH120 are great for that, especially in a treated room.

Bass isn't inherently bad for your purposes, it's the decay time, but managing that in-room is not easy and you may be happier with no sub.

 

[steve59]

Reminds me a bit of hawkwind back in the day. What I do when all I'm doing is listening to unwind and just enjoy some music is pull my chair closer to the speaker pair so instead of my 8x8x10' i'll pull the chair in to 8x8x8' or even a little closer to hear better separation.

 

[SHB]

No, you didn’t destroy your hearing.
No, any decent speaker is meant to be compatible with any audio source.

The only factors that need to be considered are the level at which the audio is to be played back and the room it’s being played into (basically, the area that the audio is meant to cover).

As far as your disdain for low end frequencies is concerned, that’s not surprising since you’ve been listening to headphones for over a decade. Hearing low frequencies and experiencing low frequencies are two different things.

Low frequencies aren’t just something that you take in with just your ears. Your entire body is part of the mix as well.

• Your skull and, most especially, your sinus passages have a great deal to do with how you hear sound. Your Eustachian Tubes connect your middle ears to the back of your throat. The tubes help drain fluid from your middle ear and balance air pressure inside your ears.

• If you listen with a congested sinus cavity, the sound is a lot different than when those passages are clear.

• Your lungs and chest cavity also affect how you experience low frequencies. Engineers like to make sure the kick drum has either a prominent fundamental or second harmonic around 70-80Hz on dance music because that’s the resonant frequency of the air in your lungs.

• Loud bass frequencies will vibrate your internal organs and literally rattle your bones.

• As a bass player, I’m very aware of all of this and quite enjoy it. Also, volume levels don’t need to be incredible for you to physically feel all of this. Hell, just playing an acoustic bass guitar gets my body vibrating a bit.

Your taste in audio has been shaped by all of your time, listening to headphones. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Listening to headphones is a lot like watching a movie or TV show. You can have a 10 foot screen, but you’re not going to experience everything that you would being at a sporting event, etc.

Listening to speakers (especially a surround system) brings you a good bit closer to a live presentation than headphones do (even with all the new virtual tech), but that doesn’t invalidate headphones.

Hearing a band in concert hall is a lot different from listening to them playing outdoors.

If your taste is different, fine. You don’t need to have subs to enjoy music if your speakers cover most of the human range of audibility.

I, on the other hand, though, need subwoofers because my instrument goes down to 30Hz and I want the low notes to be reproduced with very little distortion. That’s not possible without subwoofers.

The Genelec and Neumann speakers you mentioned will both do a great job.

Also, it sounds like that salesman didn’t realize that subwoofers aren’t something that you just add in to a system without any thought. To get the best sound, you need to crossover the main speakers to the subwoofers so they handle all the low end duties.

And, hey, maybe it just wasn’t that good a subwoofer!

 

[Grimoire]

My guess is that because you are listening to fast details in the music, any increase in decay time and indirect sound will tend to be a problem for you. No wonder that more bass sounds worse to you in that case, it has the longest decay time in most rooms. Also no wonder that you liked nearfield speakers.

You will want a high ratio of direct and indirect sound and a low decay time, along with a flat frequency response, to get closer to the level of detail you hear from headphones. The 8030 and KH120 are great for that, especially in a treated room.

Bass isn't inherently bad for your purposes, it's the decay time, but managing that in-room is not easy and you may be happier with no sub.

Cardioid speakers would help with this. AsciLab C8C might fit the bill.

 

[RDoc]

Hello all,

I hope my question is not regarded as too off, but...I will just give it a try.

Due to being a consultant and therefore travelling a lot, I did not own loudspeakers for the last ~13 years. I am a huge fan of very, very technical metal (Archspire, Psycroptic, etc.) and listened to that kind of music with my beloved headphone companion Beyerdynamic DT1350.

(sorry already if this is just noise for you, but I just love it).

I chose this pair of headphones back in the days as it was pretty much the only headphone in the shop that allowed me to not only enjoy a song itself, but to easily follow any instrument in the mix separately and, most importantly, effortlessly. I want to only focus on the drums? No problem. I want to listen to the bass only? Easy. Vocals only? Swap between them? Enjoy just the attack of the snare, identify the string gauge on the guitar (just kidding) - what I want to say is: that`s the way I like to enjoy music on my headphones: absolute precision, still easy listening. Btw: I only listened to flac- or WAV-files.

Now my personal circumstances have changed and I wanted to invest in a nice hifi setup for my home. I did a lot of research on this forum regarding amps and speakers which might fit my requirements and sound preferences and then went to the local expert shop to have a listening session in their test chamb.., uh, tastefully, obviously geometrically perfect and elegant listening room. They had various speakers from Elac (Vela Something), Fischer&Fischer, Quadral and KEF in various price ranges and presented them to me with some random classical music, Blues, Jazz, Orchestra etc. Although all of the speakers sounded different, but all exceptionally great, I quickly noticed, that I really somehow disliked low frequencies. For some of the smaller speakers, the shop owner recommended the addition of a subwoofer, but the moment he turned it on to present the difference and smiled to me as if he wanted to suggest that the music was now more even enjoyable, to me everything suddenly really sounded meh and was just...a mess and no pleasure anymore. Like a layer of discomfort. A distraction. It added volume, but reduced the overall precision. It is hard to explain, but I really, really did not like the sound, independent of the price tag of the equipment he switched on and off.

Now to the actual problem: as I know my musical taste is not really mainstream or mass compatible, it took a while for me to hesitantly ask if I could play some of my own music. No problem, he said. But there was a problem: all songs sounded shite. At first I could not really understand what it was, as all speakers were somehow great before, but then I realized, that I was lacking the ability to effortlessly(!) follow each instrument. The song itself was there, yes, but a good amount of the separation was gone. I could no longer follow each instrument with ease, but had to focus very intensely, making listening a physical excercise, not a pleasure. I had my DT 1350s with me, listend to the same song again to make sure I wasnt having a bad day, but: absolutely different experience.

So I left the shop (without speakers, of course).

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a huge professional audio shop in the next big town with my brother, who was looking for guitar equipment. They had a listening room with loudspeakers and I could connect my phone to them.

Huge surprise for me: every speaker in this room was better than anything I listened to before in the hifi shop. And not by a small amount. By lightyears. I spent almost 60 minutes in there, swapping back and forth from pair to pair, enjoying my music in a way I did not think it was possible with speakers at all. I could hear the same details as with my headphones and was able to follow the individual components of each song absolutely effortless. The best part was: even when I was 2-3 meters away from the speakers, running around, and definitely not in a perfect listening position, the experience was still way better than with any of the $$$$$$-equipment at the hifi shop. I am not talking about a slight difference, but another world.

I narrowed my preference down to:

Neumann KH 120A
Genelec 8040
Adam Audio A7V (not as clean as the aforementioned, but overall...a bit more fun)

I tried some electronic music afterwards and even that sounded better than any of the huge tower speakers in the hifi shop.

So I am actually asking myself three questions now:

1. Did I "ruin" my listening preferences with my headphones over the last 13 years and/or
2. Is the music I am listening to generally "incompatible" with hifi equipment?
3. Is there any drawback in using one of the aforementioned speakers in my living room?

Also perhaps someone here can shed a bit of light into my experience and why it is the way it is?

Do you mean KH 120 A or KH 120 ii? The kh 120 ii speakers are a newer design with stronger amplifier and lower bass extension. The other consideration would be room equalization with something like Dirac. It makes a significant difference.

 

[dfuller]

1. Did I "ruin" my listening preferences with my headphones over the last 13 years?

Nope. You like what you like. That said, your time spent using solely headphones is going to skew your interpretation since headphones effectively have zero indirect sound.

2. Is the music I am listening to generally "incompatible" with hifi equipment?

No, but a lot of "hifi" equipment is generally tested with, well, "audiophile music". Acoustic, slower, less harmonically dense music. Also, a lot of them are, well... not great.

3. Is there any drawback in using one of the aforementioned speakers in my living room?

Nope! A lot of people do. However, note that you may want to invest in some acoustic treatment to knock down the reverb levels in your space, given your preferences.

Also perhaps someone here can shed a bit of light into my experience and why it is the way it is?

Well, the sub they had at the hifi store was probably horribly integrated on top of being in a bad room. Subs are cool but only if they're integrated well and the room is equipped to handle the low frequency information they put out. Studio monitors tend to be much more neutral in tonality than the average hi-fi speaker (even the "bad ones" e.g. PMC are generally much closer to a neutral tonality than a bunch of even very high end domestic focused speakers).

 

[kidprofessor]

I'm not a huge tech death fan, but I listen to Nile and Necrophagist sometimes, and use metal in general to test my systems. In headphones there is no room sound, so very dense music can subjectively seem to have more space around the different sounds than when listened through speakers in a room. I moved to a new house with wood floors from a much smaller house with carpeting and I noticed that the room sound of the bigger room is more prominent because I don't have as much stuff. I basically have to turn it up louder to make it easier to hear the sounds separately. Not always good for your ears! The most important thing you can do regardless of room is to use DSP to knock down the room modes in the bass. I have a Wiim Ultra for that purpose. Fixing the room modes will make the bass sound "tighter" and make it easier to differentiate instruments, even the sounds higher up in the frequency spectrum.
I think a lot of people listen to music louder in their headphones than through speakers, which could also explain the effect.

 

[Wolf11Man]

Even as I don't listen to your music, I understand your problem. To cut it short: You want an active professional speaker and dislike HIFI passive speaker. This is great, as you will pay a lot less money and get much more value with such a speaker.
Pro speaker, often called monitors, all follow strict rules, like balanced power distribution and correct phasing. Otherwise they are not sold to pro's.
They are made by engineers and sound correct. Not having passive components in an x-over is a huge advantage for uncolored reproduction (some may strongly oppose this).

HIFI speaker are more of an artists work, where incorrect "sound" is wanted, often to have a typical brand like sounding and produce certain effects.
Compare a Picasso painting of a nude woman to a real photography, you get the picture?
If you don't like the artists way that he designed this speaker, it is like an expensive painting you never would chose for your interiorl.
Also, (personal oppinion!) many expensive HIFI gear is constructed to look nice, but technically simply of poor quality, done by incompetend personal.

Some of the most beautifull and expensive Italian speakers sound just incredible wrong. Probably because some talented carpenter and wood designer was so bigheaded, he decided to be able to do the "loudspeaker stuff" as well. Ask me what you are, if you think "any idiot can build a speaker".
So, stay away from 90% of HIFI and go for some professional monitor. You are not doing anything wrong, infact you are simply right in your listening and will save a lot of money.
Before you buy, listen to the exact model you finaly choose, with your music. Even a Mk II version may not be what you like, when your reference was the Mk !.

 

[Defi]

This hifi speaker aiming for colored or pleasant sound trope needs to stop. There are plenty of "hifi" speakers that measure as neutral as any studio monitor. Kef would be in that category and Elac have some good things too. I don't know what models the OP heard in the store.

I'm not fighting for either to win. Active bookshelves, passive floorstanders, they each have their place but neutrality and clarity is not a deciding factor between the two.

 

[dfuller]

This hifi speaker aiming for colored or pleasant sound trope needs to stop. There are plenty of "hifi" speakers that measure as neutral as any studio monitor. Kef would be in that category and Elac have some good things too. I don't know what models the OP heard in the store.

I'm not fighting for either to win. Active bookshelves, passive floorstanders, they each have their place but neutrality and clarity is not a deciding factor between the two.

While I'm sure plenty of hifi speakers aim for neutral, you can't tell me a huge percentage aren't all over the place with regard to tonality. Kef, Revel, and (to some degree) Elac are the exception, not the rule.

 

[Daverz]

I use my IEMs (TRUTHEAR x Crinacle Zero) as a guide to what to listen for in my speaker setup. With careful speaker and subwoofer setup and EQ, you can get a mostly neutral and satisfying sound, but room acoustics is always going to work against getting that super clean sound right down to the sub-bass that an IEM will give you. Still, I think it's a useful reference to have in your head.