Looks can be deceiving. . I really, really doubt that you will want to use PA system, even with EQ, for listening to recordings. Their off-axis response is simply too uneven.
Jim
Hi thank you very much for the kind and very valuable advice. I got a more extended reply from you by email ... i dont know what happened. Anyway let me comment briefly to some of the extremely interesting issues you have raised
Looks can be deceiving
I agree absolutely. The visual experience distracts from the pure listening and influences the listener That is the main reason for blind testing
High end speakers are very well crafted with exotic materials and nice looking to convince the buyer to spend a premium price. And also they look at the wife acceptance factor. Wives usually look at speakers as another piece of furniture. They would hardly accept PA speakers in the living room ... (just guessing here, as i am not married)
More technically speaking i had a personal experience that made me think. I had the opportunity to listen seriously to a pair of huge JBL 4350
After some warm-up the speakers disappear sonically if you know what i mean. The sound was coming clearly from a plane way beyond the speakers ... my eyes were seeing these huge boxes but i could not hear them
I had always thought that only small speakers can disappear The sensation of the speakers disconnected from the system with the sound coming out from the space around them.
This experience changed completely my mind
I think that the really best way to listen to a system is listening in the dark ... or blindfolded The only way to concentrate exclusively on the sound.
Repeated recordings of a same played back track (sorry for the english)
The first time i heard about this kind of test actually it was from a quite famous PA speaker designer i.e. Mr.Tom Danley of Danley Sound Labs
Delivering full range audio thanks to our proprietary single source technology, the SH family of loudspeakers offers targeted, crisp sound that can cover a whole range of needs.
www.danleysoundlabs.com
He is an advocate of this kind of test and i am pretty sure his PA speakers come out exceptionally well from this very challenging test.
I thing that the truth is that not all PA speakers perform at the same level. There are also high end PA speakers i mean.
There is a guy here where i live (Italy) who has a Youtube channel
After a long experience with also high end speakers ended up with an Electrovoice Deltamax system.
Clearly he has attracted the criticism of many operators in the business. I tend to think that he is right about his system providing a very high quality sound.
off-axis response
i dont know you but i usually listen on-axis And usually speakers are optimized for an on-axis response
Horn loaded drivers, like the compression drivers in your wonderful Altec, have limited/controlled dispersion. In a domestic environment this can be a good thing
You have to treat acoustically fewer walls. I am not sure that room placement is more critical with PA speakers than domestic ones. Size aside. Now domestic speakers are slimmer I see a lot of tower speakers
Moreover i see more and more speakers with lenses or horns used as sound guides ... maybe the concept is sound After all a 180 degree dispersion is not needed.
i do not like omni ... and planars The 3D sound image is less focused
I will occasionally listen to live bands in clubs, and I don't hear anything in the PA systems that stands out as really, really different from thirty-some years ago.
I have been to clubs in the past and i agree with you. But this could be related to PA systems of low quality or bad acoustics of the room.
You can have much better sound in some movie theaters ... and they do not use domestic speakers for sure. They are sourced by Meyer Sound.
I have been to one and i was floored by the power and the cleaness of the sound. They also play video concerts with amazing results.
If i had a big listening room (that unfortunately i do not have) i would not exclude the option of trying good quality PA speakers, like the above mentioned Deltamax or Danley Sound Labs or JBL etc.
My feeling is that they could provide a high end performance, at a fraction of the asking price for a domestic high end system of similar level.
I agree also that usually the PA speakers are ugly looking.
But as you very well says ... "Looks can be deceiving"
Thank you very much again.
gino