Passive Speaker Recommendations for USA (by @sweetchaos)

[dinklesprocket]

I recently bought KRK RP8 G4s for my living room, however I'm not that impressed. The RP5s reviewed decently so I figured the 8s would be fine, but they're just not enough of an upgrade over what I had to keep.

My plan is to return them and either get Kali LP8s or passive speakers (probably towers).

With that in mind: Is there any reason to not buy tower speakers over bookshelf speakers?

 

[sweetchaos]

With that in mind: Is there any reason to not buy tower speakers over bookshelf speakers?

Towers can look overpowering (ie. too big) in a small room.
Bookshelves usually blend-in more in smaller rooms.

But the real problem is that we don't have THAT many tower measurements.
The complexity of measuring them on Klippel NFS is off-putting to both Amir and Erin (although Erin may be measuring more tower speakers in the future... cough).

You'll likely find a lot more bookshelves (both active and passive) for the same budget as a tower, with Klippel NFS measurements and reviews.
My 1st post shows you the options, so you're free to choose, which ever path you take.

 

[Sancus]

With that in mind: Is there any reason to not buy tower speakers over bookshelf speakers?

Towers usually offer better output for the price. But bookshelves are usually cheaper for the same quality of measurements. It's pretty often a better bargain to buy a couple cheap subs, good bookshelves and a miniDSP as long as you don't mind learning how to use those things.

Sometimes there are bookshelves that offer capabilities not found in almost all towers, like the D&D 8C.

And space constraints. For example in HT, towers are less useful since your center speaker plays harder than any other channel so unless you have a truly massive one, or you just want them for stereo, L/R towers are a bit pointless. The system will be bottlenecked by the center anyway.

It's honestly better to just compare specific products within your budget than to get hung up on categories.

 

[Danaxus]

I recently bought KRK RP8 G4s for my living room, however I'm not that impressed. The RP5s reviewed decently so I figured the 8s would be fine, but they're just not enough of an upgrade over what I had to keep.

My plan is to return them and either get Kali LP8s or passive speakers (probably towers).

With that in mind: Is there any reason to not buy tower speakers over bookshelf speakers?

People may disagree with me here, but the main benefit of bookshelves is a balance between budget, subwoofer, and placement.
For the price of a tower, you can afford to buy bookshelves and a sub - and there are pros and cons to this.

Pros of Bookshelves + sub:

• subs with their own amps will take a lot of heat off your speaker amp
• Flexibility in sub placement, to better deal with room modes
• Can set your crossover to whatever you want
• Easily transported
• Will be amazing as secondary speakers (i.e. heights or rears), if you decide to buy towers in the future (assuming you want a surround sound system)

Pros of Towers:

• Better integration of woofers, especially if they're active with their own DSP (like the KEF LS60).
• Instead of 1 sub, you have 2 full(ish), range towers
• Much better future-proofing as you can buy a sub or two later for a truly impressive stereo setup
  • Much more flexibility with sub crossover. Since towers go much lower, you can set a lower crossover that simply isn't possible with bookshelves

 

[radix]

People may disagree with me here, but the main benefit of bookshelves is a balance between budget, subwoofer, and placement.
For the price of a tower, you can afford to buy bookshelves and a sub - and there are pros and cons to this.

Pros of Bookshelves + sub:

• subs with their own amps will take a lot of heat off your speaker amp
• Flexibility in sub placement, to better deal with room modes
• Can set your crossover to whatever you want
• Easily transported
• Will be amazing as secondary speakers (i.e. heights or rears), if you decide to buy towers in the future (assuming you want a surround sound system)

Pros of Towers:

• Better integration of woofers, especially if they're active with their own DSP (like the KEF LS60).
• Instead of 1 sub, you have 2 full(ish), range towers
• Much better future-proofing as you can buy a sub or two later for a truly impressive stereo setup
  • Much more flexibility with sub crossover. Since towers go much lower, you can set a lower crossover that simply isn't possible with bookshelves

I almost fully agree! But I think it is vey expensive to get full range towers. If you're ok with ~30-35 Hz @ -3 or -6, then yeah, there's ones you can find. But if you want a solid 20 Hz @ -3, it is expensive. And generally one wants the sub placed somewhere different than the speaker due to room modes vs mid and high which get directional. And even with speakers that get that low, I think a 12" - 15" sub still adds more.

To me, the biggest difference is power handling and the amount of air you move. A tower will usually be able to handle higher power, so if you have a large room and big amp, you might be looking at a tower. I find Erin's measurements of dynamic range (compression test) very helpful in this regard. You can also get some idea from the THD vs frequency @ SPL graph, but the dynamic range graph has all the powers in the same graph so it's easier to compare.

 

[dinklesprocket]

People may disagree with me here, but the main benefit of bookshelves is a balance between budget, subwoofer, and placement.

Towers usually offer better output for the price. But bookshelves are usually cheaper for the same quality of measurements. It's pretty often a better bargain to buy a couple cheap subs, good bookshelves and a miniDSP as long as you don't mind learning how to use those things.

Towers can look overpowering (ie. too big) in a small room.
Bookshelves usually blend-in more in smaller rooms.

Replying to all 3 because you guys said similar stuff: My receiver is a Denon X3600H, which has Audyssey XT32 (not sure if it counts as DSP) and an SVS PB-2000. I used to have a MiniDSP 2x4 HD, then I fried it and their support was useless lol. Forgot to add: I'm in apartment, so I rarely have my sub on, and don't even necessarily want sub 50Hz.

I realized while writing my reply that I'm just trying to justify tower speakers over bookshelves. I *hate* speaker stands. I'm always worried they're gonna tip over. I also hate the idea of spending $100-200 on good stands when I could use that money instead on better speakers.

 

[radix]

Replying to all 3 because you guys said similar stuff: My receiver is a Denon X3600H, which has Audyssey XT32 (not sure if it counts as DSP) and an SVS PB-2000. I used to have a MiniDSP 2x4 HD, then I fried it and their support was useless lol. Forgot to add: I'm in apartment, so I rarely have my sub on, and don't even necessarily want sub 50Hz.

I realized while writing my reply that I'm just trying to justify tower speakers over bookshelves. I *hate* speaker stands. I'm always worried they're gonna tip over. I also hate the idea of spending $100-200 on good stands when I could use that money instead on better speakers.

I made some wall mounts for the KEF 3 out of some 1" (really 3/4") alder plus heavy duty brackets mounted over studs. The R3 have sealed nuts in the bottom (I don't remeber the size), so I was able securely attach them to the shelf. For smaller speakers one can buy pre-made speaker mounts. One thing I like about the Arendal line is they have wall mounts for most of their speakers.

 

[Danaxus]

I realized while writing my reply that I'm just trying to justify tower speakers over bookshelves. I *hate* speaker stands. I'm always worried they're gonna tip over. I also hate the idea of spending $100-200 on good stands when I could use that money instead on better speakers.

Sounds like you know what’s best for you then - get some towers! The aesthetics of your room are important! You won’t regret it from an acoustics perspective and they’ll bring you joy to look at.

 

[Opal]

Did the DBR62 dropped from 5.7 to 5.2?

 

[sweetchaos]

Correct. Latest Erin’s review shows a slight decline in PS compared to Amir’s original review.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

I don't see any Infinity Kappas on the list. -Useless.

 

[goldark]

Correct. Latest Erin’s review shows a slight decline in PS compared to Amir’s original review.

Thanks for all your hard work!

Just wondering: how do you determine which preference score/whose measurements to use as the default basis in the rankings?

 

[sweetchaos]

Typically, the latest review is the most accurate one. So in this case, since Erin reviewed it recently, it would dictate the new standard.

 

[sweetchaos]

I don't see any Infinity Kappas on the list. -Useless.

Is it still in production? If not, it won’t make the list.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Is it still in production? If not, it won’t make the list.

Erm. No. It's not..

 

[HighFutility]

Typically, the latest review is the most accurate one. So in this case, since Erin reviewed it recently, it would dictate the new standard.

I think Erins Kef ls50 metas scored ~6 PF

 

[sweetchaos]

I’m aware. I’m waiting for Erin to send Pierre the data for the LS50M, so I can update my table.

I’m also aware that Erin’s PS calculations are typically slightly different from Pierre’s PS calculations. But to maintain consistency across multiple sources of data, I always take Pierre’s PS calculations as the representative value in my table.

 

[Opal]

Correct. Latest Erin’s review shows a slight decline in PS compared to Amir’s original review.

Oh i see thanks for your effort. Hmm any clear reason why the difference is so much? 0.5 is like 10%. i mean 0.1 or 0.2 i can understand the margin of difference in both different test conditions n set ups but wow 0.5 drop

 

[Sancus]

Oh i see thanks for your effort. Hmm any clear reason why the difference is so much? 0.5 is like 10%. i mean 0.1 or 0.2 i can understand the margin of difference in both different test conditions n set ups but wow 0.5 drop

The confidence rating for the score is 0.8 so 0.5 is not that much, no. The chance that the real blind tested score would be within 0.5 is only 45%, so there's a 55% chance the score would be off by more than 0.5.

You should really ignore differences smaller than 1 point and consider personal preference to be a stronger factor within that margin. The score is best used to build a list of possibilities for purchase within your budget, not to pick a specific speaker based on score differences.

E: Some further investigation of the DBR6.2, using Pierre's site, it's easy to compare the two sets of measurements.

Solid line is Erin, dotted is ASR:

Spoiler

There is a bass difference, and quite a bit of treble deviation. The ASR review is pretty old, and I think it predates some adjustments Amir made for both bass and treble measurements.

But that said, the DBR62 is also a pretty cheap speaker and cheap passive speakers often have a lot of unit to unit variation in the treble. So it's entirely possible that Erin just got a slightly worse sample, as well.

If you want +/- 0.5dB precision unit to unit, well that's one of the things we pay Genelec and Neumann so much money for

 

[sweetchaos]

Still available to purchase from USA:
US$1400/pair https://us.kef.com/products/r3

Looks to be officially discontinued now by Kef.

Changelog:
2023-12-31:
-Seeing how Kef just removed R3 non-meta from their US website, I've removed all R non-meta and Reference non-meta from my table