What do floor standers really bring to the table?

[Chrispy]

Some practical aspects of bookshelf vs. floorstanding.

Partly extra cost of speaker stand, partly if the bookshelf speakers are placed on stands they take up about as much space as a floorstanding. Then why not take advantage of all the space and choose a flooorstanding? The possibility that a floorstanding (vs bookshelf) are digging deeper in the base area increases.View attachment 160299

Cost?

 

[DanielT]

Cost?

Speaker $ X. Speaker stand $ Y.

In total, what you need to dig into the wallet for: $ X + $ Y.

If you literally intend to place the speakers in the bookshelf. Then a total of $ X.. Plus $ Z. If you do not have a bookshelf.

 

[Chrispy]

Speaker $ X. Speaker stand $ Y.

In total, what you need to dig into the wallet for: $ X + $ Y.

If you literally intend to place the speakers in the bookshelf. Then a total of $ X.. Plus $ Z. If you do not have a bookshelf.

I just meant the difference in cost as is typical between a standmount/bookshelf speaker and a tower/floorstander. Speaker stands can be relatively inexpensive if you make your own, and even if you buy them, not that expensive....but would depend on speaker specifics of course.

 

[DanielT]

That's how it is. A cost though, it does not have to be that high .. Tip, for those who do not have the opportunity to DIY their own speaker stands. Take advantage of and support the local:

If they can solve it.

I post a picture of the little local mechanics, welding workshop that sometimes helps me.

 

[richard12511]

I feel the super deep (below 30Hz) vibration primarily through the air, and almost nothing in the floor or other vibrating surfaces. At least that's the sense I get. The last minute or so of Phoebe Bridger's "Punisher" is a good test. It has a super deep (sub 10Hz? I think) electronic bass beat. Even with *full range speakers, it's not audible(or feelable). It's only with the RS2s engaged that you can actually feel it. The wave is so long, you can actually feel it passing through your body. Super weird, but also awesome experience that makes the music sound better to my ears. Hard to describe the feeling, but I'd say it's definitely through the air. Feels kinda like falling or riding a roller coaster/tower ride that drops really fast.

 

[richard12511]

Because we have 100+ years of recorded music to listen to? And it's really only a tiny fraction of mostly top 40 pop of the last couple of decades that is really compromised by the 'loudness wars'. Plenty of other things to listen to ...

Even then, a lot of modern pop sounds fantastic. Streaming services have (imo) curtailed (and somewhat reversed) the loudness war. Compressing to maximize loudness now just results in your song being volume reduced, which encourages dynamics. This has been a recent thing I've noticed, though. Not sure when it started(when did Spotify introduce loudness normalization?), maybe like 2015? It's been getting better. Unfortunately, pop from the first 2000s decade is still tiring to listen to(even if I like the song). I tend to avoid remasters from the early 1990s to mid 2010s, but I'm starting to find that modern remasters often sound better than the 60s/70s original .

Do radios employ some form of loudness normalization? Honest question, as I haven't listen to radio in at least a decade. If not, I could see where it might be useful for studios to release both a radio(compressed for loudness) and streaming(more dynamic) version.

 

[richard12511]

Cool, I totally get and respect that and it's great you achieved it.

I'm super sensitive to tone and timbre. I have it just right in my set up. I found the subs always, to a greater or lesser degree, altered the perception of timbre and I preferred it without subs. I spent quite a while trying all sorts of things - different crossover points/phase etc/DSP to try and get "what I already liked, but with deeper bass" and it never truly gelled for me.

Whereas I could understand another person listening to my trials in my system saying "You know what? I like your system better with the subs."

I was motivated by the idea of improving the sound of my system, but I was also fine with it not working out, since I hate subwoofers - the looks, the added cabling and complexity, the hassle etc. Frankly selling it all off was a relief, aesthetically and financially.

One more thing, I'm not sure I mentioned in a previous thread about this: The subwoofers SEEMED to negatively affect the sound of my home theater system, even though they were not in use! I can't be sure, but what happened was:

I have my 2 channel speakers in the same room as my projection-based home theater. The home theater system is a 5.0 system, big center channel, good size stand mounts, which flank the screen. At some points I had both JL subs sitting where I could place them along the floor under the screen, so behind my 2 channel towers, but in between the L/C/R home theater speakers. I also at times had one sub behind my sofa.

Anyway, I often listened to music on my home theater system too. Right after I'd put the subs in my room (powered off) and I played music on my home theater speakers, the bass seemed all bloated. I was confused, because playback in the room had always been tight and clean. Then movie playback, whenever there was significant bass in a scene, it was overblown and bloated too. Like really obnoxious.

It was so puzzling because I hadn't changed any settings or anything. The ONLY thing that changed was placing the subwoofers in the room.
For the entire time I had those subwoofers in the room (a long time) bass was more bloated from the home theater system.

Of course my system was a bit unusual since the subwoofers in the room were not in use (hence woofers not controlled by their amp or a signal) while the home theater system was playing.

When I mentioned this on the AVSforum some of the subwoofer-heads there said it was quite possible the woofers in the subs were resonating sympathetically with low bass, adding to the sound hence the bass bloat.

I don't know if that was happening, but once the subs were gone from the room (when I sold them not long ago)...sound from the home theater no longer seems to have that bass problem. All sounds more even.

So...I dunno.

If you really are super sensitive to tone/timbre, then you definitely want multiple separate subs . It's a PITA, for sure, but the overall potential is without a doubt higher. With towers (no matter how good), you are hearing incorrect tone based simply on room/position physics. On top of that, add much more distortion. The only way to get "perfect" tone is likely with multiple subs and great DSP.

That said, I don't think good sub integration is as easy as they make it seem on AVS. I know many have had great results with calibration from Audyssey and other auto calibration tools, but I've never been that lucky. I've got some pretty "full range" tower speakers(below 20Hz in room), and getting a sub integration that sounds better than the towers on their own requires (at minimum) use of a miniDSP 2x4HD and use of either MSO or REW's new phase alignment tool. It also takes many hours of tedious work. For this reason, I actually use the towers on their own atm(no subs). I spent a few hours trying to integrate them with subs in that room, but the results didn't sound quite as good. Do they sound as good as they could with subs and proper integration? No, but they get me 90% of the way there with basically no effort at all.

There's also no doubt in my mind that most good towers are better integrated than most end user's of bookshelfs(or towers) + subs end up with. There comes a matter of good enough, imo. If you're someone who will do whatever it takes to get the best sound quality possible, then I definitely recommend putting in the work(and money for Audiolense/DLBC/miniDSP) etc. to get a good sub integration. Also helps to get great subs(15" +) with tunings below the audible range(20Hz).The end result is without a doubt better than what is possible with even the best tower speakers on their own. On the other hand, if you just want to hear your music with great sound, and don't want to waste your life chasing that last 10%, get some great tower speakers and call it a day . Great towers on their own can still sound amazing.

 

[richard12511]

However, one thing Amir wrote in his review of the Triangle Esprit Antal Ez stuck with me: "As a way of comparison, I put my Revel M16 next to the Triangle on a stand. While tonality and to some extent clarity was better on the Revel, the sound was clearly localized to a smaller source vertically, leaving a preference for the Triangle for the larger, more realistic image it portrayed."
How much of that is just bias on Amir's part, and how much of that is real? Is this something we can measure? It sounds logical that having more drivers/a bigger area reproduce certain frequencies would lead to a bigger "scale" - but is that really it? I would love to know, what others thought about that

That quote by Amir is one of the most interesting insights into his personal "biases/preferences", and has helped me immensely in translating his subjective impressions to and from my own.

"the sound was clearly localized to a smaller source vertically" is a positive attribute to me, but he scored it as a negative. Personally, I want my image to be as small as possible(confirmed with blind tests), as I find that it sounds both best and most realistic for voices. Despite the fact Amir listed that as 1 (greater) win for the Triangle and 1 (weaker) win for the Revel, I took it as 2 wins for the Revel. I'm quite sure I would have strongly preferred the Revel speaker in that comparison. Could also have something to do with Amir's reference, which is the Salon2, which has a very diffuse (horizontally and vertically) center image.

 

[don'ttrustauthority]

But this whole thread is about bookself vs floorstander
So the question is what should you choose In this situation?
And if the Kanta were definitely better than I would assume Focal would price them higher than the small bookshelf Utopias

It's not what is the better speaker. It's the better speaker for your needs. Small room, small speaker.

 

[Chromatischism]

There is a difference between absolute and relative phase.

Definitely. The fact that phase relationships matter is the whole basis for crossover design, subwoofer integration, room correction, and more.

But can my ears tell the difference between a woofer that by itself goes out-in-out vs in-out-in? Nope. My eardrums are still vibrating at the same number of cycles per second.

 

[jhaider]

I'd be interested in say a high-quality 3-way standmount (or floorstander) that made no attempt to go below say 60 Hz (since I'd use a sub), but I don't believe such things exist?

NHT C3 comes to mind.

 

[Pearljam5000]

It's not what is the better speaker. It's the better speaker for your needs. Small room, small speaker.

There's a debate whether that's true or not
Some say a big speaker in a small room is better than a small speaker in a small room
And that there's no such thing as a "too big" speaker for a room.
Honestly I don't know what is correct

 

[Chromatischism]

RE: Speakers "too big for the room"

I think that notion was at least partly dispelled with room correction. I believe it was rooms that wreck the bass output of powerful (usually large) speakers which gave rise to that idea. All bass can be controlled these days, so what's left is the dispersion of the treble. I haven't seen any science on this yet, but I happen to believe that you don't need super wide dispersion speakers in a narrow room. That could mean that putting Salon2's in my 11' wide room could be overkill in the sense that I'd be left with an onslaught of reflections. I doubt I'll ever get to test that.

 

[Chromatischism]

I feel the super deep (below 30Hz) vibration primarily through the air, and almost nothing in the floor or other vibrating surfaces. At least that's the sense I get. The last minute or so of Phoebe Bridger's "Punisher" is a good test. It has a super deep (sub 10Hz? I think) electronic bass beat. Even with *full range speakers, it's not audible(or feelable). It's only with the RS2s engaged that you can actually feel it. The wave is so long, you can actually feel it passing through your body. Super weird, but also awesome experience that makes the music sound better to my ears. Hard to describe the feeling, but I'd say it's definitely through the air. Feels kinda like falling or riding a roller coaster/tower ride that drops really fast.

Just tried that with the FV15HP's and I'm not getting much action. I'm -6 dB at 11 Hz (10 Hz on a good day) and 125 dB capable at 30 Hz.

Maybe it's just sealed sub territory.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Just tried that with the FV15HP's and I'm not getting much action. I'm -6 dB at 11 Hz (10 Hz on a good day) and 125 dB capable at 30 Hz.

That's impressive!

 

[Newman]

That quote by Amir is one of the most interesting insights into his personal "biases/preferences", and has helped me immensely in translating his subjective impressions to and from my own.

"the sound was clearly localized to a smaller source vertically" is a positive attribute to me, but he scored it as a negative. Personally, I want my image to be as small as possible(confirmed with blind tests), as I find that it sounds both best and most realistic for voices. Despite the fact Amir listed that as 1 (greater) win for the Triangle and 1 (weaker) win for the Revel, I took it as 2 wins for the Revel. I'm quite sure I would have strongly preferred the Revel speaker in that comparison. Could also have something to do with Amir's reference, which is the Salon2, which has a very diffuse (horizontally and vertically) image.

I read that a bit differently to you, Richard. It would surprise me if you wanted all your music jammed into a long thin line no taller than the top and bottom of a bookshelf-sized speaker.

I suspect Amir was referring to the ability of a speaker to portray realistic height scale of the music. Not the inability to portray small height scale when needed. My mains are 5 ft tall and have no difficulty portraying a singer’s head as head-sized, or a violin as violin-sized. I’m assuming Amir felt the same for the Triangle, but when it comes to the converse, ie size of a grand piano, drum kit, or ‘big sound’ productions, the Trangle succeeded in ways that the M16 couldn’t.

And that’s a good thing.

 

[Chromatischism]

That's impressive!

A small room does WONDERS for output.

 

[Sal1950]

Aside from higher SPLs, what real listening advantage do towers have over the better measuring bookshelfs, if any?

All things being equal well done towers with more/larger drivers all bring lower distortion for any given SPL.
This should combine to give you better inner detail and be more revealing of all the instruments in the mix.

 

[Sal1950]

Take advantage of and support the local:

Oh man, look at the cars. You can actually tell one model-year from the next.

 

[Ultrasonic]

NHT C3 comes to mind.

Are you saying that on the basis of having heard them? The measured data posted on this forum doesn't look particularly impressive to be honest:

NHT C3 Review (3-way speaker)

This is a review and detailed measurements of the NHT C3 3-way, sealed speaker. It was purchased new by a member and kindly drop shipped to me. It costs US $391 on Amazon for a single unit. I must say, I was impressed by the fit and finish of the C3: The enclosure is sold and dense with a...

www.audiosciencereview.com

For context I'd be prepared pay significantly more than this for better performance, and would have a preference for an active design but would still consider passive speakers.