Speaker suggestions for those who enjoy listening to metal?

[RGA]

Slim line design speakers with multiple stacked 6 inch woofers and tweeter on top share very much a similar sound. Yes there will be frequency differences brighter treble, one has more bass or box resonances but there is clearly a sonic trait shared by a Dynaudio C1 and PMC TB1 or 2 or a Paradigm 100V3 and an Energy C9 or similar from Klipsch or Polk or B&W 603 or 604, Dynaudio Audience 72/82. I didn't say they sounded the same - similar enough to me that they don't separate themselves from each other in a significant enough way to warrant the price differentials (which is no doubt why they can all easily be interchangeably "recommended" by the review press. The 100V3 is three times the price of the C9 and it's not remotely 3 times better or for that matter all that different. In that virtually all of these speakers have the same foibles in the closed midrange and lack of cohesiveness.

The OP has already discounted Cerwin Vega so there is no point bringing them up. I am intrigued by their possibilities but like the laws of physics there is also the laws of parts quality. As for budget there is the used market. There is a difference between playing loud which all the above can do and playing loud and balanced. The problem with "all" of the 3-6 driver multiway slim lines is none of them sound cohesive in this price range. Usher did a good job of it and some others but then we're into ~15K not to mention the electronics needed to be up for the job.

I suppose I am presenting the anal end of the spectrum. If I am going to recommend the usual suspects of deep/thin/tall multi-way then I would lean to the Dynaudio 82 or I suppose now the Focus 360 and the B&W 604 as the cheap and cheerful runner up. But metal at the very least needs a speaker that is larger and doesn't crumble at levels and most standmounts in the $2k range simply fail at this.

Maybe I was in a mood but looking at forum advice where someone wants a speaker for metal or hard rock on various forums for sub $2k prices and I see people recommending puny stanmounts or the Magnepan MMG (possibly the worst speaker for any music with percussion ever created) is irritating. I have a set of old Wharfedal Vanguards in my closet that could probably be had on the used market for $400 that will blow any of the standmounts mentioned here into next week on metal/rock/dance/hip hop and at least sound credible with jazz and classical. That's a rock speaker. The product literature was similar to the maxell tape add with the wind blowing the guy in the seat back. 120db 40hz-23khz, ring dac horn loaded tweeter 95db sensitive 10ohm typical impedance - 5 watts will crack plaster and they had a DJ version with rigid sides. Metal needs kickass loudspeakers.

[YBArcam]

Maybe it's because I've never heard a wide baffle speaker with a 12" driver, or something like that, but my old Tannoy Mercury F2 and also my old Monitor Audio RS5 both did a pretty good job at presenting rock with a big sense of scale and dynamics. If put up against a bigger speaker perhaps they would come up lacking.

Doesn't a lot of this depend on the room? My room is small, and I simply don't have the room for huge speakers. A large monitor or small floorstander is enough to pressurize the room. As I type this, I'm not sure what the OP's room is like.

Also, I think the amp is a big factor in this too. You need an amp with some guts, and the ability to just grip the speaker drivers and make them do what it wants them to. High peak current and a high damping factor, as far as I know. I just bought an Audiolab 8000S which has these kinds of specs. The sound is full bodied, dynamic, with drums that have impact and are super tight. I started with a Denon minisystem and when I heard the 8000S for the first time I thought any similarly priced amp would produce that kind of sound, so I skipped the Audiolab and bought something just a little higher end. Well, I found out that it isn't the case. My current Exposure amp is well regarded for rock, I think, but I'm finding it sounds a little too loose and unexciting, with a relatively thin and distant sound. I also had a YBA YA201, which had the guts but was a little too smooth and relaxed.

[RGA]

First the three loudest and powerful rooms and bass drive room shaking and hugely tight bass rooms I heard at CES were Acapella High Violencello speakers run by Einstein Tube amps, The Trenner and Freidl RA Box being driven by 35 watts of Heed amplification and a tube amp, and the Audio Note E/Spe HE driven by 27 watts of SE tridoe power. The Galo 3.5 driven by a SS was also driven very loud but it also sounded grittier - although excellent mind you but it would have been a lot better with a better front end IMO.

It's complete myth/hooey/poppycock/lies/rubbish/enter your favorite adjective, that you need big power to get big sound. Granted to drive some of the overly complex multi way loudspeakers that suck power inefficiently it is true but generally those speakers tend to sound worse.

It never makes any sense to me. SE amplifiers sound better - every system no matter how hard the speaker is to drive - if it's just quality they sound better. So with the garbage in garbage out view it makes far more sense to have the best front end sound quality wise and then a speaker that can take advantage of it. With very hard to drive speakers - even if they, in themselves are well designed and could sound great, are let down by the fact that you need to run worse sounding, way more expensive front ends to get them to sound good where a high efficient speaker with low powered tube amps will give the same volume levels and cost significantly less money.

I am not an engineer but some things are fairly obvious. My speaker uses a SEAS 8 inch woofer and is ultra low excursion - I can play very very loud and you barely see the woofers moving at all which reduces the distortion to ultra low levels which is why they are so unbelievably clear and why so very very very many panel owners make the switch to the AN E - it has to be ultra fast for a panel guy to not "miss" the openess and speed they like from their panels. They are dead easy to drive and the goal of the thing is to let the box and the wall provide the drive and bass. With the Jinro amp on the E the room could play at ridiculous levels with the tightest fastest bass available in a loudspeaker period. So it's ultra fast and has very little excursion meaning the amp doesn't have to work much to control the drivers.

Conversely, you take a speaker that has 2 or three woofers that have high excursion moving way out and in to create bass lines and just using logic you can see serious problems around distortion. If the amplifier can't control the stop start action of such woofers then the woofers will create a doubling effect where the driver is too slow to hit the next note it lingers a little longer and you get that mushy slow sound that people despise.

The answer is to then buy a huge high damping factor amp with 1000 watts. And of course you are 100% correct that such an amp will have tremendous grip being able to pull that woofer in and out quickly whilst the low powered SS or tube amp will in most cases fall flat on its face.

But I would make the case to you that such amps in general sound awful. While they have that "grip" they also do the same for the tweeter or midrange units that don't require that sort of power and the result is a speaker that sounds "overcontrolled" and thins out the rest of the presentation (midrange up) such that is is highly fatiguing.

Several articles have been written on negative feedback as one of the biggest reasons for lousy sound. The higher the amplifier power and damping factor the higher the use of negative feedback - the more negative feedback the worse the amplifier sounds. Stereophile, Hi-Fi Critic, and UHF have written on this aspect. UHF does not, in their book, recommend amplifiers with a damping factors above 40.

Even the top SS designers when listening in blind conditions don't choose their own high damping factor amplifiers. http://stereophile.com/reference/70/

And then to get the really good ones you're looking at the likes of Technical Brain. One guy who was defending bryston to me said that I dump on them and have I heard their 28b. Yes buit look at the bloody price of the 28b. He was basically saying that this amp is finally a good bryston - yes at $25,000+ SS begins to sound good??? or the big Pass Labs at tens of thousands of dollars.

But the question is why? I would far rather put the money into loudspeakers than power amps - the speaker after all is the game changer. I grew up on SS big power, My dealer has some of the better examples of big SS power amps. They have recently picked up the Dynaudio/Octave tube amp line and here again - big tough to drive speakers with low powered tube amps. Dynaudio believes in the tube gear as they are being matched together at audio shows now.

In a small room you need power even less than you would in a large room.

Now again, I am 100% with you that most speakers to play loud with hard rock NEED huge power to get them under control - I am just saying that those speakers are the ones best avoided to begin with. But I suppose at the entry level price points there is not a lot of choice. But I would still look at the amp/speaker purchase as a combined expense. You can get a Grant Fidelity/Rogue Audio/Mystere/Audio Note kit amp/Antique Sound Labs/Octave for $1k-$3k that will sound terrific (note the stereophile article where the makers of the better upscale ss amps chose a $100 tube amp over their multi thousand dollar amps). This leaves you far more money to get premium speakers.

Unfortunately very few shops carry products that are not in fashion and fit with the decor of the modern home. My dealer recently picked up Harbeth. A speaker that is one of the oldest best sounding speakers around that very few dealers will touch with a ten foot pole (like Audio Note). The slim speakers designed with home theater in mind with slam and sleek sexy looks is what is all the rage. So is the Mp3. And in both cases the sound quality is not a priority!

A quote from the Martin Colloms Stereophile article "I invite you to keep a sense of proportion when I claim that, compared with worthy zero-feedback designs, conventional amplifiers impose a significant "graying" of dynamic expression, a falsification of timbre, a shift of truly natural tonality, and a smearing of temporal definition. There may also be an associated loss of rhythm, a blurring of the delicate nuances of the leading edges of natural sounds."

Martin Colloms is as good as it gets from a technical engineering sense and formed the speaker company Monitor Audio. http://colloms.com/default.aspx

[YBArcam]

Interesting stuff, RGA. I haven't listened to my 8000S yet, but when I do I will try to hear if high frequencies sound harsh and overcontrolled. I just recall loving the sound the amp made and therefore, I bought it. The speakers that I've owned over the years haven't been terribly hard to drive, though not as easy as an AN-E of course, nor with the same big driver and wide baffle. Then again, I don't have $12K to spend either.

But I was pretty satisfied with the sound I got from a 6.5" driver, in a speaker that wasn't too tough to drive, on the larger side for it's kind of speaker, being driven by an amp that had some guts and control. Maybe this isn't so bad then. I think if going for a wide baffle design that is affordable, used might be the way to go. There have been some old Mission speakers that have caught my eye...one day I might bite on a pair.

Tubes are something I am becoming more and more interested in. As an intro to tubes I did buy a tube buffer. It's cheap and I'll see how it sounds, more of a curiosity than anything, though it wouldn't shock me if it doesn't have as much impact on sound as a true tube front end would. Obviously there is much more going on when the entire amp section of the chain is powered by tubes, rather than in just sticking a tube buffer somewhere along the way.