Good secondhand speakers for £6-700... suggestions?

Here is an interesting viewpoint, that you would need to be a studio engineer to answer, and sadly (happily?) I am not...

Working on the premise that most loudspeakers ARE engineered without a flat response curve to give a little extra boost in the mids/bass...would it not be possible that engineers COMPENSATE for this by INCREASING certain levels when recording to provide the result they want through a typical HIFI SPEAKER?

If they do this, then to gain the response desired by the recording engineer you would NEED a coloured loudspeaker, and not a studio monitor.

A speaker with a flat response in this example would give a LESS ACCURATE rendition of a piece of music - if accurate can be seen as portraying the piece as the recording engineer intended.

Now, you could argue that response curves vary amongst commercial speakers greatly - but if the recording engineer does try to compensate for the environment in which they think the music will be played then either some form of EQ or a speaker with the approppriate response curve would be best?

Personally, I think Julian had it right about 20 posts ago when he said buy the speakers that you like the best - and if as DAT19 said you are partially deaf - well if the end result is the most enjoyable for you then you have achieved your goal. If your next door neighbours think its dreadful, who really gives a shit?

 

NOtice how, I don't get involved with these ongoing monitor disputes, either you like down the wire or music, as long as it does it for you cool, but Mackies Jeez no wonder all that Fooking up happens in recording studios
Prey do continue, my noble warriors of tedious monitorisum

 

Yep Sideshow B, I dangled that in the Fish forum to see how long it took to filter through. After all, bub never reads the hi-fi comics.

Of course, my little dig at bub was just a joke. I know he doesn't really strive for accuracy; if he did he wouldn't have a CDS2, 52 or LP12.

 

Try it. Then repeat to get your speakers to sound like Quad Electrostatics, JBL K2s, Linkwitz dipoles, Linus line arrays, Seventh Veils, etc.

If you could come up with a black box that could make these transitions at the turn of a switch you'd become a very wealthy man ...

... unless your original statement above is utter nonsense. No chance of that I suppose?

 

So the fact that you were listening to these nasty monitors through damaged ears wouldn't have any bearing on whether your complaint was justified then

I must say though, despite your continuing reliance on flawed arguements and inaccuracies, your vocabulary has come on in such leaps and bounds (what with references to the EBU and industry white papers), that I suspect you were just hiding your real identity from the off you old dog

This reliance on measurements and ruler flat responses shows the naivity of a member of the AV crowd I suspect, crossing over for a brief foray into the world of quality before quantity. Do you think that the actual cone material itself has a bearing on the percieved sound quailty Dat19? Or how about crossover components and magnet material composition? Are these effects measureable?

 

I like speakers like I like women...plenty of bumps and curves
seriously tho', it done'st matter how it measures, just if you like it...this is a very personal issue, and having heard loads, meausrements mean jack shit soundwise, so carry on jerking off to specs, and I will carry on enjoying the music, which is what its all about

 

To answer a question not directed at me: yes. Take a look at the Klippel site.

 

No you haven't, there must have been something wrong with either the system or maybe the recordings. If it sounds bad, it can't possibly be accurate.

I know how accurate my system is because I've heard a live band, then the recording of the session played back to me in the same room. This, I admit, is an unusual situation to be in.

Studio monitors vary Alex, rather like domestic speakers. The big horn-loaded monitors of old had plenty of dynamic range but relatively poor sound quality, but things have moved on since then, and we now have monitors which have almost the dynamic range of the horns, but with better sound quality than domestic hi-fi speakers.

 

I'd have to agree with James on this one. If a system isn't musical then it can't possibly be accurate - conversely, if a system is accurate then it is, by definition, musical.

Michael.

 

I would have to disagree most strongly with this....accuracy to my mind means measurement accuracy.
Musical means euphonic, inflexions, breathing....something can be accurate and sterile..my most hated..I would call the chord dac accurate, and its not unpleasant, buy I have heard more 'musical' elsewhere....
here we go ...music vs hifi

 

Thank you Michael, a voice of sanity. Basically Hi-Fi+ and the other 'musicality' weirdoes on this thread are saying:

'to get music, you need a fuzz-effect pedal on your hi-fi'

[Copyright JR 2003]

Mr Data - balderdash, sir!

If it sounds 'sterile' there is something wrong - this is not what I mean by accuracy. I think I know exactly what you mean, however, having been served up large goops of 'sterile' sounding music by various 'hi-fis' over the years. You are describing a form of coloration.

 

actually bub, I will have you know that some studios do add 2nd/3rd harmonic distortion to their mixes to stop them sounding too clinical, so not a fuzz pedal, but subtle overdrive...fuzz is made by germanium diodes

 

This depends entirely on what you mean by "accurate". For example, it is quite possible to equalize a speaker so that it measures flat in the frequency domain 20-20kHz within, say, 1/2dB. Try this with a good loudspeaker such as a Quad electrostatic or, better yet, a single ended triode amp playing through a good horn. You'd soon be able to tell whether the accurate speaker was more musical than the vanilla offering.

Yes, studio monitors vary, as do domestic speakers. By that fact alone, it's meaningless to make any generalisations about which are better.

 

indeed mr bub,...it is all about our individual interpretations of semantics and words, which can cause communication problems...definitions, meanings in other words...

 

Hmm, that there paragraph sounds very familiarly like a creative re-hash of one of the pages from the ATC's 50 / 100 owner's manual.

 

measurement and accuracy are important in the design and Q.A. stages of manufacturing however once the speaker is in your living room it becomes 100% subjective. even the quest for the most accurate speaker is subjective as it's YOUR idea of what makes a good speaker and not necessarily someone else's.
as for 'if a system is accurate then it is, by definition, musical' what happens if the origional recording wasn't musical - iv'e been to some gigs where the bassist has decided to resume his heroin habit and you could definately not call the resulting performance musical. surely, then, accuracy will be working against musicality which by pure whimsy i've defined as something that is melodic and enjoyable. what if the recording is of spoken word. or opera. accuracy cannot impose musicality on these types of recording (ok i'm being harsh about opera sorry).
cheers


julian

 

OH, FFS if it don't rock 'n' roll bin it I've heard very accurate systems, spot on stuff, but it just clinicaly pulls the music apart, disects it and spits it out a lovely non involving stream of notes, and the don't have to be expensive to do that either.
Symantics again, here we go around the mulberry bush (yet a again), perhaps as James, is limited in his posting scope these days, maybe he should get with the boys on Z/G and see what we all bang on about, then maybe we can all go to James for Hogmannay as, I can vouch he is a very gracious host Wm

 

Your saying that it can't be done, but your not saying why it can't be done.

 

What is you argument? That it is possible to choose sufficiently bad components that the distortion that they introduce is audible?