Pro Gear vs Audiophile Gear

and no, it doesn't compete with my big rig

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Marty

I haven't heard anything ever which competes with "your big rig"

I was talking to an engineer a few years ago about this trend, and the increase of DSP-based units to model various other speakers during mastering (I have a pair of old Roland monitors that work with modeling f/w in the companion mixer/recorder unit). I mentioned trickle-down and -across to the consumer market (audiophiles and manufacturers), and he said there had been some interest but focus groups showed an aversion to integrated speakers, especially at the price points they would command (>$1k/pair min. about 5 - 10 years ago, and the good ones were more in the $5k range). The listeners preferred to buy and pair their own amps with the speakers and "upgrades" was the mantra for both listeners (audiophiles) and manufacturers. At a lower price point it would have been more accepted to consumers, but it wasn't cost-effective to make cheaply, and at higher price points consumers (and manufacturers) wanted more flexibility to "do it themselves" and change components later. They decided they couldn't produce a marketable product.

Now, technology has advanced and prices have fallen, so maybe it's more acceptable? Maybe if we got some of them to advertise in Stereophile?

Interesting discussion. - Don

marty said:

there is now a plethora of speakers that have built in active crossovers and dedicated amplifiers for each driver that are commonly used in this setting. The big secret is just how damn good these are for the money.

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I agree. I have Mackie 624s (with a killer SVS subwoofer) in my living room home theater and the Mackies are fabulous. If my setup was two-channel only I'd have a pair of the larger Mackie 824s instead, and no sub.

--Ethan

I had a surround system of Adam A7's in my purpose built room and didn't like them at all. I then tried the Genelecs before finally chosing the Focals. The Focal audiophile line is well known among consumers and is finally getting a foothold in the professional area. I have a surround systm of Focal Twin6, Solo6 and Sub and use it almost everyday.
I've heard the larger ATC's (150?) and Genelecs (10?? series) and can't stand them. I run from the room screaming covering my ears.!

Bruce, can you tell me anything about Geithains? A swiss friend who's a retired studio guy has recommended them a couple of times for a MBR system. Not a lot about them @ Gearslutz that I can find. Perhaps they're rare in the US of A.

Ken

unfortunately when this subject comes up the 'R' word--refinement---rears it's ugly head. refinement is a nebulous term for a combination of aspects of the sound that results in listenability.

when i hear active speakers, or 'pro-audio' speakers such as ATC or Genelec or others what is typically missing is refinement. i can only guess that this is because these speakers are only concerned with information. they are tools. presentation is a secondary thing. they tell you what is on the recording and don't bother with style too much. they can be snugged up against a wall or in front of a window and won't sound much worse for it.

snooty audiophiles like their sissy speakers with their soft presentation. real men like ATC's.

i've yet to hear an active speaker that i like 'much'. even the big Meridians leave me cold. not that there is any reason that someone could not make a great sounding full range active speaker; i've just not heard one yet.

RUR said:

Bruce, can you tell me anything about Geithains? A swiss friend who's a retired studio guy has recommended them a couple of times for a MBR system. Not a lot about them @ Gearslutz that I can find. Perhaps they're rare in the US of A.
Ken

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Some friends and I were invited over a distributors house that had these speakers. The dealer was intent on showing how loud they could play by cramking Rammstein albums at full tilt boogie! When asked to play at "normal" levels, the speakers left alot be be desired. There was no wow factor and the speakers felt like a cold hard edge. They had a similar sound as the ADAMS. If I were to mix/master Industrial Metal bands, these speakers would be great!

*Still laughing*

Nope, not what I aspire to, Bruce. Wonder why in heck he likes them so? Sooooo, Focals, eh?

Ken

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?895-Why-not-active

Raul.

marty said:

I am starting a new thread here at the request of one of the moderators based on a recent posting elsewhere in this forum.

I think that one of the most remarkable audio movements that has gone largely unnoticed by audiophiles, is the recent proliferation of powered monitor speakers that are now in common use by the amateur and professional music recording communities alike. As most folks know, it takes little more than a Mac and Garage Band software (or the fancier Logic Pro, Pro-tools etc.) to have a fairly competent home-made digital recording studio at a modest cost. Essential to these digital studios are monitor speakers and there is now a plethora of speakers that have built in active crossovers and dedicated amplifiers for each driver that are commonly used in this setting. The big secret is just how damn good these are for the money. I would love to see TAS or Stereophile take some of these on in a critical review. Some monitors with surprisingly hi-tech features such as ribbon tweeters and built in amps are available for around $250 each (i.e. Behringer Truth B3031A, Adam Audio A5). Regarding the latter, Adam displayed its larger home audio speakers at CES last year so this is a company that straddles both markets. For speakers in the $500+ price class, speakers such as the KRK VXT 6 and the Genelec 8040 are available. How many audiophiles know about these? I do remember seeing a review of a KRK speaker in one of the journals a few years ago and can't recall who did it exactly, but to my mind, its an area that deserves more publishing attention. The value here is simply unprecedented. I am using the KRK VXT6 with my digital work station and no, it doesn't compete with my big rig but it is 1/100th the price, very enjoyable to listen to and it holds its own admirably! I'd not only love to see more of these amplified monitors reviewed, but I'd love to see shoot-outs with comparably priced non-amplified gear (i.e. the Genelec 8040 vs a pair of PSB speakers plus a Rotel amp etc.). You get the idea. The floor is open for comments.......

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That's what I'm talkin' about, with one exception:

The big secret is just how damn good these are for the money.

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You just don't need the qualifier. Not for the best of them, anyway. There are, no doubt, active monitors at all price points that suffer the same indignities suffered by many passive consumer speakers -- mid-bass humps to create the illusion of deep bass where there is none, goosed trebles to create the illusion of detail. But when they're done right, this design approach is a valid path to higher fidelity, not just a workman's tool, and higher fidelity to the recording is the point. Isn't it? So is it possible for a pair of smallish (5.5" to 6.5" 2-way) monitors and a well integrated sub or two to run with the big dogs? I give you a smallish monitor and a couple of well-integrated subs:



In audiophile circles, that puppy is a pretty big dog. And it is, not essentially, but exactly, by design, a smallish 2-way monitor and a well-integrated sub. The difference? You can't move the Watt Puppy's subs around to get the right room placement, your amplifier has to plow through the messy, distortion-inducing imprecision of passive crossovers (if you don't believe this is the case, that's another thread) and they don't benefit from the ultimate synergy -- engineered integration of crossovers and amplifiers (in that, the correct, order), with individual drivers, by the designer.

So now that we've established that there is no reason in the world why a pair of smallish monitors and subs cannot be definitively high end, all we have to do is open up our minds and find more examples. The pro audio world is full of them.

P

I really don't know how a reviewer would go about doing a review without using an all pro rig. Matching of familiar sources might be a challenge with pieces of gear not working in the operating ranges they were designed for. Pro reference voltage levels are approximately 1.23 Vrms vs. consumer level's 0.32 Vrms. That's a difference of almost 12 dB.

The presence of XLR outputs and inputs in consumer gear can be misleading. First it doesn't mean the unit is truly balanced because there are many pieces out there that provide them for convenience only and secondly it doesn't mean that it's output is indeed pro level.

There are level matching devices that can be had for a few hundred dollars but given the penchant of audiophiles for having less in the signal path, these are likely to be frowned upon as well.

As for Active speakers vs Passive Speakers. The active crossovers of all professional monitors I've worked with expect to see that +4dBu reference level. One might need to push the outputs of a consumer device pretty hard to get there making them behave non-linearly. So that's one thing to be careful about. Always check if the active speakers have the capability to receive consumer levels and provide the make up gain internally. Otherwise the myth of the superiority of an active system gets busted pretty quick as distortion from output devices become audible.

The argument used for active speakers is that the amps are always matched for the driver. This is a very big assumption to make. There is no way we can know the actual process of selection and matching employed. It could be as painstaking and thorough as Nelson Pass' Rushmore exercise but it could also have been as simple as "Find me a 50w module for the tweeter and a 100w module for the woofer.".

The other area of concern to me is when folks like to say, sorry Mr. P, I will disagree with you politely, the degradation from passive parts. No matter how you slice it, pun intended , passive parts are used to cut up the signal be it at line level or speaker level. You will find much of the same parts in an active crossover as in a passive one. They will just have different values. Add to that the fact that the active crossover now requires 2, 3 or 4 quality pairs of gain sections.

It is not in the parts. The advantage of actives is in the efficient use of power. It is this that results in the lowering of PASSIVE IM distortion which is in turn caused by non-linearities when an amp gets pushed beyond its comfort zone. To say that an active system is free of intermodulation distortion is also misleading. IF for example, the partnered amplifier is not properly spec'd given a specific driver (in other words it isn't strong enough) IM distortion/sidebands will appear in that driver's assigned frequency range as well.

This is different from what lay folks understand IM distortion to be. To the audiophile IM distortion is usually describes as the highs cutting out on a bass transient or the reverse where a system begins to scream. This is slew induced IM also know an transient IMD. I use a power amp that doubles power into 2 ohms with a slew rate of over 40V per microsecond and max clips at 1kW into a 94dB efficient loudspeaker with integrated 15" 1000wpc subwoofer. Needless to say at way past 100dB, I do not get drop offs. Acoustic overload sets in way before signal degradation.

Again like anything audio, there are no silver bullets. There will be trade-offs. In the end a system has to stand on its own merits. Being active does not mean it is inherently superior. Execution will forever be as important as design.

Being active does not mean it is inherently superior. Execution will forever be as important as design.

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Of course, and I've heard some pretty bad active speakers. But when they're right, the crossovers are much steeper with fewer negative effects, the amps have much better control over the drivers and the benefits are, IMO, clearly audible.

P

We always get along P

So how about the first paragraph? I experienced this first hand trying to play music through my CD player into my little 8 into 2 mixer and powered PA rig at my daughter's birthday party. I had to crank up the gain on the mixer to get anywhere near decent level.

JackD201 said:

We always get along P

So how about the first paragraph? I experienced this first hand trying to play music through my CD player into my little 8 into 2 mixer and powered PA rig at my daughter's birthday party. I had to crank up the gain on the mixer to get anywhere near decent level.

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Can't really say, Jack. Since I've gone active for my listening system I've also been a computer-as-source user. I can't say I've run into this problem with a DAC.

P

Phelonious Ponk said:

Of course, and I've heard some pretty bad active speakers. But when they're right, the crossovers are much steeper with fewer negative effects, the amps have much better control over the drivers and the benefits are, IMO, clearly audible.

P

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P

Steep crossovers are not without their immense faults... they also are quite difficult to implement in analogue so .... the claim of amplifier matching could be made for woofers but from the mid-band up .. not much of an issue IMO.

I am looking forward to better active crossover. Digital allows us to implement whatever order we desire once we dream of the mathematical function and indeed DSP can correct for speakers non-linearities and of course general in-room correction ...

I am not interested that much in Active speaker with built-in amplifiers, Rather I am interested in Active Digital Crossovers ... So far not that many in the industry Pro or otherwise .. I know of the efforts of TacT , Behold and Boz ... not much else .. I would like to see more of these ..

I think the biggest misconception is the the "pro world" knows what's best. In most cases, they have very limited budgets to work with and also rooms that cannot handle floor standing loudspeakers. Puget Sound Studios is one of the exceptions

They have enormous overhead and cannot afford "audiophile" grade components. Pro gear is built at a price point and uses lower quality electronics, drivers, wire, cabinetry, etc.

Also, even though I have heard some systems that wonderfully implement DSP (Marty, I have heard wonderful things about your system), for the most part it degrades the signal. In the few cases that I heard it done right, the room could not be overcome by speaker placement. This is one of the reasons we decided to make our loudspeakers adjustable in the bass region.

jtinn said:

I think the biggest misconception is the the "pro world" knows what's best. In most cases, they have very limited budgets to work with and also rooms that cannot handle floor standing loudspeakers.

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I think too narrow of a definition is being used for "pro" gear. Genelec speakers go way up there in cost and SPL levels. JBL is there too. We just got this "little baby" in rated at nearly 10,000 watts!



Plan to do a listening test with it soon.

They have enormous overhead and cannot afford "audiophile" grade components. Pro gear is built at a price point and uses lower quality electronics, drivers, wire, cabinetry, etc.

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Stuff from companies above are designed to take massive beating and still play. So they are clearly over-designed from that point of view. Where they differ is typically in things like heat management and noise where fans are often used whereas home gear usually doesn't have one.

Steep crossovers are not without their immense faults... they also are quite difficult to implement in analogue so .... the claim of amplifier matching could be made for woofers but from the mid-band up .. not much of an issue IMO.

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I'm not sure what you're driving at, Frantz. The benefits of the amplifier exercising dramatically greater control over the drivers are very audible, arguably more audible in the upper midrange than in the bass. If anything, people sometimes seem to miss the boom of passive speakers when they make the switch. I haven't run into a single active convert who hasn't enjoyed the greater clarity in the midrange. And while I understand that every approach has its compromises, what are the "immense faults" of a crossover that limits the bandwidth at which a 6" cone and a 1" dome are attempting to reproduce the same frequencies, often well out of their range of competency? Can active be improved upon digitally? Absolutely! Is well-implemented analog active better than well-implemented analog passive? Objectively, it's pretty difficult to argue otherwise.

P

I think the biggest misconception is the the "pro world" knows what's best.

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I don't think anyone has said that.

In most cases, they have very limited budgets to work with and also rooms that cannot handle floor standing loudspeakers.

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Pro suppliers like JBL and Dynaudio have limited budgets compared to audiophile companies like Wilson and Sonus Faber? The audiophile companies are cottage industries by comparison. I'm not saying that being big makes the pro suppliers better, the actives I personally use come from a small audiophile company, in fact, but I'm not sure I get the point at all.

If you're talking about the studios themselves, control rooms and mastering suites are often designed around the speakers. If they saw an advantage in coupling them to the floor, they would do so.

Let's be clear: We're not just talking about bedroom "project studios" here, or at least I'm not. That would definitely be a "bang for the buck" conversation in which the bang could be quite large for very small bucks. I'm talking about active two-way monitors and subs that are designed for the most critical kind of listening. There are very cost-effective because they do not carry the financial weight of elegant furniture, heavy metal boxes, redundancy of components and many feet of interconnects, They can be substantially less expensive than audiophile systems, but do not make the mistake of thinking they are sonically compromised because they are more efficiently designed.

They have enormous overhead and cannot afford "audiophile" grade components. Pro gear is built at a price point and uses lower quality electronics, drivers, wire, cabinetry, etc.

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I don't think this conversation is about costs, but if it were, if we were looking for pro monitoring systems with costs similar to high-end systems, we'd be looking at large main monitors, often custom designs and installations, supported by massive amounts of power and capable of delivering massive SPLs into tuned and treated spaces. It wouldn't be a fair comparison. In any case, there is plenty of pro gear out there at price points that could support audiophile parts and silver wire. They are seldom found in pro equipment because their benefits are dubious, while the benefits of the two of the biggest differentiators of pro audio, massive headroom and active design, are both theoretically sound and audibly demonstrable.

The drivers and cabinetry of quality pro monitors are absolutely up to audiophile standards in every regard except cosmetics.

P