What is the best HEAVY METAL speaker?

I think there are metal speakers out there, you just need to shop around. I listen to mostly death metal as I said before. Let me add some more to the Revel and Axiom suggestions I made before.

Tyler accoustics, legacy, vandersteen, von schweikert, swan, usher.

I have personally tried Zu speakers (which like tekton are often suggested for metal/rock), and was not satisfied at all. Full range drivers like that should be avoided at all costs. They don't move enough air/have enough driver displacement to have adequate dynamics for metal.

As others have said, a powerful SS amp is a must, but I for me, adding a tube preamp upstream of my amp made a huge improvement.

Also in my experience, subwoofers are not a must if you have at least 2-3 6.5" woofers or a 1-2 8" woofers.

Lizzard-

back in the 1980's into early 1990's I used Cerwin vega AT-12.
Very nice speaker for Rock/Hard Rock- not quite audiophile though. In addition to my suggestions previously, from CV I moved up to B&W 805 w/ small sub. Still retained the "rock" factor- not a bad speaker for your application at all.
Keep me posted & Happy New Year!

"... if a speaker is really good at classical music, it will be good with metal too."

I kinda disagree. IMHO classical is very a forgiving music genre (from a tonal perspective). I've heard classical well-reproduced on Quads and Maggies and Martin Logans. I've never heard metal well-reproduced on any of those speaker brands.

However, Fields of Nephilim is a good reference. Same with early Husker Du (or any Husker Du, really). Awful engineering. Awful production. But a great metal system will allow those "awful" qualities make sense and not detract from the musical genus.

Call me crazy, but I listen to mostly rock and heavy music on Martin Logan ascents. They sound great to me, and 95db is no problem. That's more then loud enough for me.

"... if a speaker is really good at classical music, it will be good with metal too."

I kinda disagree. IMHO classical is very a forgiving music genre (from a tonal perspective). I've heard classical well-reproduced on Quads and Maggies and Martin Logans. I've never heard metal well-reproduced on any of those speaker brands.

if a speaker system can do full tilt boggie warp 9 orchestral music without limits, it will easily rock your world with Heavy Metal. no worries at all. full on orchestral, or organ, or choral......is the most demanding of any genre. maybe 'big band' might be '1-a' as the second most demanding genre.

and getting full orchestral or big band 'right' was the driving force behind my system and room development. large scale 'rock' or 'heavy metal' performance came along with the ride.

but no one would consider Quads, or Maggies, or Martin Logans to be ideal for full on orchestral if you seek the full effect. the bottom octave or two is lacking, as is the heft and weight in the mid bass/lower mids. certainly those brands have excellent refinement and transparency to offer in the balance of trade-offs. so using those to make your point fails.

OTOH speaker systems that might work for Heavy Metal might not get the refinement to work at full on orchestral.

there is no place to hide with large scale orchestral music. I can tell you that. every small step forward brings you more with Classical as the information will reveal itself more and more. with Heavy Metal since it lacks the textures the improvements in the performance are not as evident (none the less refinement does help the Heavy Metal too).

my system is able to do full on Orchestral......and any Heavy Metal you can throw at it.