I'd probably have a hard time looking at sets of specs and reliably picking out which speakers are best suited for rock.
In my opinion, for rock music you want bass down to 40 Hz or so (you probably don't need it deeper except for synth rock), and then you want as much dynamic contrast as you can get.
The challenge of a small speaker trying to reproduce rock at SPLs that do it justice is that as the speaker runs into its thermal and mechanical limits, power compression occurs. An example of power compression would be a 20 dB musical peak comes along, and your speakers only give you 17 dB. The emotional impact of the music is diminished, because musicians use dynamic contrast to convey emotion. The Heresy is likely to give you very close to the full 20 dB peak that the music called for, whereas a smaller and/or lower efficiency speaker probably will not.
As far as bass specs goes, unfortunately there is no real uniformity in how those numbers are arrived at. And even worse, some marketing departments are a bit... how shall we say this?... optimistic. There is a trade-off relationship between box size, bass extension, and efficiency: If you want good bass extension and good efficiency (which usually but not always translates into good dynamic contrast), then you're going to need a big box.
In general, bigger woofers seem to have more impact than smaller ones even at the same sound pressure level. I don't really understand why - by definition both are moving the same amount of air if they're playing the frequencies at the same SPL. But to do justice to rock music, imho you want a lot of cone area.
My (not unbiased) preference for playing rock music would be speakers that use prosound type drivers. In general prosound drivers are not as smooth-sounding as hifi drivers, but there are exceptions to that rule - and prosound drivers exhibit negligible power compression at normal in-home loudness levels. Intelligent speaker choice is about making eyes-wide-open tradeoffs to get what you want while steering the inevitable compromises into areas that don't matter as much to you.
I hesitate to suggest a rule of thumb... but heck why not. To do justice to rock music, I'd suggest speakers with at least 1.5 cubic feet of internal volume and an efficiency of at least 90 dB/1 watt. This combination of box size and efficiency will give you good extension down to about 40 Hz, and maybe lower depending on speaker placement and/or room acoustics. The efficiency is high enough that you should have good dynamic contrast unless you crank it really loud.
There are a couple of speaker/amplifier matching tricks that imho do a better than average job of giving you good dynamic contrast and bass extension, but that would be a tangential subject.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer
In my opinion, for rock music you want bass down to 40 Hz or so (you probably don't need it deeper except for synth rock), and then you want as much dynamic contrast as you can get.
The challenge of a small speaker trying to reproduce rock at SPLs that do it justice is that as the speaker runs into its thermal and mechanical limits, power compression occurs. An example of power compression would be a 20 dB musical peak comes along, and your speakers only give you 17 dB. The emotional impact of the music is diminished, because musicians use dynamic contrast to convey emotion. The Heresy is likely to give you very close to the full 20 dB peak that the music called for, whereas a smaller and/or lower efficiency speaker probably will not.
As far as bass specs goes, unfortunately there is no real uniformity in how those numbers are arrived at. And even worse, some marketing departments are a bit... how shall we say this?... optimistic. There is a trade-off relationship between box size, bass extension, and efficiency: If you want good bass extension and good efficiency (which usually but not always translates into good dynamic contrast), then you're going to need a big box.
In general, bigger woofers seem to have more impact than smaller ones even at the same sound pressure level. I don't really understand why - by definition both are moving the same amount of air if they're playing the frequencies at the same SPL. But to do justice to rock music, imho you want a lot of cone area.
My (not unbiased) preference for playing rock music would be speakers that use prosound type drivers. In general prosound drivers are not as smooth-sounding as hifi drivers, but there are exceptions to that rule - and prosound drivers exhibit negligible power compression at normal in-home loudness levels. Intelligent speaker choice is about making eyes-wide-open tradeoffs to get what you want while steering the inevitable compromises into areas that don't matter as much to you.
I hesitate to suggest a rule of thumb... but heck why not. To do justice to rock music, I'd suggest speakers with at least 1.5 cubic feet of internal volume and an efficiency of at least 90 dB/1 watt. This combination of box size and efficiency will give you good extension down to about 40 Hz, and maybe lower depending on speaker placement and/or room acoustics. The efficiency is high enough that you should have good dynamic contrast unless you crank it really loud.
There are a couple of speaker/amplifier matching tricks that imho do a better than average job of giving you good dynamic contrast and bass extension, but that would be a tangential subject.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer