Best all around speakers

Timrhu said:

"When looking for speakers I look for a one that can play at low volumes without losing its sonic signature. Not all speakers do this well."

Unfortunately for you, Flecther and Munson (sp?) demonstrated that your ears don't hear the same at low volumes. The old "Loudness" button on old two-channel receivers was meant to compensate for this.

Does anyone have a modern, audiophile-level way to deal with this today?

Listening near-field is my only suggestion. I do this often on morning when I get up early for coffee and the paper while others are asleep. It works pretty well.

Dave

Consttraveler [The open baffel dipole design takes the room and its' problems out of the equation] and just how does it do this? Since its impossible;) Maybe you ment takes cabinet and a few cabinet problems out of the equation. Still OB are not perfect as are all loudspeaker designs.

SPL of 110db is insane. More detail???? Wow.

Yes a drum set is insane! Most brass instruments are insane. Indeed, many musical instruments are insane - even grand pianos! Who would want to play or listen to this insanity. Long live recorded music - compressed and squashed to a pulp for audio playback at artificially low levels!

Lets Kill the dynamics! After all Dave has found a recording with 40 db dynamic range....holy smokes! - that is unheard of these days when most recordings have 3 db of dynamic range. Who are these rebels at San Fransisco Symphony? I mean this is nearly half the available dynamic range of the redbook CD format? Surely 90 db of the 96 db spl range of CD should not be used for such a horrendous purpose as to bring back dynamics to music (so you can listen louder comfortably)!!!

=> The reason 110 db spl sounds absolutely horribly loud is because of modern ultra compressed music which has absolutely NO DYNAMICS anymore - old vinyl is way better than most CD's nowadays (but none of this is at all like the real thing - live music). Of course 110 db SPL peaks are hellishly loud when the AVERAGE continuous sound is at 107 db SPL! This is not the same as the odd 110 db SPL peak/accent/cresendo on music that averages 90 db SPL.

The dynamic range or contrast between soft and very loud sounds is what gives music life...it is sad that dynamic range is all but completely DEAD today. No wonder 90 db SPL sounds so extremely loud with modern music - as it averages 87 db SPL continuously - that is why!

I have to imagine that a large speaker with multiple drivers and large woofers can do things that a small two-way cannot, and just as importantly the small two-way will excel in many ways that a large, multi-driver, big woofer cannot match. The Vandersteen 3As comes to mind as a speaker that has some of the attributes of both extremes, and makes an excellent all-around speaker for all types of music. I prefer Merlin VSMs that excel at the kind of music I most care to listen to small group jazz, accoustic, and chamber music - a similar genre speaker as the Quads, but louder and more dynamic and ultimatley a wider range of music - but I would not choose it if I wanted to listen to reggae all day long.

To Shadorne's point, last Saturday I listened to Mahler's 1st, which gets incredibly loud at several points when the average loudness is set around 85dB. Immediately after that I put on a Bruce Cockburn CD that had mysteriously arrived in the mail despite me not ordering it. I love much of Bruce's work, but the thing blared out at 90+dB and just sounded crappy. I turned it way down, but it was totally lacking in dynamics and sounded lifeless at lower level. It didn't sound good loud and it didn't sound good medium or soft. I gave it one listen and, even though I was intrigued by some of the lyrics and music, I'll never listen to it again.

Dave