Audiophile speakers that rock well


I am interested in a monitor sized speaker that does all the audiophile tricks, but can also rock the house without bleeding my ears. Can I get both in a single speaker? I've heard some real good speakers that do vocals, acoutical type music well, but absolutle fail at R & R. Can I have the soundstaging, the imaging, etc.etc. With a speaker that rocks? Budget is $3K

GLR
glrtrgi
There must be some other speakers out there that fit this requirement - this is a good thread. I hope others offer their suggestions

I agree that book shelf speakers on stands might often just as well give up the space to larger speaker cabinets that sit on or near the the floor. One such speaker was the Celestion Ditton 66 - it might have been a tad colored but it played loud, went deep/low, and cranked out some strong rock and roll.

Other smaller speakers that did well with rock were Yamaha NS1000s, Dahquist DQ10s, and Large Advents; perhaps some of the Vandersteens belong on the list; but again, there must be others - please add yours to this thread.

My sense is that to have strong rock and roll you probably need to get down to around 32Hz (and up to close to 20KHz) +/- 2-3dB; and lower wouldn't hurt. And then of course, you need a good room. To me, there's not much sense in having a hifi system if you can't play good rock n roll - which isn't to say good speakers and a good system shouldn't do well with other types of music - they should - but good rock and roll is requirement. :)
OHM Walsh are still the best for me. And for most other kinds of music as well.

Most everything else sounds merely like hifi speakers in comparison to me until one gets into certain esoteric megabuck systems where few will ever tread.
"Again, there is plenty of stuff out there the can bring some life to the poor recordings. Just have to know where to look."

Kclone:

I am open to suggestions of "where to look"...

GLR
Mark and Daniel Ruby, WLM, Green Mountain Audio, and if you can find one, American Acoustic Development E-48s. The AAD E-48s are not expensive but just very big sounding, great with rock. I used to own a pair, if I wasn't a sick audiophile I would have just kept those and been perfectly happy. I have not actually heard the PSB Stratus Golds, but a dealer told me a fews years ago they are a poor recording friendly speaker too. Also, wide bandwidth amps can help in this area too.
They pull off the counter-intuitive trick of revealing many recording flaws, while NOT making those flaws intolerable to listen to.

Yes!! That's exactly what my GMA Callistos do. Bad recordings don't sounds bad - they sound like the are *supposed* to sound bad. Husker Du is listenable because the awful recording and engineering is presented as part of the art, not as a mistake. Now, subs are a must if you want to articulate the low end. But once you augment the low end of a GMA system, IMHO you have a full-range system made in heaven.

But then again, I'm biased....just check out my system.