best bookshelf speakers for < $2000?

You need three things to completely integrate a subwoofer into your room and your speakers. Bass traps. Digital EQ. Room measurement software (with microphone).

Lack any of them and you are better off with limited bass 2 way speakers.

In fact, before you get new speakers, I’d get the bass traps, they often help extend the bass response of 2 way speakers. No one ever believes me though. They get bigger speakers, and crap bass instead.  I did a demo with members of the SF Audiophile Society though and they were convinced. :) 

Having said that, if you are willing to go with custom speaker makers, any 2 or 2.5 way custom speaker from Taylor or Selah with a 6.5" scanspeak woofer will have great amounts of bass.  

Best,


Erik

Eric, have you heard the bass tunable Vandersteen subs?  There are also others out there that have Bass EQ built in.  Even with the crossover you can't properly integrate the subs unless you have a full octave overlap. I''ve spoken over the years with many speaker designers who offer sat/subs and they privately agreed that it's not a proper way, but they do it because it's close and it's what so many seem to want.  I get that.  We all know that HT is a different breed so they get away with it and folks just assume that it works for real music, but it can't.  Not every room needs bass traps. I've had them in my room and I didn't like them.  Erik, I get that you believe in bass traps and digital eq because it works for you.  Why do you lump larger speakers with crap bass?  My Treo's have wonderful bass as it's tight and highly musical.  I just want more.  Bass traps didn't give me more, nor can it.  Physically you are limited by your speakers.  If a speaker only goes down into the 30's then another device can't make it go lower.  That's just physics. If I'm off base, please share the scientific proof.  I am going to move up to Quatro's because I want MORE bass and dynamics.  There are various ways physically to do this.  Adding a subwoofer within the speaker is one that I personally like, because it's built for THAT speaker and the amp is designed for that speaker. It's room tunable, but not in the digital domain.  When set up properly it sound like a point source (what many call it, including many reviewers as well as manufacturer's of other equipment who own them or the 5CT').  

Just so I know where you are coming from, what do you consider great amounts of bass?  Amounts of bass and quality of bass are two totally separate things?  I've personally never heard smaller case speaker be able to produce true low bass.  Physically it can't happen as there are still limits to how low they can go and then you have excursion problems in how distorted they will be by trying to produce larger quantities of bass.  Maybe you are talking about mid bass? If so, I get it.  Every speaker designer has to do trade offs. It's part of what there design and marketing process is.  Bass done properly is very expensive and the better quality AND quantity will be paid for. There is just no way around this.  I've never hear anyone in the industry say different since 1969 when I started out.  Any designer of any component I've met always talks about physical limitations due to technology at hand.  The laws of physics can't be broken.  

I do appreciate the fact that you love bass traps and digital eq, taylor and Seleh speakers.  It's awesome that you do.  Passion is important in being an audiophile, but I went to the Selah website and saw their 2 way speakers go down to the 50hz range at best before trailing off. Even their largest 3 way only goes down to 35hz and that's already -3db. At 30hz it's -10db and that's for the floor standing speakers not bookshelves that we are talking about in this thread.  Just curious as we all have a different meaning of quality, low bass I think.  Thanks.

Wow, so much animosity.

So, as for physics. The -3dB measurements of a speaker are only part of the physics needed to understand the perceived bass extension. Of course, anechoically, a larger diameter driver and greater linear excursion contribute to lower and deeper bass. Each time you go down an octave your excursion requirements for the same driver go up by a factor of 10. This is basic theory, and there’s nothing incorrect about it. However, in a room, room modes matter a great deal. Having done a lot of measurements, +- 25 dB room modes is not uncommon below 40 Hz, so it may be quite impossible to get deep bass. Michael Fremer regularly complains about this, which is sad because it’s perfectly treatable. It may also be possible that the bass level is set by the peaks, not the average. As has been written by better acousticians than me, these room modes are completely untreatable by conventional (even digital) equalizers. There are some cool things being done with time-domain EQ’s though, I have not experienced them. 

So, when I say that bass traps can extend the bass, I mean they can remove nulls, and flatten peaks. In addition, they can make speaker and listening locations more flexible. Lastly, they are the enabling technology for equalization (again, no matter if digital or analog). My concern, which you seem to have taken askew, is that most music lovers try to get bigger speakers, or more expensive speakers or subs without considering the room and room acoustics first. They spend thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars on new speakers which may not end up being satisfactory. I prefer to suggest they consider bass traps and room equalization first. Of course, buy what you want. I’m just trying to suggest the most effective order of purchases.

Now, as for Vandersteen subs with built in parametrics. It’s much better than no EQ at all, that’s for sure. My preference for digital EQ’s such as Dirac Live or miniDSP comes from the flexibility and power of the measurements. Even with bass traps, some modes will exist. I can measure at six different locations, get an average, and then compute the exactly correct filter sets, upload them and bam. Done. In addition, being able to set delays to the main speakers (which are usually out in front), crossover slopes, and EQ of the entire combination are all features available via digital EQ’s or crossovers. Putting one before your DAC allows it to happen completely transparently.

My comment about "crap bass" is related to the end result I often hear. As you go down in frequency you are more likely to run into room modes. A smaller speaker, with a higher rated -3 dB cut off may in fact sound better. Focal famously added a subsonic filter to some of their subs for just such a reason. Of course, every room is different, and I’m not getting paid to do an in depth analysis of your room, so you should take this advice in context.

So, if you ask me what the recipe is for reliably getting the deepest, cleanest, and most musical and movie friendly bass, my suggestions are still measurement tools, bass traps, digital EQ and then a subwoofer, in that order.

By the way, you keep talking about having an octave overlap between the sub and the satellites. As a speaker designer myself, this sounds rather vague. I’m not sure how it’s possible with most speakers not to have this, so I’m clearly not understanding the specifics.

As for me liking Scanspeak and kits, yes I do. My point to all of that is, many good 2-way speakers can have much better and deeper sounding bass than most people realize. I use 6.5" ported versions in my mains, and for most music at volumes my neighbors will let me play is really great. I’m sure other brands can do the same in the right setting as well. I’m trying to encourage listeners to go for quality, not quantity.  In addition, the phenomenon of room-gain can extend the -3dB point pretty meaningfully down in frequency, so a 2-way speaker that is rated to 40 Hz or so may play much better than you would think. Again, the lower you go, the more you can run into trouble.  For more details on room-gain, look up Troels Gravesen's kits, where he compares the anechoic and in-room responses. 

As I’ve written, I’d much rather have a $1,000 Hsu (very nice subs!) with bass traps and a miniDSP than practically any other sub without them. The quality of the room and integration between the sub and the room matters a lot more than the quality of the sub, and even more than the integration with the speakers. About 2/3rds of the time that listeners say they have speaker integration problems they don’t. They have room integration problems. This is why my generic advice is shaped the way it is. Does that apply every time? No, but for most it should be helpful.

Best,


Erik

No animosity what so ever.  That's why it's hard to have a discussion in writing as you don't hear voice inflection or see verbals.

I agree with half of what you say,  but the advanced part of this hobby still is not satisfied with digital anything.  That  includes class D amplifiers. DSP is not transparent enough for me to want my signal always going through it. We have been told for years that once the signal is digital anything can be manipulated at will without degradation so all the digital engineers can quit looking for better sounding DACs. Not true as  all one has to do is compare the sound of hi-rez digital to a record of the same master tape to know. One wants to remember that for most people it is easily good enough (Bose sells more speakers than anyone else). That is fine, but it is not what Hi-End audio is supposed to be. Anyone saying that a 6.5 inch woofer can fill a room with realistic bass without room gain has never heard a drum set in a room (yes I was a drummer in my earlier years, lol). Recordings are almost always made in a room and music is almost always listened to live in a room, which includes room gain on top of the energy produced by the drum set.  I've found it hard to discuss with kit makers as they of course believe strongly in what they do.  Proof is in the market place though as kit speaker are very easy to build by anyone for less money and they still are a small fraction of the market. JMHO

Unfortunately there’s just too much that happens between the master tapes and the disc or file you play to be able to draw any direct conclusions about analog vs. digital. Besides vendors deliberately sweetening mixes to prove the superiority of DSD, or what have you, tastes and fads change. The disk engineer of two decades ago would have been satisfied with a different balance on vinyl than one working on DSD today.

When CD’s came out, compression and loudness were king. Bob Carver famously demonstrated the lack of channel separation present in a CD, when the CD was technically far superior in that dimension.

Don’t get me wrong, if I didn’t have cats I’d love to have a record player and nice vinyl collection. :) I’m just saying we are buying more than technology when we buy vinyl, we are buying a musical culture.

If you are trying to stay with an all analog setup, I would at least encourage you to think about a miniDSP at the subwoofer. But, measurements are key and accelerate getting to great.

Last tip, don’t try to tune the sub for flat. I usually go for around 1dB to 1.5 dB /octave downwards slope.

Erik