Using PA Speakers In A Home "Audiophile" Application!


Hi guys,

I am a bit inspired to explore/trial usage of a pair of PA speakers at home after i attended a live event recently. 

I looked at some Yamaha PA models and zoomed in on one that isn't too huge/heavy, relatively easy to move around perhaps. 

Are there any audiophiles here who had relative satisfaction trying such speakers at home? I am also thinking that this may not be a great idea, but, just curious at the moment.

 

deep_333

@OP, just coming back regarding the Yamaha speaker you posted. While the specs mention "full range", that speaker is actually for what back in my live sound days, we would call a 'vocal PA' i.e. really designed for sound reinforcement of vocals, guitars and keys but not bass and drums - typically the kind of PA you'd use in a small pub.

One other observation, a couple of posts conflate pro sound with studio sound. Studio monitors are totally different in design to PA speakers and there are plenty of studio monitors that are entirely usable domestically.

But @yoyoyaya is there any (lower priced) studio monitor that puts the PA energy into music playback? They seem tangential to the goals here.
Seems OP is hoping to save money and get a more live experience but the trouble might come from studio-recorded (mastered) music lacking the dynamics of live music. After all, the idea to use PA in home would probably be based on how good it sounds with live music, right?

@benanders. You touch on an important point, but particularly with regard to electric music. The use of compression in recording limits dynamic range relative to what you'd hear from a live band. In addition, not always, but a lot of the time, there are many more instrument tracks on a studio recording than a band will reproduce in a live setting. That leaves more dynamic space for each instrument being played live and makes it more of a visceral experience. 

As regards lower priced studio monitors - the answer is no. Price for price, the equivalent studio monitor to an affordable PA speaker will almost always be a two way desktop system with a bass-mid unit around six inches.

Good properly full range studio monitors don't come cheap.

@yoyoyaya ​​@benanders

I have used a fair amount of studio monitors at home over the years, nearfield and midfield (Neumann, Yamaha, Genelec, etc). They have never come anywhere close to what I recently experienced on this PA rig man. Some tracks from ’Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears’ were playing at this venue, an album I know all too well and have played many a time in my current high end rigs. It is a studio mastered album, of course, which would have gone through its fair share of "compression", as you all have noted above. But, what I heard at this venue was just visceral, raw and mind boggling. It felt like Ozzy and Zakk Wylde were piercing through the core of ya..."Moving air" (as Levinson notes in his video), is an understatement...