Using PA Speakers In A Home "Audiophile" Application!

deep_333 OP

446 posts

01-11-2024 at 10:08am 

@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...
 

@deep_333  - good points of clarification. Thank you.
Speakers x room? Size/potential of both (plus the power kit). I’m hazarding the guess that Ozzy playback venue was not much like a living room or bedroom. Most venues are unlike most dedicated listening rooms, too, as I cannot think of a commercial venue for live music built the same as a typical residence. Not just size - wall/floor/ceiling composition, furnishings, (audience?) etc.

If you can replicate those factors (speakers x room x extras) and the rest of the playback chain in your home, then maybe the answer is yes. If you cannot, then you’re wanting something different than what your OP queries.

If the real question is “How do I make music playback in my home like music playback I heard in a PA-equipped venue?” then you already know the ingredients. If you can’t change the room to match, though, then you might have to think about speaker x room parameters (among other things) much more extensively.

I took a less conventional approach in speakers x room based on similar interests to what you describe, and think it worked out. But I also don’t use PA kit and I don’t live in a studs/drywall residence, so YMMV 😅

It depends on the speaker just like home audio. Some are trash and same are amazing. 
 

When I look at a speaker like the JBL VTX’s (huge and expensive) drivers and layout I have to believe they are exceptional. The drivers are pretty similar to the JBL M2 but probably have some changes in the motor (more mass) for heat control. But it is a PA speaker with controlled directivity in mind. pretty amazing engineering and not just a shiny box. Not sure they could fit in a typical home lol….
 

quote from website. 
“VTX V25 is fitted with JBL’s precision-engineered 3rd generation HF waveguide technology producing a properly time-aligned, coherent high frequency wavefront that maximizes the combined output of three D2 Dual Drivers. While producing a wavefront that is sufficiently flat to couple properly at extreme high frequencies, the active radiating surface area extends to the edge of the enclosure, thereby ensuring optimized vertical coupling even when enclosures are tightly-wrapped at 10 degrees.”

I confess to being one of those “reverse guys” :…with Wharfdale Heritage Lintons and an REL T5i , streaming WiFi through an ESS Sabre DAC, connected with Mogami cables, but I love my high current mid-80s Crown PS-200 amps. They’ve been serviced at AE Techron after early careers in commercial PA sittings, one in a small theater and the other in a church in Virginia. Bought them both on EBay for peanuts. Barely have $1k in them total.

The expertise shared here has been invaluable in refining my home listening enjoyment and taming these amps, but to my ears it’s hard to beat the great damping factor, wide dynamic range and high overhead of these legendary pro-audio workhorses. My Lintons can dip to 3 ohms and the Crowns push 133 wpc into 4 ohms.

This group helped create my sound stage with key advice. The ideal line-in level for older amps is lower than the hot modern DACs generate and once I added an unpowered Shiit preamp to tamp down the gain from my streamer, the Crown delivered amazing imaging.

Not a sound pro, but an event marketing person who spends time on the stage deck at existing events like DefFest and have dealt with stage manager details, production specs and road crews for 35 years. The input in this thread about the engineering and reliability requirements in touring level pro audio is on the money.

But the hobby history side of all this is fascinating to me…especially the early days when the Dead and the Allmans used early Macintosh and Crown solid state amps get get the combination of volume and reliability they needed on tour.

Our home audio hobby has many flavors and I really got a kick out of building a couple of stereos powered by same amp architecture as the Allmans used at the Fillmore :) Paul at PS Audio is a teller of truth, and he’s probably right saying that these early Crowns have a high end that sounds like breaking glass to his educated ears but I’ve enjoyed creating an Input chain and speaker level output hardware that tames it.

I have a full Carvin PA in my garage that I use for vocals in a live band I also put a Cdplayer thru this 9000 watt system using my old Cal Audio Labs Icon . Basically  have a club system and it pumps 2 sub woofers , 4 mains and three monitors

Not audiophile but not supposed to be .....my  Mac system in my house is for vinyl