What is the best HEAVY METAL speaker?

You named some stuff in my personal collection, and I have Classic Audio Loudspeakers in my living room. They can shake the walls! What's nice about them is that you can play sustained high levels without compression and without straining the amp.

More: In Flames, Skepticism, Therion, Earth, Sunn (and incarnations thereof), Om, Opeth... I don't think anyone would be suggesting that a speaker is good for some metal and not other forms of metal.

Really, all music is composed of combinations of sine waves and transients. Its been shown mathematically that nearly all waveforms can be created by the right combination of sine waves. Its only the human ear/brain system that makes the distinction between various forms of music. The reproducers don't care so long as you stay within their range of linearity. So dynamic range is important, but on this matter metal rarely has the dynamic range of classical, and with peaks of 120 db on stage, classical can be just as loud although usually not at sustained levels.

I'm not sure what you were implying about digitally recorded, but FWIW, when analog technology is used you often get greater dynamic range. This is not because analog as more dynamic range (although it is so close its really not worth arguing about) its because digital recordings tend to have more compression because that is how the industry likes to handle it. Analog is a little more forgiving of overload and so while compression is still likely, its often just not as much.

I run an LP mastering operation and a recording studio BTW, so I see this stuff first-hand.

Atmasphere, Hey, Try listing to avengeged sevenfold- Hail to the King, this song is recorded very decent, Rock's really good, incredible actually, tell me what you think about it, please listen to the whole song with you set-up, should bring a smile to your face, Happy Listening.

Dang! Old school!

atmasphere, actually, they are a new band of about 6 years of being famous, they have a huge fan base, sale out concert's world wide, yes, the music does remind me of old school a little, what did you think of the recording quality?, it's not compressed at all to me.

Yes, I know they are a new band. But they sound a lot like Iron Maiden, except for the vocals. IOW, old school.

I'll have to find an LP to really assess the recording quality. We (my band) were working on a mix of the last part of our 3rd album last night. As usual, we made an analog and also a digital recording. After we were satisfied with the mix (funny how it took 2 hours to mix 2 minutes...) we had to listen to the results on both the analog tape and the digital. Try as might, the digital just does not keep up- the analog sounds smoother and its easier to hear all the instruments.

So when I do an assessment I try to find the vinyl.