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On one hand I like spare-no-expense halo products like this. They are fascinating, at least visually. On the other hand this is why the hi-fi hobby is dying.

On one hand I like spare-no-expense halo products like this. They are fascinating, at least visually. On the other hand this is why the hi-fi hobby is dying. With products like this, we promote the idea that high fidelity audio requires all sorts of exotic equipment that few can afford. The happy reality is that excellent audio reproduction can be achieved without spending much money; certainly less than a modern game console. One example would be JBL's excellent entry level studio monitors. While they don't play super loud, they measure nearly impeccably and sometimes go on sale for as little as $200/pair. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/jbl-lsr305p-mkii-and-control-1-pro-monitors-review.10811/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/j...

bob1029 5y ago
You can get damn close to the performance of the halo products with stuff as humble as Polk Audio floorstanders and some Emotiva amps. Any dumbass with a table saw, glue and a bunch of clamps can make speakers that rival the highest end for pennies on the dollar. There are lots of online resources for this sort of thing. If you think this hobby is about the most precise listening experience (bit rates, conversion, etc), you would be wrong in my eyes. It's more about the presence/power you get from a system that can saturate a 20A circuit with transients. The effective dynamic range in a real world listening room. Having your walls rattle a bit when the depth charges explode is an experience. You don't get that with sound docks/bars, headphones, etc.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  If you think this hobby is about the most precise listening experience you would be wrong in my eyes. It's more about the presence/power you get from a system that can saturate a 20A circuit with transients. Both things are true and the best systems nail both. The research done by Floyd Toole and Sean Olive and others tells us that all other things being equal, listeners prefer speakers that accurately reproduce the input signal. https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Psychoacoustics-Loudspeakers-Engineering/dp/0240520092 https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Psychoacoustics-Lo... But, I also agree 100% that gobs of power and accurate reproduction of those transients is also key to listener enjoyment and that this is something that is currently (no pun intended) undervalued by the objective audiophile world. In a modestly sized room one can have their cake and eat it too, with regards to studio monitors. My den music room is about 200 ft^2 / 19 m^2. In this room I have studio monitors crossed over to a pair of subwoofers and it's able to push some very satisfying output levels.
  - bob1029 5y ago
    > In a modestly sized room There is the magic part of the whole equation. Everything comes down to the room. Small/medium rooms can be easily pressurized by reasonable setups. I am currently cursed with a gigantic open concept living room, but will be moving my gear into a better home very soon. A lot of people miss the environmental factor. It's the biggest one. The various room modes will have the most impact on your listening experience. No amount of equalization or other DSP hackery can defeat the laws of physics. The best listening environment is in an open field in the middle of nowhere, but you need a ridiculous amount of power to make that sound really good.
    - JohnBooty 5y ago
      A lot of people miss the environmental factor. It's the biggest one. The various room modes will have the most impact on your listening experience. No amount of equalization or other DSP hackery can defeat the laws of physics. Objectively, this is true beyond doubt and can be easily measured! Subjectively I think it's perhaps a little more complicated since our brains already do a lot of "room correction." When we completely remove the room from the equation via absorbers etc. we essentially create a headphones-like experience which feels a little artificial to many people. It's like the music is happening inside my head instead of on a stage in front of me. So, I typically don't really worry about room treatment, other than rugs and bookcases and furnishings. This is personal taste and I won't say you're wrong if you do otherwise! Incidentally it's worth noting the living room of Floyd Toole who wrote "the" book on a lot of this stuff. https://www.thescreeningroomav.com/single-post/2019/03/06/the-ultimate-real-world-home-theater-and-listening-room https://www.thescreeningroomav.com/single-post/2019/03/06/th...
k-mcgrady 5y ago
Studio monitors and HiFi equipment seem like different categories and use cases to me. HiFi speakers should fill the room. To get a good sound from studio monitors you need to be positioned well. Just moving a little bit can make a big difference in the sound.
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  I used a pair of Adam A5Xs as my main speakers for a long time, and those were perfectly capable of filling my living room with sound, as well as being seriously good and accurate monitors. Obviously the 5" woofers did struggle a bit with bass at high volumes, but so would any hifi speaker with similar-sized drivers. Augmenting them with two 12" active subs took care of that well enough. Replacing them with the larger A7Xs or A8Xs would have been an option as well. I've since replaced the Adams with a set of Monitor Audio Bronze 2s, because I wanted something with a bit more living room friendly looks. Finding an AVR with outputs for active speakers is surprisingly difficult, so I had to go back to passive speakers, and I compensated a bit by getting the largest practical model I could fit. Studio monitors are as varied as any other speaker design. There are ones with really small sweet spots and others with extremely huge ones, the JBL LSR series is a great example of the latter, their horn loaded tweeters have really impressive horizontal dispersion.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Studio monitors and HiFi equipment seem like different categories and use cases to me. . Studio monitors can potentially be great hifi speakers, though generally not the other way around. To get a good sound from studio monitors you need to be positioned well. Modern studio monitors are often quite the literal opposite of this! Thanks to the waveguide on the JBL 3-series and 7-series monitors, you get nearly perfectly constant sound over an unbelievably wide 120-degree swath. You won't find anything approaching this in the consumer hi-fi market segment. This is nearly as true for Genelec studio monitors as well. Check the dispersion graphs (the rainbow colored ones) for these models: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/jbl-lsr305p-mkii-and-control-1-pro-monitors-review.10811/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/j... https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/jbl-308p-mkii-studio-monitor-review.17338/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/j... https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/genelec-8030c-studio-monitor-review.14795/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/g... Which makes sense given the use case: you might have a few people sitting at the mixing desk and you'd like them to be hearing the same thing. HiFi speakers should fill the room Depending on the size of the room, studio monitors may or may not be able to fulfill this duty well. It does definitely tend to be the achilles heel when you try and use studio monitors for hifi. I've got JBL 306's crossed over to a pair of compact 12" subs in my fairly small music room and and they definitely get way louder than I want or need them too.
deltron3030 5y ago
>On the other hand this is why the hi-fi hobby is dying. The actual hobby (active music listening) is dying because it has a lot of competition in the entertainment space. That's why these days good speakers often part of home theater or computer setups, with a screen in between instead of standalone systems just for music listening. >The happy reality is that excellent audio reproduction can be achieved without spending much money; Indeed. But people often buy for social reasons, to boast in forum threads or to belong to a circle of elitist in those communities, it's also a status game.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  The actual hobby (active music listening) is dying because it has a lot of competition in the entertainment space. Yeah, this is probably a bigger problem than the perception of hifi being strictly a rich man's game thanks to $50K flagship speakers. But, I do think that perception is one of the biggest issues.

bob1029 5y ago

You can get damn close to the performance of the halo products with stuff as humble as Polk Audio floorstanders and some Emotiva amps. Any dumbass with a table saw, glue and a bunch of clamps can make speakers that rival the highest end for pennies on the dollar. There are lots of online resources for this sort of thing. If you think this hobby is about the most precise listening experience (bit rates, conversion, etc), you would be wrong in my eyes. It's more about the presence/power you get from a system that can saturate a 20A circuit with transients. The effective dynamic range in a real world listening room. Having your walls rattle a bit when the depth charges explode is an experience. You don't get that with sound docks/bars, headphones, etc.

JohnBooty 5y ago
If you think this hobby is about the most precise listening experience you would be wrong in my eyes. It's more about the presence/power you get from a system that can saturate a 20A circuit with transients. Both things are true and the best systems nail both. The research done by Floyd Toole and Sean Olive and others tells us that all other things being equal, listeners prefer speakers that accurately reproduce the input signal. https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Psychoacoustics-Loudspeakers-Engineering/dp/0240520092 https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Psychoacoustics-Lo... But, I also agree 100% that gobs of power and accurate reproduction of those transients is also key to listener enjoyment and that this is something that is currently (no pun intended) undervalued by the objective audiophile world. In a modestly sized room one can have their cake and eat it too, with regards to studio monitors. My den music room is about 200 ft^2 / 19 m^2. In this room I have studio monitors crossed over to a pair of subwoofers and it's able to push some very satisfying output levels.
- bob1029 5y ago
  > In a modestly sized room There is the magic part of the whole equation. Everything comes down to the room. Small/medium rooms can be easily pressurized by reasonable setups. I am currently cursed with a gigantic open concept living room, but will be moving my gear into a better home very soon. A lot of people miss the environmental factor. It's the biggest one. The various room modes will have the most impact on your listening experience. No amount of equalization or other DSP hackery can defeat the laws of physics. The best listening environment is in an open field in the middle of nowhere, but you need a ridiculous amount of power to make that sound really good.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    A lot of people miss the environmental factor. It's the biggest one. The various room modes will have the most impact on your listening experience. No amount of equalization or other DSP hackery can defeat the laws of physics. Objectively, this is true beyond doubt and can be easily measured! Subjectively I think it's perhaps a little more complicated since our brains already do a lot of "room correction." When we completely remove the room from the equation via absorbers etc. we essentially create a headphones-like experience which feels a little artificial to many people. It's like the music is happening inside my head instead of on a stage in front of me. So, I typically don't really worry about room treatment, other than rugs and bookcases and furnishings. This is personal taste and I won't say you're wrong if you do otherwise! Incidentally it's worth noting the living room of Floyd Toole who wrote "the" book on a lot of this stuff. https://www.thescreeningroomav.com/single-post/2019/03/06/the-ultimate-real-world-home-theater-and-listening-room https://www.thescreeningroomav.com/single-post/2019/03/06/th...

k-mcgrady 5y ago

Studio monitors and HiFi equipment seem like different categories and use cases to me. HiFi speakers should fill the room. To get a good sound from studio monitors you need to be positioned well. Just moving a little bit can make a big difference in the sound.

KozmoNau7 5y ago
I used a pair of Adam A5Xs as my main speakers for a long time, and those were perfectly capable of filling my living room with sound, as well as being seriously good and accurate monitors. Obviously the 5" woofers did struggle a bit with bass at high volumes, but so would any hifi speaker with similar-sized drivers. Augmenting them with two 12" active subs took care of that well enough. Replacing them with the larger A7Xs or A8Xs would have been an option as well. I've since replaced the Adams with a set of Monitor Audio Bronze 2s, because I wanted something with a bit more living room friendly looks. Finding an AVR with outputs for active speakers is surprisingly difficult, so I had to go back to passive speakers, and I compensated a bit by getting the largest practical model I could fit. Studio monitors are as varied as any other speaker design. There are ones with really small sweet spots and others with extremely huge ones, the JBL LSR series is a great example of the latter, their horn loaded tweeters have really impressive horizontal dispersion.
JohnBooty 5y ago
Studio monitors and HiFi equipment seem like different categories and use cases to me. . Studio monitors can potentially be great hifi speakers, though generally not the other way around. To get a good sound from studio monitors you need to be positioned well. Modern studio monitors are often quite the literal opposite of this! Thanks to the waveguide on the JBL 3-series and 7-series monitors, you get nearly perfectly constant sound over an unbelievably wide 120-degree swath. You won't find anything approaching this in the consumer hi-fi market segment. This is nearly as true for Genelec studio monitors as well. Check the dispersion graphs (the rainbow colored ones) for these models: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/jbl-lsr305p-mkii-and-control-1-pro-monitors-review.10811/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/j... https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/jbl-308p-mkii-studio-monitor-review.17338/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/j... https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/genelec-8030c-studio-monitor-review.14795/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/g... Which makes sense given the use case: you might have a few people sitting at the mixing desk and you'd like them to be hearing the same thing. HiFi speakers should fill the room Depending on the size of the room, studio monitors may or may not be able to fulfill this duty well. It does definitely tend to be the achilles heel when you try and use studio monitors for hifi. I've got JBL 306's crossed over to a pair of compact 12" subs in my fairly small music room and and they definitely get way louder than I want or need them too.

deltron3030 5y ago

>On the other hand this is why the hi-fi hobby is dying. The actual hobby (active music listening) is dying because it has a lot of competition in the entertainment space. That's why these days good speakers often part of home theater or computer setups, with a screen in between instead of standalone systems just for music listening. >The happy reality is that excellent audio reproduction can be achieved without spending much money; Indeed. But people often buy for social reasons, to boast in forum threads or to belong to a circle of elitist in those communities, it's also a status game.

JohnBooty 5y ago
The actual hobby (active music listening) is dying because it has a lot of competition in the entertainment space. Yeah, this is probably a bigger problem than the perception of hifi being strictly a rich man's game thanks to $50K flagship speakers. But, I do think that perception is one of the biggest issues.