Nearfields for audiophile listening?

Ooh, when the forces meet..

 

Proacs need a super warm chain and beefy warm amp. Otherwise they suck. They sound good but still soft off something like a McIntosh or old warm power amps. Think Yamaha Natural Sound or anything designed by Pass. THe new ones should react similarly to the old ones to this. It's not worth it for the price imo but some guys want brit fi to not suck.

I think they all suck dude with neutral/revealing gear. Don't get me wrong. The Harbeth tweeter is nasty too. Same with PMC. They all have a treble shelf dialed in the crossover as specified by the BBC monitor specification. PMC is the most V shaped, Harbeth has the insane deliberate resonances and warmest bass hump.

ATC doesn't adhere to the BBC bullshit. They are the word of God about the chain, mix, and recording. Quested are just dark. I wouldn't use Brit-fi not made by one of those two.

 

I'm happy you're into studio gear, but why do you keep repeating the same things in a thread that isn't titled "nearfields for studio monitoring"?

Can't we just have a stickied thread for "All the things Psalmanazar thinks is shit (and all the things he doesn't think is shit)" and then ease up on the posts in random threads?

 

No. There is no difference between studio monitoring and critical listening. The only difference is volume, mastering speakers are full range, and many mixing speakers tend to have a present midrange. The most common mixing monitors, Auratone 5C and NS10, started off as a hi-fi bookshelf speakers that were designed to be boundary loaded. Some of the best monitors are sold as hi-fi speakers with nothing but a nicer wood veneer for interior decorating approval. Many pros monitor off of hi-fi speakers and many audiophiles listen on "monitor" speakers. The Proac "Studio" speakers were always intended as hi-fi speakers.

99% of dealer-sold hi-fi speakers are absolute crap in 2020. The big brand ones sold in other stores are pretty middling. The powered bookshelves and typical 6.5" woofer floor standers mostly all just suck for pleasure listening compared to say a pair of A7X or LSR 708p 1-3m away. If you are deluded enough to believe otherwise, go to a show or dealer. Most nearfield monitors above 1000 a pair sound pretty good. Even most of the Focals and Genelecs are not smash them with a hammer bad. The voicings are all over the place. The one thing they are mostly not, above the bigger entry level speakers and Focals that shouldn't have passed quality control, is total crap. If they were as crappy as the typical hi-fi speaker, they would get returned or just break. The barrier to entry is slightly higher.

If you can't hear that Proac is more responsive than an Adams, which is more responsive than a Harbeth, that's your own problem. Some people like the slight upper bass bump and treble shelf for hi-fi listening. Some mixers like that makes them do to all of their mixes. I prefer the Yamaha type approach or just a slightly 2khz ish dip around the crossover because it's easier to fix problems on and sounds more normal.

And yet there are audiophiles that like HS8 as a hifi speaker because it sounds big while retaining midrange and they like that dialed in dryness and paperyness. NS1000 is still very popular as a hi-fi speaker.

 

There's no accounting for taste. Some people eat shit and like it. Some people want to eat different flavors, colors, and consistencies of shit.

 

proac d100 is probably one of the best speakers I've heard period of the hundreds if not thousands of speakers I have sampled over the years.
Definitely can be enjoyed beyond mixing use. Proac has a huge following here in Australia as a hifi speaker, same with the UK.

 

It must be the combination of my roommate's amp + speaker (Hothouse S400 and Proacs), but when he was mixing with them at home before starting his own studio, he never ever used them for pleasure, and I understood why.

 

I feel a little bit like an audience member who wants to get roasted by the comedian next.

Hey @Psalmanazar what do you think of the Barefoots?

I have a pair of MM27(listening from a MH ULN-8) that I use as my midfield audiophile setup.

I was thinking about getting the Footprint 02 for nearfields but I am concerned with that 180hz crossover point.

Back when I was getting the MM27, ATC v Barefoot was all the rage over at gearslutz and I was considering getting the
SCM12 Pro to see what I was missing from the other side. I listen very quietly though so I am a bit concerned if they don't hit potential at lower levels

 

@raif barefoots are awesome. metric halo is awesome. getting a different sound is always fun. don't expect the small box atcs to hit you in the face with transients. they're small, sealed speakers that just weight over 50 pounds. you're not really going to better the detail from an scm20. the scm12 has the lower specced drivers but should be cool if you like the sound. they're not really gonna hit you at all.

some guys love it. I don't know but i guess they like the upper bass boost and upper mid bumps to add excitement to small, boxy speakers and that raspy air shelf to cut through whatever warmth they're shoving in front of it. It's definitely a "hi-fi" voicing for middle-aged guys who are losing their hearing a bit.

 

Book shelf proAC and floor stander proacs are very different animals just FYI.

 

I'd like to hear D100's one day.

 

There is a special room at the Adelphi in Singapore, one of the vendors personal rooms with Kondo and d100, worth trying to find it.

 

The floorstanders and some of the bookshelves are the best brit-fi you'll get aside from ATC.
Actually competent standalone stuff.
My only worry is how much they're pushing ribbon tweeters on their new offerings, when in practice they just don't have the coherency or dynamics the soft done variants have.

 

I personally love the atc a lot and was just disappointed that with the history and expertise in sound, they have been compared unfavourably to the buchardt s400 by almost all reviewers.

Of course all of these are subjective, but a small part in me just died knowing this.

Stay safe everyone

 

this stay at home period allows me to compare a/b between my falcon ls3/5a and graham ls6. I'm really surprised not much love is given to the graham ls6 considering it is just slightly bigger than ls3/5a, but without a doubt, much better than ls3/5a.

i've been reading up so much about ls3/5a and the best iteration of it, but you can never find a definite answer. many will say harbeth p3esr is better, many others will say it cannot be compared to ls3/5a variants like the falcons. The person who sold me the falcons says it is definitely not as nice as his rogers ls3/5a which is why he sold the falcons. the famous ls3/5a collector joseph ki seems to love his rogers the most as well.

at least for me, who owned the harbeth p3esr (ages ago), the falcon ls3/5a (now), and heard the graham ls3/5a, the ls6 is obviously better. obviously as in, without the need to listen to it critically and you will know the ls6 is better. the scale, extra bass (though you have to cover the port to avoid flabbiness) and the price, just make this a better purchase.

i would say if you are in the market for a ls3/5a, get the graham ls6. the only let down for the ls6 is the relatively poor cabinet quality, and resale-bility.

 

Got my hands on a Vidar and did some comparisons to Aegir using the P3ESR. Thanks for the nudge @AdvanTech.

I guess this is what "not enough power" sounds like: Aegir get loud enough but lacks dynamics. Fine with slow, acoustic material but once it gets busy or into frequency extremes the Aegir sounds slow, lacks attack, low bass gets muted, and everything sounds more like a compressed soup. Exaggerating a bit but overall outcome is just not good enough.

That said, the Aegir has a more beautiful tone in the midrange. Acoustic guitars have a beautiful sheen, highs are less strident, and vocals sound sweet and lifelike.

Wondering if getting another Aegir would solve the power issue?

 

Lockdown means I have a lot of time on my hands these days. So I did some comparisons of P3ESR/Vidar, P3ESR/Aegir, and Adam A7X. Also compared P3ESR/Vidar with and without a Rel T/7i subwoofer. I sit ~1.2m from the speakers. Spend about a full week with all of the components, switching back and forth. Sonnet Morpheus is the source/pre-amp.

General learnings
Most of these will be obvious to folks, but I thought they might be valuable for other speaker beginners like myself:

• EQ / room acoustics have an outsized influence. I did the whole Sonarworks routine (Sonarworks mic + Reference 4 software) and this is the correction being applied to the Adams: I knew I had some resonance problems in the lower midrange but this crazy. Night and day on either speaker. Will apply some room treatment once I move these to a proper room post-Corona. But from a sound quality ROI perspective, Sonarworks wins hard.
• I now get to appreciate how many time- and or money-consuming variables you remove with great headphones. E.g. it's hard to get precise bass with speakers without spending mega-bucks and/or -time room acoustics, floorstanders, proper subwoofer integration, etc.
• Depending on the speaker, a subwoofer might be essential and I'm no basshead. Without one, there's just so much information missing even on bass-light music. For the P3ESR (small cabinets/woofers + laws of physics), I find a subwoofer to be essential.
• Don't trust Stereophile. I knew they only write positive reviews, but I thought at least they'd a) do proper pre-selection so only good stuff gets reviewed and that b) they have decent ears. Claiming the Aegir works well with P3ESR is just wrong unless you only listen to a very narrow band of music.

Updated thoughts on the P3ESR

Pros

• Timbre + midrange + imaging means voices and instruments sound very lifelike
• Decent microdetails.

Cons:

• Macrodetails, dynamics, and speed improved with Vidar but still not top of the heap
• Not the best extension / air on top
• IMO useless without a subwoofer and by having to integrate a subwoofer, there are other downsides

Con but can be managed

• Funky frequency response, very colored. And it's not just my room: the Adam without EQ-ing despite its V-shape sounds a lot more "normal" using HD650/Verite as a benchmark. Pro: fairly EQ-able without losing its strengths or sounding weird.
• Power-hungry. Already mentioned Aegir vs. Vidar in the previous post. Ideally, I'd have Vidar's power and Aegir's tone & midrange but happy with the Vidar for now. Aegir standalone just doesn't have enough power for most music, resulting in a compressed sound and lack of dynamics.

Updated thoughts on the Adam A7x

Pros

• Great plug and play sound and you can tone down the highs with manual controls. I will recommend these to my parents.
• Macrodynamics, attack
• Usable and quite decent bass without a subwoofer

Cons

• No matter the EQ, the treble is very present. Not etchy / metallic, but just very present (sometimes too present), reminding you this thing is about its tweeters. I used to have the Adam A5 in my college dorm room 15 years ago and somehow don't remember the tweeters to be that hot (and the HD650 was my preferred heapdhone back then for reference). Not fatiguing, but I get annoyed that my sole attention is often on the highs. Back then I actually compared Adam to Genelecs, Mackies and KRKs in that price range and thought the AMT tweeters were the smoothest of the bunch. Strange.
• Microdetails. The difference between the Sonnet Morpheus and my Macbook soundcard is smaller on the Adams than on the P3ESR.

Some notes on the Rel T/7i

• Don't think I could live with the P3ESR without a subwoofer
• This is my first subwoofer so I'm not going to claim how it's better than something, but overall I'm very happy with them. Easy setup and even without spending days on crossover setup, etc., I feel the bass is very well integrated. Sonarworks did most of the work, Probably not perfect but works very well for now.

Conclusion
I strongly prefer the P3ESR now. Clearly an unfair comparison given how the P3ESR/Vidar bundle costs around 2.7k EUR (or 3.5k with subwoofer) and the Adam can be had for 1.1k EUR. But when I was looking at truly nearfield options (< 1.5M from speakers), there aren't that many choices irrespective of price unless you move into the ATC 10k range.

With the Adams, I too often felt like watching a TV with saturation dialed all the way up. This is an exagerration and they present great value, but I'm keeping the P3ESR/Vidar/Rel T/7i combo. Not cheap and hardly perfect, but the various parts complement each other's shortcomings and the overall package works. Microdetails and timbre are very important to me and I'm happy to pay for diminishing returns (hence also choice of DNA Stellaris as headphone amp), and the P3ESR albeit imperfect overall does well on these two things. But if you do get the P3ESR, strongly consider getting a subwoofer as well. And I can't stress enough again how much Sonarworks drove a massive improvement in my untreated and far from optimal room.

 

The passive ATC nearfields aren’t 10k...

 

Happy to read about your findings, though I think there are more nearfield options than you currently think. I have MTM bookshelves ~1.5m from me that work well because they act almost like a point-source due to driver configuration.

 

Actually there are so many more nearfield options.. This entire thread is dedicated to nearfield listening..

@Metro posted a few pages back about how p3esr and t7i seems good in terms of bass integration until he heard buchardt s400.

P3ESR should be easy to drive, even with aegir. I'm glad you shared about how insuffient it is though, cause I almost wanted to get aegir for my ls3/5a.

I really think from what you want, a bigger p3esr will satisfy you the best. I mentioned Graham ls6 and if you can, the harbeth m30.2 is good as well. Atc scm 11 or 19 seems to be a good balance between a7x and p3esr. Atc 11 with vidar is a good match, though rlow and I agree the treble will get a little hot, though nowhere as hot as a7x.