Speaker Asylum

RE: mad speaker decision

24.154.216.28


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Speaker Asylum ]

This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

This is not a mad speaker decision. It is an honest reaction to what you have discovered. I too have been down the road of horn-loaded speakers (from Altec and Klipsch,) dynamic speakers (from Thiel PSB, B&W and others) and panel speakers (from Magnepan and Quad).
Big horn-loaded speakers ARE dynamic and exciting, and your Quads may sound dull by comparison, but listen to yourself--you have observed 1.) the horn-loaded PA speakers lack deep bass, 2.) big rock causes fatigue, 3.) Quads have better sound top to bottom.
Purchase of a subwoofer involves considerable expense and may be difficult to integrate seamlessly with the PA speakers. With combined systems--horns and dynamic speakers for example--there is always the problem of matching the efficient horns to much less efficient dynamic woofers (and subs).
I would advise you to do the following: spend a few months going back and forth between your two sets of speakers if you have not done so. In my experience, it is very easy to be impressed by and enamoured of anything that is new and sounds more exciting than what you have gotten used to. It takes me a long time and a lot of listening and comparing for that novelty to settle down and for me really to understand the tradeoffs between components.
Too, you haven't said anything about what kinds of music you listen to, which may have a bearing on what you decide. I listen to a lot of acoustic music--classical, opera, and all kinds of mainly acoustic folk, blues and so on. I do listen to rock but not at traumatizing levels. So accuracy of timbre, extremely low coloration and resolution of onset transients, so important for evaluation of singers, are very important to me. The Quads are simply unmatched in my experience at reproducing these musical values. Horn speakers have horn colorations. These can be very fatiguing over time and are often a factor in reducing the accuracy of sounds of orchestral instruments.
Go slow, give it time, and be cautious about abandoning those Quads.
Good listening!

Follow Ups: