EV SX500+ speakers as studio monitors?

[TheDewd]

Sorry, but you could not be farther from the truth here. Power amps can be VERY different sounding from one another. There are many specs involved with how power amps function asa well. Is it class A? B? H? AB? Then there are slew rates, dampening factors, quality of the transformers etc... Even pure wattage isn't a fair reference. For instance, I would definately rather have 1000 watts of a Crest power pro amplifier than a Peavey amplifier. Not only will the Crest sound better, but it will actually sound louder as well. In fact, there is a good chance that 1000 watts of Crest Power Pro will be louder and fuller than 2000 watts of Peavey. The best part is that Crest is owned by Peavey, so some people might think they would be more similar. Then again, they are also drastically diffferent in price.

Dude, I know all that. But the fact is that YOU ARE WRONG! One can design an amplifier of any class and have similar specs and sound. You CANNOT judge an amplifier on the topology used. While it is true that Class A designs exhibit much better specs, you will not find many class A amps on the market because of heat dissipation. Furthermore, I bet that if I put you in a blind test with some Class A, Class AB, Class AB+B, Class D, Class T, Class I, Class G, Class TD and Class H amps, you would never identify which is which! So there you go...plain wrong !

Also, Slew Rate, damping factor are specs right? So when I say that specs tell all, they actually do! If an amplifier has a lower slew rate, specs will tell you this.

About power...I can't see how you can say specs are wrong? WTF ?? If an amplifier is rated at 1000W in a 4 ohm load with 0.1% THD over all his bandwidth, that's what you get! It doesn't matter if it's a PV or a Crest dude! How the hell are you thinking? Specs are specs. You can't assume the manufacturer is lying to you dude!

One other often overlooked thing in the Pro Audio and Recording industry is the importance of specs. Many specs are not as accurate as we might like to think. Otherwise you really would have $200 monitors that sounded like $25000 monitors. The specs may look pretty close, but 2 seconds of listening will instantly tell you just how different they are. Amps are the same way. Believe it or not, I have several trusted friends that swear up and down that they can hear a difference between using a standard power cord and a high end extremely expensive one. None of them wanted to believe that and were all very skeptical. However, experiencing it is the only way to decide, and to their amazement they were all suprised at the difference they could here.

I'm sorry, but the specs of $200 monitors are much less impressive than those of $25000 monitors. Also, you have to check the setup that was used to make the specs. Good specs always specify the testing methods.

About the power cords, this is SILLY! It doesn't change a tiny bit dude! Unless you can come up to me and prove scientifically that there is a difference, you ARE WRONG! The power cord gives the AC to the power supply who converts it to DC again. As long as the power cord has the correct current rating, the power supply can do its job. You are suffering from the placebo effect.

One of the problem with specs in the indutry is that there is no true unified standard by which all of the companies have base their specs on. There are too many variables that are left up to the testers to decide (typically on staff with the manufacturer). I am not saying that they lie with their tests, but there are definatley ways of tilting your results by changing certain variables within the testing procedure and not ever actually lying to anyone.

I agree with this. But I think Crown is actually a very nice company and the specs they pubish are not rubbish and are sufficiently detailed.

 

[TheDewd]

Going by that, isn't a speaker a speaker?
Amps all sound different too.

Amps with similar specs will all sound the same.
AGAIN, someone is suffering from the placebo effect.

Speakers have much more effect on sound, because it IS the transducer with connects the signal world to the physical world. If an amp is flat (amplitude and frequency wize) from DC to 100k, it means that whatever frequency you put it, it goes out amplified by some factor. Given a reasonable THD factor, one can assume any properly designed amp with similar specs will sound the same.

Amps don't have a wooden resonant box, are NOT dependant on the location and listening angle, are NOT dependant on the listening room, etc...speakers DO!

Bottom line is: If an amp has good specs, it should sound good.

Face it dudes, it doesn't matter is Behringer came out with a revolutionary $100 class D design which specs smoke most of the QSC line amps. The behringer would sound as good, saying otherwise is snobbism.

 

[kludge]

You want a useless spec? RMS power ratings! Those are measured with steady-state sine waves into resistive loads. It's like measuring how well a car drives 60mph. Seriously. Music is NOT steady-state sine waves, and speakers are NOT resistive loads!

Here's a little taste of the difficulty of amp/speaker interface design. A speaker motor is basically a coil of wire around a magnet, right? Apply AC to the coil, and it moves relative to the magnet. Now, take a coil of wire around a magnet and move it... now you have a generator. The suspension of the speaker cone is basically a spring. Your speaker is also a spring-loaded electric generator, producing its own electric signal and feeding it BACK into the amplifier. This energy doesn't just disappear... the amplifier has to absorb it somehow.

Speaker crossovers are made with inductors and capacitors. What these do, in practice, is DELAY signals going through them. An inductor is a coil of wire around a chunk of magnetic metal - in other words, a speaker motor is also an inductor. It's also a capacitor, and a resistor. These things all store and release energy in their own peculiar way, and the amplifier must deal with it all.

Now, the reason you see the same specs on all the amplifiers in the ads are because those are the specs that look good. It's not hard to build low RMS THD amplifiers. Now, you'll never see SPEAKERS rated for THD, even though they have it too - 10% THD isn't unusual even for audiophile speakers. But honestly, the factors involved in amplifier and speaker sound quality are so complex and difficult to measure that they're basically incomprehensible. The only thing you can really trust is your ears.

And if you sit down and A/B test a bunch of amplifiers, you'll get some VERY different results. That's because all amps have a distinctive sound.

 

[TheDewd]

The only thing you can really trust is your ears.

And if you sit down and A/B test a bunch of amplifiers, you'll get some VERY different results. That's because all amps have a distinctive sound.

While I agree with the remaning of your post, if you think there is an actual difference between amplifiers, you are again suffering from the placebo effect.

What COULD be the cause of the difference in sound, is NOT the amplifiers, but the speakers. For example, two power amplifiers could have similar specs, but one of those is built around a parallel ouput transistor configuration in order to deliver more current to the load if needed. If the speaker you use sounds better to your ears when its fed more current, then you have a difference in sound. But it's not the amplifier's fault! It's the speaker fault!

The truth is that you have to find the right match between speakers and amps. The bottom line is that it's NOT the amp's fault. Amps with similar specs all sound the same. Amps DON'T have a sound, unlike speakers.

 

[Cyanide-Depende]

While I agree with the remaning of your post, if you think there is an actual difference between amplifiers, you are again suffering from the placebo effect.

What COULD be the cause of the difference in sound, is NOT the amplifiers, but the speakers. For example, two power amplifiers could have similar specs, but one of those is built around a parallel ouput transistor configuration in order to deliver more current to the load if needed. If the speaker you use sounds better to your ears when its fed more current, then you have a difference in sound. But it's not the amplifier's fault! It's the speaker fault!

The truth is that you have to find the right match between speakers and amps. The bottom line is that it's NOT the amp's fault. Amps with similar specs all sound the same. Amps DON'T have a sound, unlike speakers.

this is absolutly, 100% NOT true. i have a peavy amp and a crown amp with the same box specs and power, hook them up to the same set of 15" subs, and they do sound different, the qsc is louder, a little clearer, while both amps arent great one is better and cleaner than the other, the peavy likes to distort low end, and when used as a mid-high amp, it distorts the highs more than the qsc. on the same speaker with the same power, and the same cd in the cd player (so you cant plame the musician for playing differently) no placebo, staright facts.

 

[kludge]

While I agree with the remaning of your post, if you think there is an actual difference between amplifiers, you are again suffering from the placebo effect.

I spent a fair bit of time building amplifiers, both tube and solid-state. Start doing that, and you'll find there's no placebo at all. It's true that amplifiers interact with speakers, and amps that sound good with one set of speakers might sound bad with another. And yes, amps and speakers need to be matched (which is a good argument for powered monitors - odds are the vendor put some effort into tuning the amplifiers to the drivers).

Unfortunately, amplifiers always face some very difficult problems from an engineering perspective, and the techniques for dealing with those problems are always audible. Worse, unless you have a really huge budget, odds are most of the engineering tradeoffs in your amp were in the name of lower cost! Massive global negative feedback loops to stabilize mismatched transistors, for example.

Seriously, get a standard set of speakers, put a bunch of different amps on them, listen to the same music, and you'll hear differences. Easily.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Face it dudes, it doesn't matter is Behringer came out with a revolutionary $100 class D design which specs smoke most of the QSC line amps. The behringer would sound as good, saying otherwise is snobbism.

What specs? Watts RMS @ a % of THD? That tells one close to nothing about the sound. Harmonic distortion only a small window on the whole world. What about IM distortion, phase distortion, crossover distortion, transformer isolation, efficiency, change over temperature, change over load, and a dozen other colorations that can and do take place in circuit design?

Kludge is right; the standard published specs are only a small part of the real story and that no two amplifiers of exact same "specs" but with different design or different components will deliver quite the same sound.

Published specs are like EPA fuel ratings on a car. They provide some general reference as to the class of product you're looking at and allow for some very general degree of comparison, but they relly tell you little of any accuracy or usefulness about the performance of the car itself.

Loudspeaker specs are even worse offenders. Let's face facts, folks; if we were aliens visiting this planet and had no ears, and we had to trust the frequency response graphs included with all of our monitors, we'd assume that everybody's monitors sounded more or less the same. Those of us who are human beings with ears know that is about as far from the truth as one can get.

"20-20k +/- 3dB" under testing conditions tells us only that they design a product to deliver within those test paramters and that the product will not sound any worse because of an asepect that does't meet those parameters. That's fine as far as it goes. But it really tells us very little about how the device actually sounds.

And finally, specs tell you nothing about how the device is going to work or sound six months or six years down the road. If you see five products with similar features and performance specs, and four out of the five are priced within 10-20% of each other but the fifth one is regularly priced 40% less, you had better ask yourself why that is. If it's because the design or the components are inferior, even though they may meet some labratory spec, then you'll see that 40% savings disappear in repair or replacement costs much sooner than you'd like.

G.

 

[TheDewd]

this is absolutly, 100% NOT true. i have a peavy amp and a crown amp with the same box specs and power, hook them up to the same set of 15" subs, and they do sound different, the qsc is louder, a little clearer, while both amps arent great one is better and cleaner than the other, the peavy likes to distort low end, and when used as a mid-high amp, it distorts the highs more than the qsc. on the same speaker with the same power, and the same cd in the cd player (so you cant plame the musician for playing differently) no placebo, staright facts.

Well your subs are not well designed because they are amp dependant. The fact is that when you design an amplifier, you have a certain LOAD in mind. If you use the amplifier with something else than the "expected load" you'll get weird results.

Again, not the amp's fault. The difference you hear is due to the sinergy between your speakers and the amp. Blaming the amp is WRONG dude! You have to blame the whole system.

Also, I don't think both amps have EXACTLY the same specs. If they had, there WOULD NOT be a difference....or maybe your hearing is shot?

 

[TheDewd]

I spent a fair bit of time building amplifiers, both tube and solid-state. Start doing that, and you'll find there's no placebo at all. It's true that amplifiers interact with speakers, and amps that sound good with one set of speakers might sound bad with another. And yes, amps and speakers need to be matched (which is a good argument for powered monitors - odds are the vendor put some effort into tuning the amplifiers to the drivers).

Unfortunately, amplifiers always face some very difficult problems from an engineering perspective, and the techniques for dealing with those problems are always audible. Worse, unless you have a really huge budget, odds are most of the engineering tradeoffs in your amp were in the name of lower cost! Massive global negative feedback loops to stabilize mismatched transistors, for example.

Seriously, get a standard set of speakers, put a bunch of different amps on them, listen to the same music, and you'll hear differences. Easily.

Maybe, but you can't blame it on the amp! You have to blame it on the system as a WHOLE.

BTW, I build amps too sucker.

 

[TheDewd]

What specs? Watts RMS @ a % of THD? That tells one close to nothing about the sound. Harmonic distortion only a small window on the whole world. What about IM distortion, phase distortion, crossover distortion, transformer isolation, efficiency, change over temperature, change over load, and a dozen other colorations that can and do take place in circuit design?

Kludge is right; the standard published specs are only a small part of the real story and that no two amplifiers of exact same "specs" but with different design or different components will deliver quite the same sound.

Published specs are like EPA fuel ratings on a car. They provide some general reference as to the class of product you're looking at and allow for some very general degree of comparison, but they relly tell you little of any accuracy or usefulness about the performance of the car itself.

Loudspeaker specs are even worse offenders. Let's face facts, folks; if we were aliens visiting this planet and had no ears, and we had to trust the frequency response graphs included with all of our monitors, we'd assume that everybody's monitors sounded more or less the same. Those of us who are human beings with ears know that is about as far from the truth as one can get.

"20-20k +/- 3dB" under testing conditions tells us only that they design a product to deliver within those test paramters and that the product will not sound any worse because of an asepect that does't meet those parameters. That's fine as far as it goes. But it really tells us very little about how the device actually sounds.

And finally, specs tell you nothing about how the device is going to work or sound six months or six years down the road. If you see five products with similar features and performance specs, and four out of the five are priced within 10-20% of each other but the fifth one is regularly priced 40% less, you had better ask yourself why that is. If it's because the design or the components are inferior, even though they may meet some labratory spec, then you'll see that 40% savings disappear in repair or replacement costs much sooner than you'd like.
G.

This is exactly why it is important to have well written and well detailed specs. Of course they don't tell it all and it's a shame.

But the bottom line is still that if you listen to a 1kHz pure sine wave tone through amps with similar specs and through an 8 ohm speaker, you should hear the same thing, because the amp was (probably) designed using sine wave tones at 1kHz and was expected to have a load that is the equivalent of a 8 ohm speaker working at 1 kHz.

We are all arguing for nothing, since you guys don't seem to accept the fact that there is a lack of standards in audio world, and that if standards were defined, two amps with similar specs would sound the same.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

But the bottom line is still that if you listen to a 1kHz pure sine wave tone through amps with similar specs and through an 8 ohm speaker, you should hear the same thing, because the amp was (probably) designed using sine wave tones at 1kHz and was expected to have a load that is the equivalent of a 8 ohm speaker working at 1 kHz.

Agreed it would probably be very difficult to hear the difference under those conditions. Substitute the test tone with an audiophile mastering of a Chicago Symphony recording and even a tin ear can hear the difference (though they might not be able to express that difference very well in words.)

In-between those extremes, pop a production Lyle Lovett or Sheryl Crow CD in as the program material, and maybe a tin ear might or might not hear a statistically definable difference, but music lovers and engineers with attuned ears should hear differences. I'm not talking golden-eared snobs, necessarily, I'm just talking about somebody who knows what to listen for.

And I'll also say that the difference in the sound of any two randomly-picked quality amplifiers is *far* less than the difference between any two equally-randomly-picked loudspeakers. But it's still there.

We are all arguing for nothing, since you guys don't seem to accept the fact that there is a lack of standards in audio world, and that if standards were defined, two amps with similar specs would sound the same.

The only thing I was arguing was the statement that "two amps with similar specs will sound the same." While this would be true for my 84-yr-old mother, it is most certainly not true for me and for most of my associates in this business.

I'll agree that there is a lack of meaningful standards, but not that there is a lack of standards. There are standards in place for both measurement and and reporting of specification. My point is those standards are useful for classification purposes only, and in reality tell one very little about how a device actually performs.

They will tell you - to a degree - what the product does NOT sound like. They specify tolerances and limits (under certain test conditions) inside which they guarantee the device will perform. Put in layman's terms, the specs say that the product will not sound worse than some level for this particular technical reason. But the specs do little to nothing to tell one what a product *does* sound like inside of those broad parameters.

The problem is there'd have to be a virtually infinite number of technical written specifications definied in order to provide a true picture of how a product sounds "in the real world" to any kind of accurate resolution.

G.

 

[xstatic]

The Dewd, you certainly have a right to believe whatever it is that you want. I am sure that the reason I am constantly working in this indutry is not only because I do fall for placebo type situations, but I also am able to convince my clients that they need me working for them. So far I have only read two things in thi whole thread that were plainly and blatantly wropng. Number 1 was when you said amps are amps in such a way that would lead a person to believe that it does not matter which one you use as far as quality difference is concerned. The second blatantly wrong thing that has been posted in this thread was when you accused me of being wrong.

ANYONE that thinks that they know everything and is always right is a person that I would not accept any advice from. I will not sit here and argue the tiny little details and the technical aspects of amplifiers. I am not a technician. What I am however is an engineer who makes his living in this field. I am also an engineer who has thousands of hours of experience in the field using hundreds of different brands and models of equipment. I have earned the right to have an opinion based opn experience. Thedewd may want to call it placebo, I call it experience.

Now you also say that we "don't seem to accept the fact that there is a lack of standards in audio world". Have you read this thread? I clearly stated that that is a huge problem in the audio industry. In fact, I was the one who brought that up to begin with. As far as specs goes, every piece of equipment would have to have a small book with it's specs in order for two pieces of equipment to be exactly the same. Every different IC, resistor, transformer etc... that goes in line in a piece of equipment can drastically change the way the equipment functions and sounds. Between even the cheapest and the most expensive studio monitors out there, the specs do not show nearly how different the reality of the two different sets are.

In the end, all of this could have been avoided had you clearly stated what you meant instead of saying an amp is an amp. Especially since you are defending one of the cheapest and in my opinion worst sounding amps of the Crown line. Personally, I do not like the Power base or the CE line at all. I don't care what their slew rates, opr dampening factors, or RMS ratings are. They just plain do not sound that good to me. Does that mean a good sound can not be had if they are being used? Not at all. Doest that meant that a different amp might sound better with less work? Certainly.

 

[boingoman]

While I agree with the remaning of your post, if you think there is an actual difference between amplifiers, you are again suffering from the placebo effect.

Sorry, Dewd. Time to admit you don't know everything, cause everyone else can already see it.

Don't be a dud, dewd. It's okay, it's just the 'net.

To be fair, I wanted to echo something Glen said. The differences are subtle, but they are there. Towards the lower end of the ladder, which many of us here at homerecording.com tend to be, they are less subtle. And many people here are less than fully knowledgeable about reading specs in the first place. Two amps that appear to be very similar may sound very different.

The difference between a lab.Gruppen and a Camco might not mean much. The difference between a Nady and a Hafler might mean a lot.

 

[kludge]

Dewd, don't place too much faith in specs. Generally, the important things that really affect sound can't be measured. And like I said, THD is especially misleading. It's used because it's easy to measure, but it in no way represents any sort of real-world behavior. RMS power ratings aren't much better.