Can you recommend complete amp+speaker setup for high-res music streaming w/Tidal Connect? (~10k)

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metalgod01

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Can you recommend complete amp+speaker setup for high-res music streaming for Heavy Metal? (tidal connect)

Requirements:
- Fairly small room -- quality is more important than volume
- Considering B&W 805 D3 speakers (can get them used from a friend) but open to options
- Primarily listen to heavy metal / hard rock music
- Would be great if this could be done with an integrated system, but open to a separate streamer if necessary
- Ideally would have some way to output video to display album cover artwork on TV
- Ideally would have home theater bypass if I want to pair with an AVR in the future

Total budget around $10k! How would you spend this money?
 
Heavy Metal and Quality is a bit of a dichotomy. The music is based on gritty, growling and often distorted, driven into clipping on purpose type of sound... By "quality", do you mean a speaker that will not make your ears bleed from all that?
 
TheOctopus said:
Heavy Metal and Quality is a bit of a dichotomy. The music is based on gritty, growling and often distorted, driven into clipping on purpose type of sound... By "quality", do you mean a speaker that will not make your ears bleed from all that?
Click to expand...

I do listen for several hours at a time so non-fatiguing is important. But I don't completely agree its a dichotomy -- not for all sub-genres of heavy metal at least. I suppose I listen to more to symphonic metal, folk metal, progressive metal, etc...which are likely more to have many instruments, symphonic elements, clean vocals as well. But I think my point it that I'm not necessarily listening at very high volumes (small apartment setting) so I'd rather be putting my money towards higher quality components as opposed to just power/loudness.
 
I would say Harbeth, but metal on Harbeth? Oh boy, not sure about that one.


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metalgod01 said:
I do listen for several hours at a time so non-fatiguing is important. But I don't completely agree its a dichotomy -- not for all sub-genres of heavy metal at least. I suppose I listen to more to symphonic metal, folk metal, progressive metal, etc...which are likely more to have many instruments, symphonic elements, clean vocals as well. But I think my point it that I'm not necessarily listening at very high volumes (small apartment setting) so I'd rather be putting my money towards higher quality components as opposed to just power/loudness.
Click to expand...
I listened to a certain bit of folk and symphonic metal myself back in the days. Bands like Haggard, Rammstein, Within Temptation, Nightwish, etc.. I had a pair of Sonus Faber speakers that were from the older generation and very forgiving and I was running two JL Audio subs.

The important thing IMHO is to keep the sound balanced and to have ample bass. When the bass is satisfying, there is less of a tendency to crank the sound up to compensate which causes fatigue. Best way to optimize your system for that small room is to have a smooth sounding stand mounted speaker with a silk dome or similar forgiving tweeter and to blend the bass in with a small but quality subwoofer. The result will be very satisfying if done right.
 
Mike said:
I would say Harbeth, but metal on Harbeth? Oh boy, not sure about that one.


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Click to expand...

Sure, why not? a pair of Harbeth PS3ESR, a small quality sub, a Bryston integrated and the streamer/front end to finish it off. A sub is the key ingredient for this particular combination of a small room and metal genre of music.
 
@metalgod01 The people I know that like heavy metal or metal in general tend to prefer being able to hear everything clearly and with detail, across the frequency spectrum but I think mid-range and treble tends to be more important than playing deep, and of course at decent volumes without fatigue. In other words, warm-sounding or harmonic distortion is not desired. I am getting that impression from your second post.

Based on your budget and other criteria, you might consider the NAD M33 streaming DAC integrated amp. I think it has a good chance of matching the type of sound you'd be looking for, and I am optimistic of the sound improvement the Purifi Eigentakt amplifier modules provide over previous generation ICEPower, UcD, nCore modules. The built-in Dirac will help.

It doesn't have HDMI output for displaying playback information (I don't think you'll find anything like that without just getting a separate TV-oriented set-top box or using an HTPC), and doesn't have a dedicated HT bypass button/mode but I think you can use a preset or macro to configure one of the analog inputs that way.

If you want to break it out into two boxes, you could get an Apple TV or NVIDIA Shield type device to use your TV as a display during playback, and then there are more integrated DAC amp options with HT bypass available to you.
 
Listening fatigue is actually not as much harsh sounds or odd/high order harmonics as much as they are sounds in reflective acoustic spaces. The ear/brain try to pinpoint the source of sound (survival instinct) and with various delayed signals due to early and late reflections, the "mechanism" gets tired and overwhelmed in a short amount of time. Lowering the volume goes a long way to reducing the fatigue. Hence the reason why anyone can listen to metal on a small transistor radio but try it on a big and revealing system.... Lowering the volume is ok but even Fletcher Munson knew back in the 1930's that our ears are not linear but closer to a logarithmic scale. Hence the loudness buttons...

If someone wants to listen to metal on a highly accurate and revealing system, that is their choice and preference. I would not be able to tolerate it unless it was at lower volumes with a well filled out bottom end. Not bloated but enhanced by a subwoofer to bring the tonal balance in check and not having the midrange and highs stick out to accentuate all the grunge and grit inherent to that music genre. To each their own.
 
TheOctopus said:
Listening fatigue is actually not as much harsh sounds or odd/high order harmonics as much as they are sounds in reflective acoustic spaces.
Click to expand...

Reading back my post, I can see how what I wrote might be interpreted to equate listening fatigue with either a warm sound or harmonic distortion. That wasn't my direct intent, although from my experience I do think that some types of distortion can lead to listening fatigue in both live and dead rooms and to a much larger degree in reflective rooms. I do agree that reducing the volume is one method used to alleviate listening fatigue. Sometimes people look for NOS, R2R, or tube gear that explicitly roll-off highs (but overwhelming bass can still lead to fatigue).

Rather I was meaning to say that even pleasing non-fatiguing harmonic distortion, as well as other forms of coloration, would not be preferable to metal listeners.
 
Even the restaurant industry knows that acoustics play a big role in the atmosphere, ambiance, mood and the likelihood of patrons enjoying their meal and coming back for more. Nothing like a loud, noisy, atmosphere where people struggle to hear, need to raise voices and speech becomes unintelligible to the point where they irritated and are not even enjoying their meal. All our senses are tied together. Try enjoying a meal when any of the senses are overwhelmed... It is very irritating. Why would they want the clinking glasses and voices to sound more organic and relaxed? Same reason I already mentioned. Fatigue sets in as the brain is thrown into overdrive trying to keep up with all the noises and their source, origin and meaning, it is in our basic survival skill set passed down for millions of years up the DNA tree.

Loud noises and fatigue have been well documented. The rest, not so much.

What does any of that have to do with Metal or Music, speakers and room acoustics? Very simple. Loud, unnatural noises, such as encountered with harsh distortion, grunge, grit, combined with a room that is reflective and has a high RT60 response time/reverberation is highly fatiguing and annoying. Metal on a revealing system... It is definitely an acquired taste and one has to be in a certain frame of mind or mood to tolerate it I guess. I can't do it for long now but there was a point in my life where I could. Perhaps we get more easily irritated as we get older? Grumpy old men??
 
TheOctopus said:
Heavy Metal and Quality is a bit of a dichotomy. The music is based on gritty, growling and often distorted, driven into clipping on purpose type of sound...
Click to expand...

That is ridiculous nonsense. Every week I buy 2-3 Metal albums from HDTracks, and have been for over a year. Granted, some aren't recorded as well as others, but none are "driven into clipping".
 
Thanks for all the insight so far. I don't see a lot of audiophile discussion on designing a system for heavy metal so this is great discussion.
Also never heard of Haggard so thanks for giving me a new band to check out. Big fan of all the other bands discussed so far.
 
BlueFox said:
That is ridiculous nonsense. Every week I buy 2-3 Metal albums from HDTracks, and have been for over a year. Granted, some aren't recorded as well as others, but none are "driven into clipping".
Click to expand...

I guess you don't understand the fundamentals then. Let's break it down.

Heavy metal (or simply metal) is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and to a lesser extent in the United States. With roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock, and acid rock, heavy metal bands developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and loudness. The lyrics and performances are sometimes associated with aggression and machismo.

Distortion and overdrive are forms of audio signal processing used to alter the sound of amplified electric musical instruments, usually by increasing their gain, producing a "fuzzy", "growling", or "gritty" tone. Distortion is most commonly used with the electric guitar, but may also be used with other electric instruments such as bass guitar, electric piano, and Hammond organ. Guitarists playing electric blues originally obtained an overdriven sound by turning up their vacuum tube-powered guitar amplifiers to high volumes, which caused the signal to distort. While overdriven tube amps are still used to obtain overdrive, especially in genres like blues and rockabilly, a number of other ways to produce distortion have been developed since the 1960s, such as distortion effect pedals. The growling tone of a distorted electric guitar is a key part of many genres, including blues and many rock music genres, notably hard rock, punk rock, hardcore punk, acid rock, and heavy metal music, while the use of distorted bass has been essential in a genre of hip hop music and alternative hip hop known as "SoundCloud rap".
 
The effects alter the instrument sound by clipping the signal (pushing it past its maximum, which shears off the peaks and troughs of the signal waves), adding sustain and harmonic and inharmonic overtones and leading to a compressed sound that is often described as "warm" and "dirty", depending on the type and intensity of distortion used. The terms distortion and overdrive are often used interchangeably; where a distinction is made, distortion is a more extreme version of the effect than overdrive. Fuzz is a particular form of extreme distortion originally created by guitarists using faulty equipment (such as a misaligned valve tube, see below), which has been emulated since the 1960s by a number of "fuzzbox" effects pedals.
 
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