Why do we buy tower speakers? (1 Viewer)

[Michael R Price]

The argument at hand is comparing a bookshelf speaker to a similar tower speaker (usually higher up in the same line). Duh, a $1000 bookshelf will sound better than a $1000 tower. What Brett and others are trying to say is that nothing is inherently compromised in tower speakers (besides money). In other words I am saying that the following statement is false.

"When you use a large enclosure, such as a floor stander you get more bass, but at the expense of loosing upper range refinement."

 

[Brian Bunge]

Bob,
I know we are not talking about MTM speakers. What I was addressing was the statement others had made basically saying that a speaker company would not build a floorstanding speaker that cost more but had lesser sound quality than a monitor style speaker that cost less. My point was that sometimes aesthetics or marketing can take precedence over engineering.
In that respect, I was using the MTM "center" channel speaker as an example of how marketing over-ruled engineering. Also, a vertically aligned MT monitor is usually less expensive than that MTM "center". Joe Six Pack has been conditioned to believe that a center channel looks like an MTM speaker. Unfortunately, that couldn't be further from the truth.
Also, from the standpoint of a midrange driver being sealed off from a woofer in a floorstanding speaker, unless the enclosure is extremely inert, midrange quality will suffer to some extent. To how much of an extent is the question. One exception to this may be the Meadowlark Audio Nightingale. At roughly 300 lbs. per speaker, midrange quality may not suffer at all. Of course, they're $20K a pair, too! But a 50-60 lb. floorstanding speaker is not what I'd call inert. But then again, I'm of the school of thought that believes you cannot overbuild.
Don't get me wrong guys. I like floorstanding speakers as much as the next guy. I've had some before. There are some I love very much. But blanketly saying one is better than the other is incorrect. BTW, the ACI Jaguar, a 2-way monitor, will best some similarly priced floorstanders in both midrange clarity and bass extension.
Brian

 

[Mal P]

Howdy,

The floorstander vs. bookshelf speaker debate is one that has been progressing for sometime. We all have our own preferences when it comes to sound, and our own perceptions of what is value for money. I'll try and explain why I myself prefer to run bookshelf speakers with a good quality subwoofer. This is just my taste, but I will hopefully come up with some facts to support my case.

If a subwoofer is integrated incorrectly, and by that I mean the wrong cross-over is chosen, it is a poor quality subwoofer and it is positioned in the wrong place, then the directionality of the bass may be apparent, it can sound boomy, and would cause distraction from the imaging/soundstaging cues coming from the main speakers. The benefits of using a separate bass module however, are plenty - provided you have the right sub and position/calibrate it correctly.

Some of the benefits include better bass integration with the rest of your system. The reason is that bass is often most effective when against a room boundary, i.e. a wall, a corner etc. This is as opposed to the optimal position for the mids and highs - which is generally away from walls.

Another reason is that when bass eminates from large floorstanders, cancellation issues can be an issue. You could have difficulty with nulls and peaks caused by the two point sources of bass (the two speakers) - unless integrated correctly. This can also be a problem with using a subwoofer (and often is!) however, it is easier and more flexible to position a subwoofer correctly (due to just one point of bass), than floorstanders, which require more of an emphasis on getting the mids and highs working correctly.

Thirdly, distortion. When you cross-over speakers and send the bass to the sub, you relieve the speaker from having to generate deep bass... this stops excess excursions on the drivers and can cause a clearer, more undistorted mid-range. Of course, with three way speakers, such as the Paradigm Studio 100, this problem is largely eliminated because you have seperate drivers producing bass and mids respectively. But the issue of cancellation can still be a problem.

Also consider amplifier strength. With a top class amplifier (such as Krell, ME etc) this is an issue I would not think you'd need to worry about, but deep bass requires the most power to generate. And often, weaker amplifiers can over-stress (and hence distort/clip etc) when attempting to generate deep bass at loud volumes. This can damage your amplifier and speakers.

Money (as it always is) is a large contributor. It is possible that you could get superior sound in the mids and highs from an equivalently priced bookshelf, then floorstanders. This is due to the fact that floorstanders, due to their size, require more material and time to build. Of course, once you buy stands for a bookshelf, the price may not be all that much different.

It is certainly possible to correctly integrate floorstanders into a system, without any of the issues I've highlighted above. Such systems would sound excellent, and would not differ significantly from the sound that can be produced from the bookshelf/subwoofer combination. For my money though, I would rather spend on good bookshelf units and a good sub. Just my preference.

Cheers,

Mal

 

[rodneyH]

this thread is gettting very interesting. As someone said earlier, I do agree that the 602 is a better speaker than the origional 603. I was prepared to buy a set of 603s, when a good freind of mine who owns a B&W made me sit and listen to the 602s, he was right they sounded better, and I bought them (BUT, those origional 603s had a passive radiater NOT an active driver, so it would be expected to sound "muddy", this has since changed and I haven't compared), having said that, I recently bought the CDM7 over the 1 and 805, I like them better.

btw, Keith, you chose to compare a Crown Victoria and a Ferarri 360 Modena (my favorite car), but you are comparing apples to oranges (or should I say grapefruit), even as a huge 360 fan, I can admit that the F50 is a much more impressive car than a 360, as is a Porsche 996 turbo when compared to a Boxster, etc, etc... Also, when you mention the 802 over the 801, you left out that the 802 is much prefered over the 803 (but then you can come back and tell me that the 804 is prefered over the 803, so the arguement is very useless in that sense, but I do find it interesting that you prefer the 805 over the tower 800 series)

btw2, I don't really have a side on this issue, I personally bought the cdm7 over the cdm1 and 805, for my own personal reasons, but certainly I believe that a moniter can sound as good or close to as good as a tower, but in some lines the top of the line speaks are towers (B&W, Revel, to name a few)

 

[Paul Clarke]

I would say that this discussion has certainly been interesting, not the least of it for the rather selective breakdown in primary usage camps. It seems that the title of this FORUM has as much to do with perspectives on this issue as much as anything else.
In fact, if you re-read page 1 of this THREAD it is obvious from the original post that there was no HT limitation in the question...2 channel music is clearly stated as well. And the vast majority of early respondents seem to have understood this. This seems to be the demarcation line from which all else flows. If I were one of those for whom personal usage favored HT by a significant margin, I might well find that monitor/bookshelves were the sine qua non of sound reproduction. But I am in the Stereo camp in terms of Music emphasis and my auditions have never led me to conclude anything other than tower superiority in this field...apples to apples.
Where does this generalized notion of soundstaging and imaging superiority in monitors come from? I would swear some people in this discussion have never heard a properly designed tower. The overall system flexibility that exists with towers should be beyond questioning. With a quality pre/pro or receiver with multiple X-over choices, one is able to achieve a speaker/sub blending not possible with other speaker types...and for different kinds of listening. A tower design inherently may not reflect the presence of a separate system subwoofer in usage but since the advent of HT one can certainly say that this is a high expectation with bookshelf/monitors. It may well be that some two-way towers are found to be inferior to similar quality monitors. I have encountered this myself. The devil is usually in the mid-range. But...I have rarely heard any quality 3-way tower which was bested by any monitor/sub combo when put to an appropriate apples to apples test.
The ability of towers to stand on their own or be flexibly incorporated into larger system use is precisely what makes them a stereophiles dream. Are there exceptions? Of course. But one has to look far afield and pony up substantial $'s to own them. And, of course, you have to like stands.
"The preceeding is nothing but an insubstantial collection of half-truths, lies and personal fantasy which happens to be true."

 

[BruceD]

An interesting observation made by Paul is the preference by Stereo music enthusiasts for towers. I fall into that camp and find the flexibility to play music with or without a sub a valuable option I want in my system (also requires a flexible prepro). This doesn't preclude the use of some monitors with good bass extension in the same fashion.

rodney,

you said;

. . . listen to the 602s, he was right they sounded better, and I bought them (BUT, those origional 603s had a passive radiater NOT an active driver, so it would be expected to sound "muddy", this has since changed and I haven't compared), having said that, I recently bought the CDM7 over the 1 and 805, I like them better.

Not sure I quite agree with your "generalization" of the sound of passive radiators. My experience says port noise and port interaction with a wall can be even worse than a passive radiator at "muddying-up" the sound. But then again I preferred and selected

the sound of Dynaudio over B&W when I went speaker shopping.

 

[shankar]

Hello all,

This thread has shown one thing; that speaker choice is not as clear cut as I thought.

For 2ch music without the use of a dedicated sub, towers are the clear winners, but no one really doubted that. My question was if this was the ONLY driving force for HT members to buy toweres, so that they can listen to music?

However, Since we are all also trying to emulate a theater, it raises some questions. Do we know what movie theaters really use behind the screens? Do they run full towers or bookshelf like speakers with subwoofers? The speakers they have on the walls sure do not look like towers, but how about the mains?

What spekares do they use in Opera Theaters?

What concept do they use in Music concerts?

 

[Dzung Pham]

This thread has shown one thing; that speaker choice is not as clear cut as I thought.

Shankar, I think there are too many parameters to make any sweeping generalizations. The lesson really should be that you should judge each speaker individually on your own personal tastes, irregardless of whether it is a bookshelf or tower.

 

[rodneyH]

Bruce, B&W uses other technologies to deal with port noise, that was no the issue. The origional 602s were clearly better than the origional 603s, like I said I was ready to buy them and my buddy made me to a comparo to hear for myself, I almost didn't do it, or even believe him, not I am glad he did, he saved me and extra $450 at that time), ever B&W I talked to back then agreed (about 4-5) that the 602 was better (B&W must have noticed since it addded an active driver to the unit on the next years version). I was just trying to say that I like towers more, but that that is not always a hard and fast rule, and that there are exeptions, and gave my example.

 

[Chris PC]

I am not trying to emulate the theater. I am simply trying to reproduce the movie soundtrack as best as I can in my room. The reason I say I'm not trying to reproduce a theater in my room is because I firmly believe sound in your own home theater will ultimately sound better in many instances. Less harshness, more true flat low end bass response UNIFORMLY for MOST viewers/listeners.
Here is a test, one we can't perform ourselves of course, but still, hypothetically. Go to a movie theater and ask to connect a CD player and sit in the theater and listen. Do you think its going to sound as good or better than your home stereo? Imaging? Bass response?
I still stand by my reasoning for buying towers. Bass extention, power handling and efficiency. I am now toying with the issue of whether towers blend better with a subwoofer, or whether smaller speakers blend better. i feel with the right crossovers and EQ's, the towers should blend better because you have more flexibility to choose the crossover point. After I teak my system, measure and tweak again, I'll have figured it out

 

[rodneyH]

Chris, I think it is funny when people talk about emulating a theater for HT and a concert for music listening, I would think and hope that 95% of the people on this board have systems that are far beyonds those measuring sticks, and you gave a good example to prove it.

 

[BruceD]

Rodney,

Yes, I understand your point. When I demoed the B&W 603 and 604, I also heard "muddy" bass that I didn't like, so I know what you mean.

I'm a fan of silk dome tweeters, hence my preference for Dynaudio speakers.

 

[Larry B]

Phil said

One person's "richness of sound" is another's "mid-range bloom". One person's "harsh" is another's "detailed and etched". It's sound, not a mutual fund, there are very few objective measures. At most levels of spending when it comes to speakers you are not buying based on absolute performance, you are buying based on shortcomings that you can live with.

People need to stop feeling like they have to defend their purchases. Simply admit that you bought what sounded best to you within your price range. There is nothing wrong with that, it's smart shopping!

I applaud you both for your sanity, maturity and logic. May you be an inspiration to others.

Larry

 

[Mark Seaton]

Wow, some passionate responses here...
Unfortunately it appears that as usual, the compromises and marketing decisions of most manufacturers have formed quite a few misconceptions that appear to hold true to the casual observer. I believe most on these forums are above such trickery.
Just to play devils advocate here, riddle me this: At what point does a big bookshelf speaker become a floor-stander? :rolleyes
Look at loudspeakers like the Aerial Acoustics LR5s, and Triad's Platinum LCR. On mere technicalities these would be considered bookshelves, or requiring stands. While the LR5s do reach fairly low, the lowest crossover I would recommend with a CAPABLE subwoofer would be ~50Hz. The Platinum LCR is in fact designed for a 60Hz crossover if I recall, and it has a pair of 10" woofers. Of course there are also many physically smaller speakers which would be categorized as tower designs.
There are many compounding reasons for the perceptions with most minimonitors vs. tower speakers. As with any such generalization there are exceptions. An easy example in Aerial Acoustics lineup is their Model 5 2-way monitor compared to their Model 6 3-way tower. With or without a subwoofer, I would absolutely take the Model 6 over the 5. Now this brings us to a topic I haven't seen brought up yet in this discussion...
How many towers or even bookshelves are REALLY designed and voiced to mate with a subwoofer?
Unfortunately quite few. Too many people still will evaluate a speaker on it's own without a subwoofer when they plan to use a subwoofer with it in their system. This can bring in some serious problems. It is well known by designers that if you took what was percieved as a properly balanced, full range loudspeaker with extension to say 20Hz, and now did nothing more than limit the speaker's response to 40Hz, it would no longer sound balanced. In fact, it would probably be percieved as being a brighter sounding speaker, not neccessarily as having less bass! But how is this possible? We didn't change anything in the high frequency response? The fact is that percieved balance is dependent on the entire frequency spectrum being reproduced. The reason speakers with limited bass extension can sound like they have bass is due to the designer's boosting of the upper bass range to enhance the harmonics of the missing bass notes. This fudging of the percieved balance is by no means an exact science, and is a major contributor to the radically different voicings we see in the market.
If we consider this matter further, you should realize that adding a subwoofer to a speaker which sounds balanced with its limited bass response will be problematic. This often acounts for our tendency to set crossovers on subwoofers to the lowest frequencies possible. This also explains why with some companies, their towers will be easier to integrate with a subwoofer as they will not have the pronouced upper bass response required in the mini-monitors to make them sound "beefy." Of course even this will then depend on the type of crossover in your processor. The THX standard, 80Hz crossover is designed around the speaker's expected sealed box roll-off near 80Hz.
In short, it is not a matter of if mini-monitors or tower speakers are a better solution, but rather that we need manufacturers to produce competent designs with both types of solutions to integrate with a quality subwoofer. Personally, aside from systems for modest dynamic levels, or exotic wide-band drivers, I consider a 2 way a compromise. Of course there are plenty of poor examples of 3 ways, but what I deem justifiable dynamic levels at various frequencies make a 2 way a compromise in one manner or another.
I covered most of my thoughts on the matter above, but I also posted some related discussion in this topic in the DIY forum: It's Infinitely Baffling...
Sorry for the rant, but hopefully it spurs some thought.

 

[Charles J P]

Silence is golden, golden....

Dang, Mark beat me to it. So one reason towers are "bad" is because they can interact with subs because they extend to low, but many really expensive bookshelves extend just as low or lower. So what the bookshelf believers are really promoting is not a speaker of any shape, enclosure size, driver size, etc, but rather bandwidth limited speakers.
My bose do not cause cancellation with my subwoofer.

 

[Larry B]

Shankar:

For 2ch music without the use of a dedicated sub, towers are the clear winners, but no one really doubted that.

Even this "obvious" truism is not necessarily correct. If we keep the cost constant, a tower will usually offer greater range, but a similarly priced bookshelf can often offer greater detail, finesse and, as stated above, imaging.

Larry

 

[Charles J P]

Well, we are only trying to come to a decision based on a hypothetical anyway... people will buy what sounds the best to them, at a price they can afford. But, what are we talking about here?
I thought we were talking about similarly designed bookshelves and towers, not similar costing. Look back at all the people (bookshelf supporters even) comparing B&W bookshelves to towers in the same product line, not the same price class. I think it is almost a given that at a single price point ($1000 say) that a bookshelf will excel in many areas except probably bass extension. But, the twoer will have to use cheaper drivers, cheaper crossovers, cheaper materials in general to be $1000 and we all agree that is what will cause the difference.
So, I thought we had all agreed that we are debating speakers with the same or almost the same (ie same tweeters and mids but maybe an extra woofer or larger woofer in the tower) parts in different enclosures, so that we can get back to debating whether a tower or a bookshelf is inherently better and we can remove the variable of different drivers.
So we are really talking about is, are Paradigm studio 20s or 40s better then 80s or 100s (sorry I keep hitting the Paradigm bandwagon, but I'm familiar with their model numbers)? Or, are Adire Audio Kit 81s better than kit 281s?
I also think that given the specs of most users systems here at the forum, we should consider both speakers with a sub, because many here (the forum in general and this specific thread) run towers as small. We have somewhat agreed that with the new trend towards towers wth slimmer baffles roughly the size of the bookshelves we have eliminated some of the imaging issues that may have made bookshelves a better choice in the past. I also think we should drop this foolishness of "studios use monitors to mix, that proves their better" if you really thought that you would own pro studio monitors and not consumer speakers. I also think that a person would be foolish to think that a B&W bookshelf speaker has more in common with a pro studio monitor than it does with its floor-standing counter part. And, if that is still what you think, then any tower supporter could cite professional musicians, composers, film scorers, reviewers, etc who all use towers. I think using who else uses a product as proof that its better is not valid at this point.
To expand on Mark's point, in college, I had the pair of Paradigm Monitor 7s that I have now and my roommate had a pair of Boston Acoustics bookshelves with 10" woofers, that produced as much or more bass than my towers. So the question is are his bookshelves
1) good becasue they are bookshelves and were a better choice than whatever towers BA was offering in the same series at that time?
2) as bad as towers because their low bass makes them hard to integrate with a sub (this point is funny because the two camps are in direct dissagreement. Tower people feel that you need extension to one octave lower than your x-over point and bookshelf people seem to be stating that lower extension causes interference and makes it harder to integrate)?
3) worse than towers because their low bass makes them hard to integrate with a sub, but they also lack the advantages of a true tower like "coolness/largeness" factor and need for no stands?
This question will probably go unanswered, but I think some really interesting things have been brought up.

 

[Chris PC]

Well, at least someone else has noticed the weirdness of speakers and subwoofers. You can't have too high a crossover cause you'll localize the bass and too low a crossover might result in speaker/subwoofer interference. I guess we need measurements.
Really, lets not forget the differences between FULL towers and SMALL bookshelfs. I think people like SMALL bookshelfs because they are small enough that their baffle face results in more of a point source kind of sound. Narrow towers try to compensate for this. Towers have a fuller sound because with more drivers, there is usually less distortion, greater efficiency and better power handling. I really notice the power handling.
Keep on listening people
To the music that is.....

 

[shankar]

Back at the AVS forum, there's a similar debate going on.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Realistically most of the time people are shopping with money being the limiting factor in what they can shop for.
Let's say Brand X has a budget line and a premium line and I've got $1000 to spend on an L/R pair.
For $1000 I can get either a pair of Brand X budget line towers of a set of premium line bookshelves with stands. Assuming I'm using a sub for bass, I would contend that the Brand X premium bookshelves will almost always sound better than the Brand X budget towers. And for the price of the premium tower I could get the super-premium bookshelves.
This is the reason that monitors are preferred most of the time, at least as far as I'm concerned.
Not from any "technical" standpoint here but from a purely proactical one.
I said it before and I'll say it again: listen to everything you can afford and select what sounds best, regardless of configuration. Now, of course there are always some installations that have certain requirements, but for the most part money is the limiting factor.