Any speakers I should be looking at instead of Event Opals?

While I love my tower speakers, it would be more convenient to move the speakers on to my desk, hence I need some studio monitors. The candidates I'm looking at are the Opals, as the title implies. Any alternatives in that general price range I should think about?

great bang for the buck,
on the cheap,
are the JBL LSR305's..
 
http://www.jblpro.com/www...es/lsr305#.VfBuhRFVhBc

batsbrew
great bang for the buck,
on the cheap,
are the JBL LSR305's..
 
http://www.jblpro.com/www...es/lsr305#.VfBuhRFVhBc

I should clarify that I have pretty high end speakers already: SVS MTS-01 towers. Home theater speakers, not monitors, but very high quality, comparable to B&W 700s to the like. So I need something that good or better, hence the reason I'm looking at the Opals.

ah, $3000 for the opals.
got it.
 
if only i had that kind of money to spend on monitors....
 
 
i would get these..

 
http://www.bhphotovideo.c...G&Q=&A=details

That's just a marketing number. The actual continuous amp power is 320 watts. That's in line with what you see in most high end monitors. Those Genelecs mentioned are 320 watt.
 
As for the Genelecs, I dunno, they are twice the price ($3000 each as opposed to $1500 each). I might consider it, but I don't know that I want to double my budget.

At that price point I would be sure to check out the Dynaudio BM6's. http://www.dynaudioprofessional.com/en/bm-series/bm-mkiii-series/bm6-mkiii/
 
Rocky

Lots of good things being said about the Presonus Sceptre 6 or 8 s.

mudgel
Lots of good things being said about the Presonus Sceptre 6 or 8 s.

I actually tried the Sceptre 6s, sent them back. The had two issues:
 
1) Didn't sound better than my SVS speakers. I was told that I'd be blown away by the imaging of coaxial speakers but it was no better (nor worse) than the MTS-01s. Maybe the MTS speakers are exceptional or maybe coaxial is overblown. Either way, the imaging wasn't anything special and in terms of resolution and detail there was no difference I could hear.
 
2) They made noise. Even when unplugged from an audio interface, they hissed. Their amps just weren't quiet enough. Granted it was a low level hiss, but I could hear it when there was no music playing and it drove me nuts.
 
I was sad, I really wanted to like those speakers.

Beagle
you do realize that ANY home theater speakers are going to sound a LOT better than studio monitors, right? they're designed for different purposes.  Studio monitors are supposed to have a flat response and so they will not sound as good as home theater speakers which are designed for listening pleasure.

 
I know this is something of an article of faith for many people but really, there is little evidence of it. Good speaker design is good speaker design. When speakers are designed for linear response, good controlled dispersion, low distortion, etc they sound good and are neutral and good to use for production. You find B&Ws in plenty of high end studios (like Abbey Road for instance). Comparing those graphs isn't easy since they are on different scales and using different measurement techniques (unspecified in the second one), and it isn't specified which crossoves the M series had (they changed them part way through their life and enhanced things a lot, and owners could send their back for free to have it upgraded). All that aside I have accurate graphs from SVS (I got all that before I tried them) and they are pretty flat in a measurement room, within 2dB. Not so in my room, of course.
 
The issue was that really I heard very little difference. The Scepters had much less bottom end, of course, since it was small 2-way vs tower, but other than that it was real "meh". The thing I was told would blow my pants off was imaging and that was just the same. The SVS speakers produce a wide, solid, convincing soundstage and so did the Scepters. Over all the detail and mids/highs were about on par. Slightly different sound, but not enough for me to call a winner, or to care.
 
I also decided to give them the benefit of a better room. My computer room is a small boxy spare bedroom. So I took the Scepters out in to my greatroom which is very large, has sloped ceilings, set them on stands out in the middle of the room and away from the wall and gave them a listen. They were fine, but I wasn't impressed. I mean if I didn't already have good speakers they'd be contenders, but I did.
 
So back they went.
 

that is a problem; they shouldn't do that.  are you certain you didn't have a defective set?

 
Searching online it seems to be a common complaint. The amps just aren't very quiet. They put out noise in somewhere in the realm of 15-25dBSPL. That's not a lot, but I can hear it in my room. I don't know how quiet the room is, my cheap dB meter only goes down to 28dB, but it is quieter than that.
 
Again I might have looked at a solution to the hiss had I been more impressed, but given that I wasn't I just sent them back.
 
So in general I'm thinking I need to look higher end, hence why I'm looking at a budget of around $3000. I'm hopeful that will provide an improvement, since I'd like that as well as being able to relocate the speakers on to my desk, rather than behind it.

While I personally prefer the idea that monitors should be 'honest and flat' I feel obliged to play devil's advocate and point out that many a hit has been mixed and maybe even mastered using speakers that are anything but honest and flat.

The most obvious example being the Yamaha NS10, a pretty inexpensive speaker with little bass, not much more treble and shouty, boosted mids that never really took off in the hi-fi market it was aimed at. Perhaps they gained their status as monitors because if something sounded good in an NS10 the odds are it would sound OK in anything. Even if the owner of the 1990s "hi-fi" had set a cheap graphic eq up in a fashionable V and sucked out all the mids.

Having said that, if I was looking for nearfields/close midfields at around $3000 the lot I'd include the Genelec 8040b and the 2.1 Genelec8030.LSE system in the list to consider. But I like Genelecs while you may not.

Sycraft

Beagle
you do realize that ANY home theater speakers are going to sound a LOT better than studio monitors, right? they're designed for different purposes.  Studio monitors are supposed to have a flat response and so they will not sound as good as home theater speakers which are designed for listening pleasure.

 
I know this is something of an article of faith for many people but really, there is little evidence of it. Good speaker design is good speaker design. When speakers are designed for linear response, good controlled dispersion, low distortion, etc they sound good and are neutral and good to use for production. You find B&Ws in plenty of high end studios (like Abbey Road for instance). Comparing those graphs isn't easy since they are on different scales and using different measurement techniques (unspecified in the second one), and it isn't specified which crossoves the M series had (they changed them part way through their life and enhanced things a lot, and owners could send their back for free to have it upgraded). All that aside I have accurate graphs from SVS (I got all that before I tried them) and they are pretty flat in a measurement room, within 2dB. Not so in my room, of course.
 
The issue was that really I heard very little difference. The Scepters had much less bottom end, of course, since it was small 2-way vs tower, but other than that it was real "meh". The thing I was told would blow my pants off was imaging and that was just the same. The SVS speakers produce a wide, solid, convincing soundstage and so did the Scepters. Over all the detail and mids/highs were about on par. Slightly different sound, but not enough for me to call a winner, or to care.
 
I also decided to give them the benefit of a better room. My computer room is a small boxy spare bedroom. So I took the Scepters out in to my greatroom which is very large, has sloped ceilings, set them on stands out in the middle of the room and away from the wall and gave them a listen. They were fine, but I wasn't impressed. I mean if I didn't already have good speakers they'd be contenders, but I did.
 
So back they went.
 

that is a problem; they shouldn't do that.  are you certain you didn't have a defective set?

 
Searching online it seems to be a common complaint. The amps just aren't very quiet. They put out noise in somewhere in the realm of 15-25dBSPL. That's not a lot, but I can hear it in my room. I don't know how quiet the room is, my cheap dB meter only goes down to 28dB, but it is quieter than that.
 
Again I might have looked at a solution to the hiss had I been more impressed, but given that I wasn't I just sent them back.
 
So in general I'm thinking I need to look higher end, hence why I'm looking at a budget of around $3000. I'm hopeful that will provide an improvement, since I'd like that as well as being able to relocate the speakers on to my desk, rather than behind it.

regardless of your feelings toward whether studio monitors SHOULD be flat or not, there is no "article of faith" regarding whether the spectres' frequency response vs the MTS frequency response IS flat and therefore will have an unflattering sound in comparison.  the frequency response of speakers is a scientifically tangible and verifiable parameter.
 
The graphs I reference, admittedly are not 1 for 1 easily compared because of the method of testing, but they are still generally flat response for the Spectres vs not generally flat for the MTSs.
 
you can mix on whatever you want if you learn the speakers and environment, but the spectres are designed to be flat and therefore they're designed to be unflattering, while the MTS is designed to make the output sound better.
 
as for whether you heard little difference between the two - I can't say anything either way on that.  that's completely up to you and completely subjective.
 
in the end it doesn't matter what I say or anyone else says.  get the speakers you want and learn to use them in your environment.