How To Choose The RIGHT Speakers For Your Home Theater

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In this video I discuss what I think are the most important attributes for choosing speakers. I take a performance based approach to designing home theaters. As such, I choose speakers that have the technical capabilities necessary to achieve those performance metrics in my design. Using this same approach, you too can choose the best speakers for your needs.

[decaf]

I’ve been following your content with Audioholics and now on your own channel. I really appreciate that you’re sharing your knowledge, I’m learning so much, new sub!

[Tulipo]

Where were you 2 years ago when we were building our theater! Great advice and resource of knowledge. Subscribed!

[kirkcunningham]

I went with projected sound, currently have the JBL Studio 5 series with the 590's as my mains, the 570 for the center and 530's for surrounds. Awesome speakers. Made very well and very good quality. Love the sound for two channel and Home Theater. Dedicated Yamaha Pro-Audio AB amplifiers.

[SwirlingDragonMist]

I remember you touching on this concept in a video with Gene, and It stuck with me as being a very good insight I hadn’t ever heard anyone else touch on. I very much align with the quality over quantity philosophy, yet have drifted into the seduction of high channel count, so it really helped me to reconsider the tradeoffs that potentially lay ahead for me in that pursuit.

[DTA_Crypto]

Great video thats where im at now saving for my end game I KNOW I WANT PERLISTEN For my speakers but I keep going back and forth between S series bookshelves vs R series R5t towers? I have a open living room concept (3000 cubic ft) now I'm thing like you suggest series for the front r series for the surrounds and atmos?

[Nightjar]

It would be cool if you guys did get your hands on some Dutch&Dutch 8c or Kii3 speakers to measure the subjective differences of wide and narrow dispersion since these have options in their DSP to do this.
They also have an option to have the speakers be perfectly time aligned and not.
Would be great to hear your or Audioholics impressions on those.
Great vid man

[miscreant]

@PoesAcoustics could you please offer your thoughts on open baffle speakers? I see some audiophile types hyping them up but I'm pretty skeptical and I can't find good info from sources I trust.

[nicolasben-fredj]

What are your thoughts on front wides are they worth factoring in, both with and without regard for budget?

[Nightjar]

Hang on man. And I say that with all due respect. But as far as wider vs narrow dispersion and the sweet spot.
How is that true with bass freq ?
Since bass freq are super wide and cover 360deg. How then does an upright bass sound smack dab in the middle ( if it was recorded that way) when bass is let’s say the widest dispersion?
Legit question.
I can see what you are saying with higher freq. but how does imaging work with bass? Is it the leading higher freq that make up an uprights bass reproduction which give us the spatial cues ?

[adrianbarac]

I don't understand why active powered PRO monitors don't get enough attention....? Kali IN-8...KRK 10-3... PreSonus Sceptre and Eris range... All amazing performers and value for money.

[chandan]

how can one identify that a particular speaker can do reference level (at least clean 95-100db peaks)in a 3300ft treated room ? i know very high sensitivity, 92db plus speakers can achieve that easily, but they tend to be horn speakers or very costly speakers, which may sound harsh compared to dome tweeters. but there are speakers like monitor audio bronze 100 bookshelf's which are rated at 87db sensitivity and they are advertised as 110db max spl for pair (mostly measured at 1 meter), does this speaker able to achieve that clean peaks with sufficient power ? some manufacturers doesn't even advertise peak spl levels. in majority of reviews they only show frequency response and distortion at lower volume levels. only Erin shows compression and distortion levels at 102db in his reviews. is there any other way to identify clean max spl of a particular speakers using spec or reviews?
I am looking for high output speakers for my lcr below 1000$ per pair with soft dome tweeters, due to harshness of horn tweeters. I couldn't able to get the max spl of many well reviewed speakers. also i am thinking of going for bookshelves like monitor audio bronze 100 for front lcr rather than going for towers to reduce cost and i have 2 18inch gaint subwoofers, is that good idea? can a bookshelf produce good 100db peaks in midrange and highs?

[RickRalstonAsumendi]

Before I get to my point of contention, I want to say that I do agree with most of what you said in this video. Your advice not to spread the budget thin across too many speakers rings very true for me. I try to turn people away from garbage speakers all the time because they want "Atmos under $1000".

At the end of the video, you claimed that Arendal and the Perlisten R series are not even in the same ballpark. I want to challenge you to quantify your ballpark and explain why you chose those numbers.

Here is my thinking for why they ARE in the same ballpark. We don't have the same quality of data for all models, so we'll have to do some interpolation. Let's give the R4b the benefit of the doubt and say it measures exactly as well as the S4b in terms of frequency response linearity and directivity. If we compare to the Arendal 1723 Bookshelf S THX, the preference scores with sub (assuming both are bass managed) are 0.5 point apart (8.1 vs 7.6). I consider this the same ballpark based on a comment that Dr. Sean Olive made in the linked thread:

"The statistical confidence of the predictions does not allow comparisons beyond 0.5- 1 point so it is moot to get down to 1 decimal place."


Now let's consider output. THX rates both of these bookshelf speakers as "THX Certified Ultra", so clearly they are putting them in the same ballpark. Perlisten claims a maximum output of 107.6 dB @1m (100-20kHz). I don't see where Arendal claims a peak output, but the RMS power handling is in-line with the R4b and it did well in Erin's compression testing up to the 102dB test limit.

Can you help me understand what puts the Perlisten R series in a separate ballpark than the Arendal 1723 THX series?

[theHyghwayman]

😲 svs not the best speaker

All joking aside, thank you brother for sharing your knowledge as I've always wondered what sensitivity I should look for.

Happy New Year