Genelec M030 Vs. KEF LS50

[esldude]

Man hate to be this way.  Ignore everything davide256 is telling you.  Too much misinformation.  Too sad all the bad info in this thread from him.  

 

The speaker is the biggest determiner of sound.  Period. Stop. That is a fact. 

 

The passive LS50 can be an excellent speaker.  It has too little bass, making the tweeter too noticeable sometimes.  The best solution is a subwoofer so the LS50 doesn't have to do bass.  What is left the LS50 will do very well.  Also the LS50 does need a really good amp, more hefty than you might imagine.  Again a subwoofer eases this problem.

 

I think you need a subwoofer with either speaker you are considering.  Unless you can learn to live without the bass being fully fleshed out. 

 

The stuff about whether you have a Mac or not......ignore it as it is a wild fairy tale.  

 

The idea noise form your PC is making things poor........lots of people believe it, for the most part it is minor to a non-audible problem.  

 

And the suggestion of a Zu speaker.....oh please they are simply not well designed.  The speakers you have are better. 

 

One of the best small speakers that have almost enough bass and sounds nice otherwise without a sub (even though it benefits from one) is the JBL LSR305.  I don't know if those are available to you.  They are not terribly expensive, but are very good.  They are self powered so you don't need an amp. 

 

If you are looking at the Genelec or LS50 only, I'm not sure which is better for you.  A friend had the LS50 and it can be very good.  The only thing I agree with that davide256 said is these need to be 3 ft from the rear wall.  If you want musical lines well separated between those two I think the Genelec would be better.  It too is probably too small to play rock music with lots of bass without a little clouding up.  But Genelec's generally do a good job of covering all the detail quite well.  

 

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/genelec-m030

 

 

[esldude]

17 hours ago, Phonautograph said:

I want the speakers to be a little forgiving and not too critical as well

 

is there a way to add a subwoofer to my existing setup (DAC + Speakers) and see how this plays out ? 

i attached images of the ports on my active and passive monitor ports 

 

 

 

Some subwoofers will let you feed the left and right signal to them first.  They'll roll off the low end (it goes to the sub) and then output the signal to the main speakers.  That would be the easiest way I think.  Of course not all subs do this.  You'd have to check on whichever sub you wanted to get. 

 

As for comments about not liking subs added to small nearfields, well it depends.  If you are going to play loud music with lots of low end you'll struggle with most small monitors to get enough bass.  A sub relieves the monitors of that and lets them work better over a range they can handle.  You also have some level control of the low frequencies vs the rest of the range.  It does become more tricky to establish the right level.  If you are listening in a small room, a big sub that goes exceptionally low may also have its own problems with room resonances.  In such cases sometimes you use the sub, relieve the monitors of low frequencies to help them, and keep the sub turned down pretty low.  You almost won't notice it is doing anything, but it can help the overall sound.  Some people just can't resist turning the sub up so they know it is doing something.  And this can be a mistake. Sorry, I don't have clear cut answers for you. 

 

I also am not familiar with your speakers, but Phil Jones has a good reputation.  So would adding a sub to what you have be a big benefit or should you get different monitor speakers?  I don't have enough information to give a good answer on that. 

 

You complain of muddiness and it sounds like musical details running together.  My guess would be the speakers or the amps in the speaker running out of capability.  Maybe even a placement too close to a wall behind the speaker.  Try this.  Use some playback software with the old style graphic equalizer in it.  If you have nothing else you can use VLC for this.  Under tools it has an EQ you can engage.  Pull down the lowest frequency slide on music that gets muddy.  Does that make the muddiness go away?  If no, move it back to the center and move up to the next EQ slide in frequency and pull it down.  Do this and see if you can find a range that clears up the muddiness.  It will change the balance of the sound obviously, but you are looking for a region that if taken out of the speakers lets the speaker clear up for the rest of the range of frequencies.  This might tell you if a speaker change is needed or a sub would help the speaker or if the problem is elsewhere. 

[esldude]

1 minute ago, esldude said:

sorry double post. 

 

[esldude]

5 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Just get a switch that run an optical link.

 

Go back to esldude's post and read each part carefully.  The one thing he left out is that while noise inside the computer is not going to flip any bits in the digital signal, you can have EM noise problems transmitted along a USB cable and - perhaps - on wired ethernet.  Ethernet has transformers but there can be parasitic leakage currents allowing noise transmission.  Some say it is a problem.  I say it could be.  Optical solves this completely.

 

I often hear that mac's are better built than PCs.  I dunno - in at least some ways, they are definitely better built than most (commodity) PCs.

Using optical is a good idea to isolate noise from the other gear. 

 

Macs are better than some PC's and not as good as others.  I generally don't find the PC in use all that important to the sound quality in my experience.  

[esldude]

1 hour ago, Phonautograph said:

 

 

the HD380 and speakers both improve in details when using the D1 , the details during complex music in the Hd380pro are less pronounced compared to the speakers  and for some reason the highs are too much too handle

 

 

 

 

I have been trying to do that , but its not really easy to tell , what annoys me is that Complex music doesn't sound as natural as music files with vocals and slow paced music do on my speakers .  Vocals and slow paced music when i sit at the right spot and close my eyes i forget that the speakers are there  as it sounds so natural and not like they are coming out of a box  (at least for my novice ears  ) , while with complex music and classical rock its not the same, they don't sound natural  and sometimes Painful for my ears.

I have been playing around with the placement of my speakers , there is a pleasant improvement in details  , I do feel that adding a sub woofer  is going to help me get the best of my speakers but i have two opposing opinions on this subject 

 

 

 

What you are describing sounds like a classic case of a speaker or amp being overloaded.  A sub-woofer would roll off anything below 100 hz on the main speakers.  Most of the power and excursion needed by speakers is in the very low frequencies.  Remove the low frequencies and the speaker/amp is under less strain.  Sounding painful and muddy at high volumes and complex music that has considerable bass is just what would cause that. 

 

That is why I suggested trying to use EQ to remove the lower frequencies.  Yes the sound will be different, and probably not to your liking. But does that get rid of muddied musical lines, and a sense of overload?

 

What you are describing wouldn't come from any credible DAC (and your DAC is credible).  It may be your speakers have problems with complex music at any volume, but I don't know enough about your speakers.  I also don't know how loud you are playing them.  Maybe you are asking more from the speakers than they are capable of giving.  Does turning down the volume a just noticeable amount clear things up any on the problem music?