What is the best HEAVY METAL speaker?

Big active ATC or PMC

Anyone who thinks a speaker that is good a classical can't also be good at metal just has not heard how hard a proper classical LP can be on a system.

Speakers and electronics really don't care what the signal is. If they are good at their job they will not be genre-specific. Its really that simple- if a speaker is better at one thing than another, its not a very good speaker.

I have two LPs that can bring most stereos to their knees in no time flat, if realistic volumes are being played. The first is of course Black Sabbath's Paranoid, on the original import white label Vertigo. The sound is astonishing and the bass energy simply saps most systems straightaway. The other LP is The Verdi Requiem, on the RCA Soria series. Play track 2 side 1 at a lifelike level and see if your system can handle the full dynamic range. Most can't.

The speakers I use are the Classic Audio Loudspeakers model T-3, which are 98 db 1 watt/1 meter and 16 ohms. Its very hard to clip a 60 watt amp on them!! I can literally get the building to shake, as the speakers go down to 20Hz. They are revealing and dynamic.

Metal is often compressed- we've mastered several metal LPs in the last couple of years and I have plenty of metal titles in my collection. Death metal in particular tends to be mostly guitar and I'm sorry but its just not that hard to reproduce. The more challenging recordings are usually not Death Metal- one I love to play at shows is Aesma Deava's second album, the Eros of Frigid Beauty (on Root of All Evil). This is a classical metal form, well recorded and very dynamic. Another title which is more Gothic classical metal is Therion's Vovin, which features choir and a string section in addition to the metal band.

Have fun!

In practice, if its truly good at classical its probably also good for heavy metal.

But the technical difference that classical music tends more towards dynamic peaks whereas heavy metal played as intended tends to be more consistently loud. Continuous delivery of power is not the same as delivery of peaks. If the amp can do both whenever called upon with the speakers used at the volume desired, then you are in good shape. Most good quality modern gear matched and set up optimally with those specific goals in mind can probably do the trick. If your amp is even slightly underpowered for the task at hand, and even subtle amounts of clipping occurs maybe not.

Clipping is always public enemy # 1 for good sound, its just that heavy metal, and large scale works of any kind, like big band jazz or classical/orchestral ups the ante.

The boundary between good sounding heavy metal and an ear bleed is a fine one. Keep clipping out of the picture and chances are best for good results.

I listen to a lot of metal. Some conventional speakers do metal ok, but I think there's a reason they use big horns at rock concerts. The best sounding metal I've ever heard was recorded music (Alice In Chains) coming out of big JBL Horns before an Ozzy concert. Outdoors!

And the latest JBL horns do that very well, and are smoother sounding than the JBLs of the 70s.

"if a speaker system can do full tilt boogie warp 9 orchestral music without limits, it will easily rock your world with Heavy Metal. no worries at all. full on orchestral, or organ, or choral......is the most demanding of any genre. maybe 'big band' might be '1-a' as the second most demanding genre."

Well said Mike,...couldn't agree more and would love to hear your system "cut loose" on any of that list.....if a speaker can tackle all the 'big boys' works in orchestral, Japanese taiko drumming on a large scale, pipe organ, and full-on Big Band, you've got yourself a contender for Heavy Metal/Hard Rock to be certain. The only thing that will really vary with Rock/Metal for a given a speaker will depend (IMHO) on the quality of the tweeter and/or super-tweeter in the speaker on those Rock/Metal recordings that were simply laid down "too hot" in the upper frequencies. We all have a few of those poorly done recordings that can make ears bleed. Wish the record companies would learn their lessons once and for all....

To the list of speakers above that do very well with Rock/Metal, I'd add the newer versions of the Legacy FocusHD, SE, AERIS and the new V. I run the gamut across all these genres here and the Focus and AERIS in various generations haven't let me (or the neighbors :-) ) down yet!