Best speakers for classic rock

I prefer to not listen to "classic rock" as it simply reminds me of songs I covered in club bands for years (although my later bands employed "veto powers" from members so nobody had to play something they hated) ...Steely Dan and Little Feat and a few others get a pass, but Jazz and classical stuff get most of my active listening these days. Note that my 12wpc power amp barely works up a sweat with 99db (Heresy IIIs aided with 2 RELs) speakers, and another nice thing is knowing those speakers are capable of dangerous levels so they're simply purring along with the dynamic capability evident in their effortlessness.

Electro-Voice
JBL
Klipsch
Cerwin-Vega
Monitor Audio
Altec-Lansing

Rock and roll music is the sole reason Vandersteen speakers exist.  A new pair of IICs will be just over your target price.  A used pair will save you a bundle.

Peaks in classical music can be as loud as a rock concert. Whether you can hear that in a recording or not is a different matter- that depends on if any compression is done in the recording.


You need good bass response to do classical right- there can be a lot of wallop in a 6' diameter bass drum!

Don't forget electronia in all its guises from the 70s until now. One of Vangelis's best LPs is the 1492 Soundtrack- nice bass on that one. Mike Oldfield did a nice recording about the same time called Songs of Distant Earth, both were available on import vinyl in the early 90s. Why limit yourself to classic rock??

I’ve been upgrading my system for several years now and each pair I bring home excells at something. That said, I do think some speakers are natural matches for specific music genres. This is self promoting but still true, I have a pair of speakers for sale online that had me spinning all my old rock cd’s with each one better than the last, Black Sabbath, Ted nugent, VH, UFO, the list goes on. Vienna Acoustics Strauss fed by my Hegel h360 was amazing, The same drivers as the Mahler but a single 11” woofer! and I always said va’s didn’t rock. I was having so much fun with the older stuff that I didn’t dig out any hi Rez stuff for several days and that’s when I figured out why they were so complimentary to the old stuff. A pretty gentle tweeter that isn’t going to compete with the be’s or dmd tweeters making the headlines. I think about keeping them just for Friday night sessions but it’s not practical.