Can someone recommend some good speakers for iMac?

Spider,

Have you ever heard any High End audio systems? They are NOT designed to enhance the bass or excite the treble of any recording to placate the various less than perfect home listening environments.

Also, only a musical instrument can produce music. Everything else on the planet reproduces music.

Brewcrew,

Read all you want about speakers for your mac but I would go listen to anything your thinking about buying first! Never go by a review alone.

My Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 system IS a high-end system. And I use high-end JBL studio monitors in my studios.

All loudspeakers, including high-end systems, color sound to some degree. It is by nature an inescapable, built in bias of every transducer or speaker to add its own tone color to the sound it produces or reproduces. Microphones work the same way only in reverse. Each transducer sounds different. A transducer transforms one form of energy into another; e.g., acoustic energy into electrical energy and vice versa. The Third Law of Thermodynamics or entropy guarantees that energy will be lost in the form of heat. That's right, sound energy is lost in the form of heat. That is how the anechoic chambers where speaker frequency response curves are plotted work. The anechoic acoustic wedges lining the ceiling, floor, and walls of an anechoic chamber dissipate sound energy by transforming it into heat energy. Since sound energy is lost in the form of heat energy dissipated by the components of a speaker, every speaker colors the original sound. Even the air we breathe colors sound.

I beg to differ that ONLY a musical instrument can produce music and that everything else on the planet only reproduces music. Everything on the planet can PRODUCE music if used as a musical instrument; e.g., ANY wooden or metal object can become a metallophone or xylophone, any hollow box or tube can become a resonator that produces a musical tone, and that includes speaker components made of cloth, paper, plastic, metal, wood, or composites. Musical instrument speakers by nature produce tone.

Analog and digital effects stompboxes, vacuum tube guitar amps, and speakers all become part of the sound of an instrument in a Zen kind of way. That is why a professional guitar player wouldn't produce music by playing a guitar through home stereo speakers or studio monitors, but WOULD play a guitar through Celestion, Eminence, Jensen, or Weber GUITAR speakers. Only a guitar speaker can produce the speaker cone breakup required for correct guitar tone; and only an alnico magnet guitar speaker can produce compression at the high volume levels required to achieve the speaker cone breakup that adds harmonic overtones to the sound of a vibrating guitar string. Effects stompboxes, vacuum tube guitar amps, and guitar speakers all become part of the instrument. Jimi Hendrix' guitar and the speakers in his Marshall stacks were inseperable and both PRODUCED his guitar sound. Hendrix played his speakers as much as he played his Fender Stratocaster guitar. His speakers became an integral part of his musical instrument. Some of the most famous guitar solos ever recorded were produced by Celestion guitar speakers. The microphones in the studios were pointed at the guitar speakers, not the guitar, because the speakers were producing part of the sound being recorded.

(Wow, everybody should frame that post and hang it on their little bedroom studio's wall.)

Spider, having thought of it a couple of minutes, I'd like to give you a less sloppy answer:

Your expertise is very valuable, and I hope you'll share more of it with the people in this forum. And on the other hand I think that they transpire a kind of attitude that I find somewhat ... ehm ... rigid. You introduced yourself with the sentence "If you are SERIOUS about producing music, you would be using Logic Pro 7 and not GarageBand." This is trivial in the sense that if any of us guys here would get a major record deal, of course we would produce the stuff with high-end equipment and high-end software and a professional sound engineer and not in GarageBand.

But this is the GarageBand forum, and GB is a consumer product. The great thing about it is that it lowers the level for people to produce stuff for themselves and even others to listen to. It used to be that you needed all this multi-thousand-dollar stuff just to get your first note on tape, and those times are over. It's a continuum these days: You can really start by sitting in front of your iBook with its built-in mic and record yourself singing along to your guitar. And be very serious about your music. You won't probably be satisfied with the result after some time and get yourself a cheap but decent mic, an audio interface, monitor speakers and so on. That's a revolution compared to the times when record companies had a monopoly on making recordings, comparable to the liberation from the printing press through desktop publishing (and before that, liberation from the transcribing monks through the printing press).

Agreed, 90 percent of the people will produce stuff that most of the others consider crap, just like most of the things that people design with Quark XPress is ugly. But what the heck - from time to time a hit record is actually produced by someone in their bedroom.

Your sentences sound a bit monolithic to me - this is how you produce good sound, full stop. And that's not true: You can produce interesting stuff with cheap equipment, and even you won't be able to tell on the finished recording how this special guitar sound was achieved. That's a lot of fun.

And, by the way: After all, the great guitar sounds of the 60s and 70s were produced because at one time some guy abused a tube amp for a purpose that it wasn't designed for and thought hey, this sounds great, why not turn the bug (distortion) into a feature. So we shouldn't canonize the "correct" way to make music - this is pop, and pop has always been about breaking the rules, too.

Drösser, my "SERIOUS about producing music" comment was in response to Silas (as stated in the byline at the top of my post) in that Silas posted the following on 18 December 2005: I guess the real question would be, "How serious are you and how serious do you think you will be about producing music in GB?"

I am so sorry that my witty American English sarcasm was lost on you Herr Drösser! That is what happens when things are misread and taken out of context. Perhaps I should have punctuated my response to Silas with a 🙂 because my sarcasm was intended to be funny. Lighten up. Each of my posts in this thread has been a response to another post and has generally been what I know about speakers.

It seems to me that you may perhaps be confusing knowledge with attitude.

First you tell me that my expertise is very valuable, and then you use words like rigid, trivial, and monolithic. Don't you think that anyone who is serious about producing music would try to broaden their musical horizons and break even the GarageBand rules by embellishing GarageBand with external high-end studio gear? A Neumann or Schoeps microphone for recording is something to which we should all aspire. By the way, the Mac is a high-end, cutting-edge computer and GarageBand is based on the "high-end" Logic music software. Logic Express 7 is also a consumer product sold in Apple stores worldwide. It is not as expensive as Logic Pro.

I agree, you can produce a hit record using cheap equipment. When I buy so-called high-end studio equipment, I purchase closeouts of discontinued merchandise often at bargain basement prices. I acquired some of my studio gear from Mars Music as their remaining stock was being liquidated when they went out of business. I play a Yamaha RBX270 bass that I only paid $250 for; but, I also play a $1000 high-end Rickenbacker 4003, because nothing on Earth sounds like one. I put the Ric on layaway and made monthly payments until it was mine.

Spider Closet Studios is in the basement of my home, and I use the spare bedroom for practicing my instruments, including a cheap "plastic piano" made by Casio; though I make it sound great by running it through an inexpensive PreSonus vacuum tube preamp and into a cheap Behringer mixer. My GarageBand music is currently being produced on a Mac sitting on the cardboard box it came in. You mentioned something about making hit music in bedrooms...

My favorite psychedelic blues of the late 1960s and the progressive rock of the 1970s are not pop. Pop music is about popularity; music that appeals to the masses, and is a reflection of the mediocrity of the majority. Pop music is all too often about prostituting the art of music for money. GarageBand is about the garage bands of the 1960s that made innovative music by breaking the rules. GarageBand is so we don't have to listen to the music selected by the corporate arbiters of musical taste.

Now perhaps we should get back to the subject of this particular forum: speakers. All of my previous posts in this thread have been what I know about various aspects of speakers until I came across your FLAMING post. Music that endures is about genius. Genius is about knowledge. I simply share my knowledge. If you find that rigid, trivial, and monolithic, oh well. It is intelligent music that stands the test of time. Long live the garage band!

Postscript: Speaking of breaking the rules, Drösser, perhaps you should also read the Apple Terms of Use for these forums which state the following about flaming:

Be polite. Everyone should feel comfortable reading Submissions and participating in discussions. Apple will not tolerate flames or other inappropriate statements, material, or links. Most often, a "flame" is simply a statement that is taunting and thus arbitrarily inflammatory. However, this also includes those which are libelous, defamatory, indecent, harmful, harassing, intimidating, threatening, hateful, objectionable, discriminatory, abusive, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, or offensive in a sexual, racial, cultural, or ethnic context.

Postscript: Speaking of breaking the rules, Drösser, perhaps you should also read the Apple Terms of Use for these forums which state the following about flaming:

Be polite. Everyone should feel comfortable reading Submissions and participating in discussions. Apple will not tolerate flames or other inappropriate statements, material, or links. Most often, a "flame" is simply a statement that is taunting and thus arbitrarily inflammatory. However, this also includes those which are libelous, defamatory, indecent, harmful, harassing, intimidating, threatening, hateful, objectionable, discriminatory, abusive, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, or offensive in a sexual, racial, cultural, or ethnic context.

Postscript: Speaking of breaking the rules, Drösser, perhaps you should also read the Apple Terms of Use for these forums which state the following about flaming:

Be polite. Everyone should feel comfortable reading Submissions and participating in discussions. Apple will not tolerate flames or other inappropriate statements, material, or links. Most often, a "flame" is simply a statement that is taunting and thus arbitrarily inflammatory. However, this also includes those which are libelous, defamatory, indecent, harmful, harassing, intimidating, threatening, hateful, objectionable, discriminatory, abusive, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, or offensive in a sexual, racial, cultural, or ethnic context.

Postscript: Speaking of breaking the rules, Drösser, perhaps you should also read the Apple Terms of Use for these forums which state the following about flaming:

Be polite. Everyone should feel comfortable reading Submissions and participating in discussions. Apple will not tolerate flames or other inappropriate statements, material, or links. Most often, a "flame" is simply a statement that is taunting and thus arbitrarily inflammatory. However, this also includes those which are libelous, defamatory, indecent, harmful, harassing, intimidating, threatening, hateful, objectionable, discriminatory, abusive, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, or offensive in a sexual, racial, cultural, or ethnic context.

Sorry about the repetition. The server kept giving me a "Not Responding" message, so I sent my post again, and again, and again, and again. Stupid AOL 🙂

Oops, I'm surprised you read my comment as a flame. It was by no means intended to be libelous, defamatory, indecent, harmful, harassing, intimidating, threatening, hateful, objectionable, discriminatory, abusive, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, or offensive in a sexual, racial, cultural, or ethnic context - it was just an opinion about some of the things you said before. But we certainly don't have to elaborate on that, especially not on "pop" vs. "psychedelic blues" or "progressive rock" (I think these terms are used somewhat differently in America than in Europe). Sorry if you felt offended. And back to speakers.

Drösser, apology accepted. There is also something in the Terms of Use about hijacking a thread for something other than the topic of speakers, for example.

Psychedelic blues? Arthur Brown, Cream, Hendrix, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" etc.

Progressive rock? Peter Gabriel era Genesis, Pink Floyd's "Meddle," The Yes Album, etc.

The father of progrock is Chris Squire (Yes' bass player). He formed the first ever progressive rock band called the Syn with Steve Nardelli who made a fortune selling psychedelic clothing to hippies in London. They have reformed the Syn and have been releasing some excellent new material recently.

One of the best ways to test computer speakers is to see if they can handle the "kaboom-kaboom" bass drum on Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's "Lucky Man/Tank" suite without breaking up and crackling, or enable the the Moog Taurus bass pedals on Genesis' CD "Selling England by the Pound" to be heard, or on Yes' song "Starship Trooper" to be felt. Or in a more obscure vein, be utterly amazed by the bass on Triumvirat's "Illusions on a Double Dimple" CD. One of my alltime favorites, though, for testing any speaker system has always been the Italian psychedelic-progressive rock band Il Balletto di Bronzo's CD "Ys." Any of these would give a speaker system a test-run for its money. I also love hearing the elegant analog tape hiss on Iron Butterfly's psychedelic masterpiece "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." They definitely channeled the cosmos on that one. If a speaker system can't handle ELP, or if I can't hear Michael Rutherford's bass pedals on Selling England, or if the cymbals on "Ys" aren't crisp and sparkly and the harpsichord delicate and articulate, I won't buy the speaker system. Nothing sounds as good, IMHO, as the tweeter/horn in the Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 system. Klipsch are famous for their horn-loaded speaker systems.

it sounds like you two should get a chat room.