Make sure the acoustics of your listening/control room are deadened first by
making most walls, ceiling, flat shiny surfaces, non-reflective and
absorbent. Getting a friend to burst an inflated balloon by the speakers
zone will tell you all about "ringing"!
Then sit in a place which forms a perfect triangle with your control room
speakers placed at ear height, if possible.
Try not to use CD medium, if at all possible.
Just patch in a VHF/FM tuner through your chain, select, say, Radio 4 from
the nearest xmitter, have no Eq nor filters in cct, and listen to speech,
live ideally, worts and all. Occasionally hit the Mono (dual) button for a
while and return to Stereo.
Make some off-air recordings on analogue, edit and re-use them for monitor
evaluation and assessment. Try to listen for dentures, breathing, open or
nasal voices, fidgetting on noisy furniture, air conditioning, page-turning,
and studio rumble, too. These quirks are part of the signal and should not
be masked by bad colouration.
Have lots of makes of quiet amps and pairs of speakers at your beck and
call - till you find that Eureka moment!

Having specialised in talks studios environments most of my pro life, I feel
the human voice is very complex to reproduce electronically acceptably.

"Charles C." wrote in message
...
Hi,

I will soon start looking for loudspeakers. Does anyone have any idea
where I could find a CD with just speech to use as part of the audition?

Any other tips welcome ;-)

The speakers are to be connected to a NAD 320BEE and 521BEE as the source.

Regards
Charles


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