Hi,
titian said:
But since you brought up this theme: which sound characteristics are you looking for in a speaker and which aren't important for you?
Okay.
I value most an absence of hints at the mechanical nature of the reproduction and recording, that is I value a natural tone, a "tonale gestalt" of instruments that is coherent, that is all parts of the instrument sound have a consistent signature of sound and the instrument appears together and both micro and macrodynamics and preferably no extra shaprness or grit added.
Due to being a nativ (saxon dialect) german speaker with english as third or fourth language I value very well above average vocal inteligibility.
Finally I value for better or worse a presentation of the spatial charateristics of the recording with a reasonable acoustical size for orchestra ranks or individual instruments in a jazz combo and at least a good hint of the size of the original recording venue and please without recourse to loads of acoustic treatment turning listening rooms into anechonic chambers.
I find that most speaker systems are inapropriate and irreconciably opposed to these goals usually presenting instrumental tonal range discombulated and inaproriate in size, distorting the venues acoustics and in most cases sounding too mumbeling and if not way too forward for my taste.
It might be worth if I comment on some well known speakers and how they impressed me....
1) Quad 63 - Like it a lot, BUT it lacks the ability to play low enough and loud enough for classical music, nice small jazz ensemble speaker, needs a lot of rearwave absorbtion to sound good though and size of ensembles is on the small side.
2) BBC LS3/5 - excellent in their intended role (in-wall of gear mounted extreme nearfield use in mobile recording vans and space challenged studios), sub-par on vocal intelligibility when used as freestanding hifi speaker with longer listening distance, image pint sized and in general all instruments sound like miniatures.
3) Avant Gard Duo & Trio - excellent on dynamics (fades to okay/satisfactory in the bass), okay on coherence and image presentation, but in most setups too artificial, as if the speakers are trying too hard.
4) Wilson Audio Watt Puppy 2/3 (that is old versions, not current), good coherence, dynamics and excellent treatment of space, original tweeter simply takes your ears off ever so often, modded with a tdx version of the tweeter (just get a recone kit) very nice, coherence could be better. Later versions started to progressively sound more mechnical, overtly detailed and non of these combo's ever went really low, but on balance one of my commercial favourites, hence my liking for Hyperion also. Other Larger Wilsons keep the charater of the WP's well, in their respective generations, but by the time MAXX, X-1 et al appeared Wilson had already moved to a more "High End HiFi" sound, rather than the more literal, less effect ladden studio versions.
5) Big format Coaxials like Tannoy, Urei/Altec etc in their various guises (be it Tannoy System 215, Tannoy Dreadnaught, Urei 803/813/823 or Aletc 604's in a soffit mounted 620 Cab with Mastering labs X-Over), these are mostly excellent, macro & microdynamics, image size, lack of mechanical artifacts, sadly the coherence could be better, but they are my other favourite commercially available systems, Tannoy probably ahead of Urei/Altec, make mine a pair of GRF Autograph with Monitor Red Drivers I think or a pair of original Dreadnaughts.
6) I always felt that active naim amplified 'bariks where great fun and excellent to listen to rock music (prerequisite Linn LP-12 also part of the system), but with purely acoustic music the whole system (and passive 'bariks with other amps) where literally miles of anything approaching realism. Great fun with the right music though.
I think that maybe more than much other verbiage illustrated what I am after.
Ciao T