Accurate vs Musical

Gregm,

I see your point. My choice of words were not the best. What I meant was a speaker that has a ruler flat FR, limited distortion, and reproduces all the details but does not have the fluidity or emotion that a musical speaker has. I am not a speaker engineer so if it is "non-linear" distortion that evokes the terms i use then so be it. :)

Cheers

gregm said it better than my laundry list of examples

Thank you for all of the well informed intelligent answers. Audiophiles on Audiogon Rule!

The term accurate speakers is surely an oxymoron.No speaker I have heard ever captures the scale and dynamics of the real thing.So how can it be accurate?
The only speakers that come close to real world dynamics are horns and they usually have flaws in other areas such as phasing.
Many dynamic speaker owners claim that their speakers are accurate but if these people have use of a good pair of electrostats for a couple of weeks and and then return to their speakers they will usually be amazed by the box and cone colourations of their speakers.
Most of us get used to a certain sound and then come to believe this is accurate.Any similar sounding speakers we also label accurate.So it is a silly term and completely subjective.Their are also cultural biases involved.

JT

I'm with Bob P. and Pbb on this one. You could not have said it better. Accurate is supposed to produce what goes in.

Garbage in will be garbage out and an accurate speaker will not hide a bad source one bit, whereas a "musical" speaker can at least improve somewhat a poor input, granted at the expense of some detail/accuracy. I equate "musical" to a warm or resonant sound with added even harmonics; even harmonics are naturally part of music and voice and therefore sound rich and natural to our ears (unlike odd harmonics or IMD distortion which sound unnatural to our ears and are best avoided).