Best Loudspeakers for Rich Timbre?


I realise that the music industry seems to care less and less about timbre, see
https://youtu.be/oVME_l4IwII

But for me, without timbre music reproduction can be compared to food which lacks flavour or a modern movie with washed out colours. Occasionally interesting, but rarely engaging.

So my question is, what are your loudspeaker candidates if you are looking for a 'Technicolor' sound?

I know many use tube amps solely for this aim, but perhaps they are a subject deserving an entirely separate discussion.
cd318
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@david_ten , I think the life of us audiophiles is like one long exercise in self-critique. Forums like this could almost be loosely termed as a self help group!

Audiophiles do mainly tend to be men, but there are no barriers of age, race, occupation or income. Just a common pursuit of personal sonic ecstasy.

Of course we can be an impressionable and sensitive lot. I intensely dislike my Hi-Fi being criticised, although I’m not as bad as I used to be. But you can also easily say the same for many car owners.

I try to take the impressions of fellow enthusiasts far more seriously than any magazine reviewer because they generally seem to ring more truer, and feel more real world.

I bet its almost impossible to be completely neutral as a paid reviewer because of all the industry politics and various vested interests. Designers and manufacturers probably feel hyper sensitive to any criticism. If I was in their shoes, I know that I would. All that time, effort and money invested.

I am still slightly puzzled as to why Magico speakers don’t get a universal thumbs up, the way say for example DeVore do. Alon Wolf seems to be far too meticulous in his approach as to not have canvassed a wide range of opinion before unleashing his products. Speaking as someone who has never heard a pair I wonder whether it’s something to do with that aluminium cabinet or the graphene drivers?

Still, enormous credit to Alon, and all the other designers out there trying to push the sonic barriers back further and further.



I've heard various Wilsons in stores, and their overall character always seemed to me to be summed up in the adjective: relentless.  And not in a good way.  I haven't heard the Sabrinas, and from everything I've read, it really seems as if these are voiced rather differently.

BTW, I recently auditioned the 40.2's and was blown away by them (in a good way).  They immediately vaulted to the top of my shortlist.

@fleschler 
I have the Magico A3 in my system for over a month now. I listen to many speakers before I chose the A3. Some of the contenders were the Wilson Sabrina the Dynaudio Contour 60 and Confidence 2 and the Focal Sopra 2. I don’t like Harbeth they are too warm, with very bad resolution ( I am a musician, and do a lot of recording, I need to hear what was recorded, not added noise from the loudspeakers). Apparently like coloration and noise, all the speakers you mentioned are extremely colored.
I recently went on the search for the perfect speaker, and the ability to capture the natural rich sound (timbre) of an acoustic instrument was one of my priorities. I home auditioned 15 speakers (review here: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/a-brief-review-of-15-high-end-speakers-on-home-demo-including...
and found some well-loved brands lacking in this area. The two which really shone in the reproduction of a natural rich timbre were the Sonus Faber and the Boenicke. I ended up purchasing the Boenicke. Interestingly Sven Boenicke, the designer, records live concerts of small classical ensembles, and one of the aims of his designs is to have a speaker which reproduces that natural sound of the instrument which he tries to capture in the recording.  I find with my Boenicke even the troublesome violin is rendered perfectly. 

I also heard the Joseph speakers in the Munich HiFi show. They were excellent too. Jazz was being played (isn’t it always at HiFi shows?!) from a reel to reel via an Alluxity amp. It sounded wonderful.
I know.  I've held off in buying $50-60K efficient speakers because I'm getting so much great sound/music from my Legacy Focus speakers using older high end equipment and recently acquired tweaks,   When I upgrade, it will cost a lot to exceed my current sound.  Buy used older Legacy's for great timbre plus their other attributes for a bargain that beginning audiophiles can afford.  
Lumenwhite with ceramic drivers offers the speakers with richest timber that I had ever heard although they are pretty expensive.

I had got a Vaughn Cabernet with ceramic midrange driver to get a rich timber at reasonable price.
I would . My Totem Sig 1’s cross at 2.7 and sound very close to what I hear and have heard in over 2 thousand live classical concerts . Very coherent and consistent from 50 to 18.000 hz .

I admit that I have enjoyed some recordings on Wilson speakers, but generally the smaller speakers sounded better.  I've heard big Wilson's from the start decades ago (abysmal) which sounded like 5 boxes of sound, incoherent music.  The Sabrina, Alexa were the most recent ones I heard and they sounded good with massive tube power amps (VTLs).  I prefer more efficient speakers.  

As to Magico, that's where I've heard truly bad sounds.  Their Q1 playing Scheherazade sounded about the size of a boombox (not much bigger).  I heard the S5 make a guitar sound like a ukelele.  I've heard the Q5 sound dark and minimally dynamic with Jadis gear.  Otherwise, the better Magico systems I've heard were meh, not musically interesting.  

The worst was bringing my wife to her first audio show.  She walked out of every Magico system saying that they're uninteresting.  She loved the Ultra 11 vonSchweikert.  We both loved the Lumenwhite, the Stein audio, Volti and Marten speaker systems.  She liked the Harbeth 40.2 a lot.  So, these speakers were especially good at presenting a musical/warm sounding tone. 

Some people love Magicos and Wilsons.  I've never heard the Magicos sound tonally interesting.  Smaller Wilsons, better.

It seems to me that Wilson speakers have for a while now entered a bit of a renaissance in terms of the feelings they engender in the high end community.   It used to be that Wilson was everyone's favourite whipping boy - that paradigm of the "really expensive heavily constructed high end speaker" that had tons of hype, and which some reviewers lauded, but which many people loved to hate "way to clinical, way too bright, way to colored, etc."

But these days Wilsons seem to get way more love, and words like "rich" and "realistic, natural" seem to accompany reviews and reports on many of their current models.  And they seem back in favour even with reviewers who may have abandoned them once before. 

These are all observations from a distance, as I haven't spent much time (if any) listening to a Wilson speaker for many years.
schubert,

"Rich timbre" is not a description I personally would give the Totem line.
I've always found they had a superficially attractive sound - those sparkly highs allied to a deeper coloured midrange, but their completely obvious contouring of the frequency response for that "Totem sound" is just too obvious and intrusive for me to enjoy over  time.   There's an obvious dip in the upper frequencies that gives it a recessed sound and but comes back out still in the presence region to give the impression of sparkly, sharp transients.   But it results in a pinched sound to the upper mids.   I think it's probably that dip around 5K in the crossover region that you see over and over in measurements of Totem speakers.


@fleschler  Wow! I applaud your energy and resolve to have thoroughly investigated the sonic properties of 2 loudspeaker brands considered to be near the state of the art, Magico and Wilson.

I must admit that I am less surprised about your reaction to Alon Wolf's creations. Could it be that in his determined pursuit of ultimate scientific truth that some of the natural warmth of music has been left behind? High tech material, but too much cold truth resulting in 'sound but not music'.

As for Wilson, I am a little more surprised. Most reviews praise Wilson speakers with few reservations other than the price. In fact it was only the other day at a show that I heard great feedback on Wilson speakers from a fellow visitor. Some of the models might not be to everyone's taste visually but the Sabrina and Sasha seem to be easier on the eye.


That is part of my problem with Magico and Wilson.  They play sound okay but not music.  That's with about 15 or more auditions of each of those two brands.  Never heard a Harbeth I didn't like.  I own Legacy Focus and Signature IIIs (originals).  I like vonSchweikerts and Lumenwhites a lot.  They have timbre and rhythm correct with adequate dynamics to make the sound lifelike to the recording.  The Harbeth has some contraints in the frequency extremes and dynamics but is otherwise a very musical sounding speaker.  I came up from owning large electrostats for over 20 years (Acoustat X, Acoustat 2&2 and ML Monolith IIIs).  While I liked what they did right, my wife did not like what they didn't do-tight deep punchy bass and dynamics.  Also, the speakers I like tend to be easy to drive, unlike the Magico and Wilsons.
@ashoka, you're right. If they took timbre and harmonics into consideration I'm sure that quite a few 'high end' speakers would be seen as hopelessly flawed.
@dracule1 , sorry for any misunderstanding but I was referring to the ever elusive Rich Timbre.

See, he's even more difficult to pin down than we thought. 
 How good speaker be high end score 100% when they leave out 25% for timbre marks?
@cd318

“@dracule1 seems to be a very elusive master of disguise popping up only very rarely in audio circles.”

Hmm...I have 5x more posts than you.  
@prof , I guess times are hard and margins are tight. Still there must be someone out there with the budget capable of organising this. 

A live piano recital behind a curtain would be a pretty stern test for any speaker. Or perhaps the pianist could just mime upon the switch to recorded sound, (presumably on tape).

As long the hands were hidden from view, it wouldn't matter too much if the pianist was in vision or not.
@nonoise , I agree wholeheartedly that what comes before the loudspeaker matters. When it comes to vinyl sources. you have to get as good a turntable as  you can.

However when it comes to digital sources, amplifiers (SS) and cables, I'm firmly in the Peter Aczel camp.

I also live in fear that I will eventuality just give up and end up listening to vinyl via a pretty tube amp and high efficiency speakers. By then no doubt fully convinced the entire industry took a wrong turn some 60 years ago and have been duping us all in the process ever since.
cd318

I'm somewhat puzzled by the fact it seems no one (or no speaker manufacturer I'm currently aware of) is doing the live vs reproduced tests for their speakers.  (With the exception of the occasional live musician brought in for some audio shows).

John Dunlavy claimed this was fairly routine when testing the success or not of their speaker designs.
@prof , yes live v recorded demos would be a great way to show off loudspeakers.

Gilbert Briggs (Wharfedale) used to do this back in the 1950s in absolutely huge arenas like London's Festival Hall.

Surely someone big like B&W could do something similar now.
cd318,
I wasn't implying that tube gear would help in getting rich timbre. I was agreeing that the whole chain of gear must be taken into consideration. 

You can swap out speakers until you run out of patience and won't get rich timbre if what is upstream of it is not up to par. If you can get as accurate as you can a set up, rich timbre should be one of the results.

All the best,
Nonoise

cd318,

Interesting list.

The main problem I see is the subjectivity involved.   If we surveyed everyone here we'd see a huge variety of speakers being used, and I doubt many people would say "My speakers don't do instrumental timbre well."  In other words, that list could be expanded to the point it's not terribly useful.

That's not to say that I think that it's just entirely subjective whether a system produces accurate timbre, or accurate sound in general.  In principle, it seems to me, blind tests could be set up with, say, live vs reproduced sound and a large enough sample size of participants, and tests, over time could produce results showing some speakers produce sound closer to indistinguishable from live (and hence good timbre) than others.

But as that isn't happening much at all, we are left to what measurements can tell us, and ultimately our own impressions.
@nonoise ,  I agree that valve amplifiers can add to our perception of harmonics/instrument timbres, but to keep it simple I wanted to concentrate on loudspeakers only.

I hope you can agree that we've had plenty of good suggestions worth exploring if anyone is interested in this all too often neglected topic. 

All of the following suggestions are of potential interest to anyone looking for above average reproduction of timbre - 

Devore Fidelity 0/96 and 0/93 
Sonus Faber 
+Franco Serblin's Ktema or Accordo
Audio Note 
Daedalus Audio 
Tannoy DCs
BBC Harbeth, Spendor, Graham
Vienna Acoustics
ProAc
Legacy Audio Aeris / Focus SE

and Joseph Audio speakers got a special mention too.
Speakers don't do math. Nor are they polymaths given the numbers of instruments, materials, musicians, tuning, styles, etc. etc. in existence.

Yes it's fair to say that all speakers must either be adding or subtracting to timbre

Timbre is the human (expert) perception of the sound of a note made by a specific (tuned) instrument, brought into existence by a musician.

Instrument. Musician. Human Perception of Sound. Note: No speakers involved.

From this point on, there is a very long chain which attempts to provide a 'facsimile' of that note. What you are hearing in your listening chair has to do with that entire chain.
We could have stopped right there. 😄

All the best,
Nonoise
@dracule1 seems to be a very elusive master of disguise popping up only very rarely in audio circles.

They seek him here, they seek him there..
That was an interesting essay. The black and white photo analogy will help me better explain to my wife what I mean when I say some songs just don't sound right or natural. I play a sort of instrument, a mountain dulcimer and when I play Jeanie Ritchie I can tell she is playing the dulcimer but it doesn't sound like it does when I heard her live or what mine sounds like.  Most of the speakers mentioned in this thread I can never afford but it's an insightful thread.

twoleftears,

Agreed.

That quality of differentiating timbre as you describe it is something I really value in a speaker.

I think mono recordings can really be a test of timbre differentiation in that regard, because in a mono recording, say of a jazz quartet and some singers, the instruments and voices are piled behind one another in a central location on the soundstage. Whereas in stereo sources it’s much easier to be able to pay attention to each instrument individually, because they are separated spatially in the stereo imaging.

A speaker that is really great with timbre can make it much more effortless to untangle one mono instrument from another, be it two voices on top of one another, a guitar and a banjo playing simultaneously, vibes and piano, or whatever. When the timbral harmonics are coming through accurately, it’s easy to hear out one instrument/voice from another almost as if they were spatially delineated.

This is one reason I’ve been really interested in Joseph Audio speakers because to my ears they do this like few other speaker brands I’ve encountered. (I also found the old Hales Transcendence speakers were great for this, and many others).

Beware those who are bored easily, here comes a mini-essay concerning my further thoughts on this issue:


There is, to my mind, a difference between really getting the timbral character of an instrument exact, and giving enough information to let you know what instrument you are hearing. That may seem a weird distinction but I’d explain it this way:

Take the analogy of photographs. Imagine a BLACK AND WHITE photograph of 3 different string instruments: viola, violin, cello. Imagine it’s really blurry (.e.g poor resolution in the system) to the point of being hard to tell which instrument is which. As you in increase resolution, the instruments will come in to focus and you will at some point easily be able to say "that’s a viola, that’s a violin, that’s the cello." If you increase resolution even more, you may even end up seeing enough detail to discern the type of each instrument: "Ah, I can see that’s a stradivarius...or a Gotting...or whatever..."

But though the increase in resolution has allowed you to make some very fine differentiations between the instruments, and even identify tell-tale signs for specific instruments...the instruments still don’t in fact look fully real and accurate. Because the photo is in BLACK AND WHITE.
Adding accurate color is when the instrument takes another full step to what it looks like in real life.

A similar analogy is for instance the fact we can all easily recognize differences between voices on our phones, we can know "that’s my mother on the end of the line" but the fact we have been given enough sonic information to *recognize* one person from another on the phone doesn’t entail that the voice on the phone is just how it actually sounds from the person in real life in front of you. There’s a difference between the experience of recognizing your mother’s voice on the phone and what your mother’s voice actually sounds like in real life, without the technological intervention.

I suggest that many "high resolution" sound systems mimic this problem insofar as they seem like they can provide high levels of detail that differentiate instruments and voices *within the confines of the music piece being played* or within *the confines of music generally played on that system*. They can give plenty of detail in a "black and white photograph" sense to allow you to finely identify certain characteristics of singers and instruments, while still withholding the actual "color" or full timbral realism. I remember this experience really hitting me hard when, in the late 90’s or so I finally heard a massive Infinity IRS speaker system. Playing an orchestral piece, for the first time closing my eyes I had the sensation of something like a full symphony orchestra playing in front of me. Except....the "color" was missing from the picture. That is, though I could easily identify all the solo instruments or sections, timbrally speaking they seemed made of the "wrong" stuff, like plasticized/electronic/metallic versions homogenizing everything. It just missed the effortless timbral rainbows that I hear from the real thing.

That really impressed upon me the problem of timbral believability, and the value any speaker would have that can increase timbral variety and believability for me.

And we all bring to a system our particular personal template of how we have perceived real life sounds of voices and instruments we care about.

So on this view, when I hear or read someone saying things like "the resolution of this system allowed me to differentiate between X and Y singer or instruments" that is a good sign....but it doesn’t tell me whether the instruments actually sound like the real instruments. Whether the timbrally true color is there.

I used to have recordings of instruments I play, that my sons played, my wife’s voice etc, that I’d play on speakers I owned or auditioned to look for this timbrally-true quality. On many high resolution speakers I could certainly tell "yes, that’s my guitar being played." But they didn’t actually *sound* like my guitar REALLY being played in front of me, because it was the wrong timbral "color/tone." It was some other electronic confection. Only on some speakers has my guitar recording sounds not just detailed, but *as it does timbrally* when I’m playing that guitar. There’s an inherent "Yes, that’s it" sensation when this happens.

It’s depressingly rare, though.



Exactly. The notes might be the same but the harmonics are totally different. That's why good speakers allow you to hear differences in guitars, violins etc. 

I wonder whether some people could be called harmonically deaf in the same way some are said to be colour blind? 

If so, this whole thread would seem pointless. The whole business about how we hear and especially interpret sound is individual to each of us. 

Keeping a complex subject as simple as possible by focussing on speakers alone there has been a lot of support here for those made by DeVore Fidelity. 

John DeVore seems to be a great example of the enthusiast made good. Sometimes I wish I had thought of going into building loudspeakers before leaving school. There are worse ways of spending your working life! 


Imagine a violin and a viola playing an identically pitched note at an identical volume.  The more a speaker enables you immediately to notice the difference in how they sound, the more true-to-timbre it is.

I'm not sure there's a word for the phenomenon you describe.

Just to get a few comments on this......What would you call:  the ability of a speaker to reproduce the image of ....let's say....the almost separate particles of sound, laid side by side in tight succession..... as in a bow on a bass fiddle's low string.....as opposed to a plucked electric bass string.  Is this 'texture', 'timbre' or 'resonance' or something else?  Hope my explanation above made sense.  
In terms of naturalness of timbre, the AN's hit it out of the park for me.  But then, they do need to be close to a front wall, and ideally close to a corner, for maximum bass reinforcement.  Judging by the number of photos I see of conventional speakers jammed up against walls, this should be an advantage for a large constituency.  On the other hand, I really like the sense of depth, air, perspective, from speakers positioned reasonably well away from boundaries, and despite AN's and the dealer's protestations to the contrary, I didn't feel the AN's had as much air as quality conventional speakers optimally positioned.
twoleftears,

It makes total sense to point out the liabilities of any design choice, of course.   The proof is always how a designer manages those liabilities and to what degree the listener perceives the pluses and minuses of the results. 
@prof Yes, I'm aware that I'm in a minority, though from alone.  Devore's tend a little more to the "modern sound" that is shared by most recently designed speakers in the 5K and up range.  I don't want to use the adjective bright, but they are doing something in the treble range that speakers with an "older sound"--e.g. Audio Note, the original Spendor S100's--don't do.  To each his own, obviously, but people should be aware.
@fleschler , I wouldn’t worry. Until we get a sound indistinguishable from reality or at least one that listeners cannot identify as a recording, it’s always going to be a matter of choosing the compromises you can best live with. Our imaginations can always try and do the rest.

Your comments regarding best seating in the concert hall also apply to the cinema albeit to a lesser extent. Except that it’s usually the case of finding the least worst seats - usually in the middle of the middle rows. I’ve almost given up watching superhero films there unless I’m looking for a low level headache. Far more enjoyable at home, just need a bigger television. It’s funny looking back how we used watch on 21" screens.

@prof yes this pleasing ’bathroom’ effect can obviously add tonal richness. It’s never seemed to matter to the music industry whether it’s seen as accurate or not. In order to make vocals sound fuller
they tend to use compression and effects (eg double tracking, delay etc) rather than employ sympathetic room reverb. So I guess they, in their own way, are trying to make the sound more interesting. No one is seriously trying to make the vocals sound thinner and weaker.

It’s this pleasing warmth/ timbre that is being sought.
I guess all the posters think that my Kevlar 7" pair of mid-range drivers produce poor mid-range sound and don't integrate with my dome tweeter and ribbon super-tweeter.  However, somehow Legacy has managed to make a superlative sounding speaker, using cheap drivers like these and a trio of cheap 12" paper cone woofers.  No one who has heard my main system will argue with the results.  The Legacy Focus is a great speaker, with cheap drivers in a vibrating/heavy cabinet.  

Harbeth's sound great too and they use thin wall construction with drivers that shouldn't integrate either.  Go figure.

@prof wrote: "I don’t know what speaker you are describing in your last response to me. The Waveform monitor has a 5" woofer - both it and the Mach Solo measured quite well."

Duke replies: I couldn’t find the diameter of the Waveform midrange driver in a quick search, so I just decided to make a generic comment. A 5" midwoofer probably has a 3.5" cone diameter, so there may still be a significant off-axis discontinuity in the crossover region because the tweeter’s pattern may be considerably wider than the mid’s.

@prof: "speaker designers... get fairly pig-headed about the path they’ve chosen..."

Duke replies: Grunt grunt. Oink.

Total agreement. 6 inch woofer is simply too big for the mid range. B&W and countless other speakers never sound completely natural for this very reason. To sound natural a speaker must have wide consistent dispersion across the full frequency range.


Whenever someone says something "can’t sound natural" in high end audio, I pick up my grain-of-salt shaker and empty another grain.

This is because what is "natural" in audio has a subjective component - that is, given the vast majority of playback systems or speakers can not fully reproduce "natural" sound, and speaker designs involve compromise at any reasonable costs, it’s often a case of choosing the set of compromises, and focusing on what a speaker "does most right" to the individual’s ear. Speaker "A" with flat frequency response (or flat power response in room) may be capturing "natural" aspects than speaker "B," but speaker "B" may be producing greater dynamic life and hence be "more natural" in that regard. Then it depends on which aspect of "natural/believable" the individual listener tends to focus upon.  There are for instance those who swear by Quad ESl 57s or panel speakers in general as leaving any box speaker shamed in the "natural" department, but when I listen to these panel speakers as much as I love what they do, I'm acutely aware of how they depart in believability from what dynamic speakers can provide. 

Anyway...

I can’t go along with the idea that a 6 inch woofer is "simply too big" for the mid range to sound "natural." For instance, Harbeth speakers like the Monitor 30 and Super HL5 plus with their 7.8" radial drivers doing midrange duty are renowned among reviewers and listeners for their particularly natural quality. I owned the Super HL5 plus and it was stunning particularly with the human voice, in a way that few other speakers I’ve encountered could pull off.

I’ve heard other speakers with larger midrange drivers sound quite "natural" in their own way.

I think some folks start to get fixated on what they think is the "right way" to do something. This is good in a sense for speaker designers - most get fairly pig-headed about the path they’ve chosen and it helps focus energy and passion, so you get really good iterations of different speaker designs designed by different people who are sure "THIS is the right way to do speakers!" But the fact all sorts of speakers find different enthusiasts, and most of those enthusiasts finding something particularly believable about one design or another, indicates there are various ways to skin the cat. IMO.


audiokinesis,

I don't know what speaker you are describing in your last response to me.  The Waveform monitor has a 5" woofer - both it and the Mach Solo measured quite well.
Total agreement. 6 inch woofer is simply too big for the mid range. B&W and countless other speakers never sound completely natural for this very reason.
Appraently you've never heard a BBC 8" - only ESLs can compete.
Hi Duke I am enjoying this thread . In my room I have found the key to a rich sound is to get the bass response in the room correct . I use 4 subs in my room . I was using a set of Ohm Walsh 2000 Omni speakers for years and just changed my speakers to a pair of Klang & Ton NADA speakers from Madisound . The difference in clarity is night and day . I am able to take advantage of this speaker design as my setup is on the long wall and do not have a early reflection point on the side walls .I have a treated wall behind my listening position . Applying your gear to work in the room is the key to good sound .    
+1 @audiokinesis

Total agreement. 6 inch woofer is simply too big for the mid range. B&W and countless other speakers never sound completely natural for this very reason. To sound natural a speaker must have wide consistent dispersion across the full frequency range.

I also don’t like early reflections as it collapses the sound to the vicinity of the speakers and reduces the stereo image effect
Post removed 

Hi Prof,

Again, thanks for replying.

Imo the size disparity between a 6" midrange cone and a 1" tweeter dome make it impossible for such a speaker’s off-axis response to have the same spectral balance as its on-axis response. At the crossover frequency, the cone will be beaming somewhat but the tweeter’s pattern will be about 180 degrees wide (constrained by the baffle itself), and this wide pattern will hold up for another octave or so higher before it starts to narrow appreciably. Such a speaker’s power response (summed omnidirectional response) can be smooth OR its on-axis response can be smooth, but not BOTH at the same time. And a significant discrepancy between the two is not conducive to good timbre in my opinion.

Omni or quasi-omni speakers tend to generate spectrally-correct reverberant fields, but they also (by definition) send a lot of energy towards the nearby walls. So they tend to generate a lot of early reflections. Imo even spectrally-correct early-arrival energy can be detrimental to clarity, as shown by the negative effects of early reflections at "bad" seats in concert halls. This may be somewhat offset by the extra early-arrival energy becoming extra late-arrival energy after a few bounces.

I believe that I am at odds with Floyd Toole here - I believe he finds early reflections to be beneficial, assuming they are spectrally correct. My source on the negative effects of early reflections in concert halls is David Griesinger, and it is my opinion that that applies to our listening rooms as well.

Duke

audiokinesis,

Yes I'm aware of the effects of off-axis response.  I've had quite a number of speakers with good, even off-axis response (I tend to favour them).  

For reference, among the speakers I still currently own are the MBL 121 omni-directional monitors (radiate evenly), and the Waveform Mach MC monitor, specifically designed for wide radiating even power response.
Here's a review of a Waveform speaker that uses this egg-shaped mid/tweeter module (I had the Mach Solos in my room as well):

http://www.audio-ideas.com/reviews/loudspeakers/waveform_mach_solo.html

At least in my experience, even speakers that have good off-axis response sound timbrally more true and complex when reducing room sound.  

Though I can totally see how the right size/room reverberation can add "tonal richness" to the sound - the singing-in-the-shower effect, to some degree.

@prof wrote: "I’ve never heard more room sound contribute to more accurate timbre."

Thanks for replying!

Many speakers do not generate beneficial room sound.

Most speakers’ off-axis response has a significantly different spectral balance from the direct sound, and as a result the reverberant energy is not spectrally correct. This can degrade timbre, and can even cause listening fatigue. I can explain the latter if you would like.

As an example of what a spectrally-correct reverberant field can contribute, imagine listening to a grand piano outdoors vs in a good recital hall. The timbre is improved (enriched, we might say) by the spectrally-correct reverberant energy in the recital hall.

So I’m not an advocate of reflections in general, but I am an advocate of reflections done right. Imo "reflections done right" involves paying attention to the spectral balance, arrival time, total energy, and even arrival direction of the reflections, in particular the first few.

Duke


I auditioned the Audio Note AN-E's and the Devore 0/93 and 0/96, and I preferred both Devores to the Audio Note.