Classical speakers that do violins well??

Telarc use ATC SCM Active 20's - another brit speaker to add to your brit audition list suggested above. You won't get an active version and a massive sub at your price point but a used passive SCM 20 should be within reach and get you started towards

nothing more than the faithful reproduction of the tone colors of unamplified instruments

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If it is good enough to keep Telarc engineers happy then it may be what you are looking for...

Good Luck!

in order to do a definitive test of a speaker's ability to reproduce timbre accurately, it is necessary to record an instrument in one's living room and compare the recording to a musician's presentation of the same music.

of course one will need a musician who is willing to particpate in this experiment as well as a way to method for recording, such as an open reel tape deck, a dat, or a cd recorder. hopefully, the quality of the recording is sufficient to make a meaningful comparison.

Not completely necessary....you could simply buy the equipment used to impress musicians in the world's top studios...the main monitors...there are literally at least a half dozen highly respected designs and all of them have excellent timbre and play at realistic sound levels of live music. You have to count on the fact that top artists and top conductors are auditioning play back of THEIR music on these same speakers which you can easily acquire...what more checks and controls do you want?

Of course your room will always be a major factor....no doubt that studios spend a lot on room designs and acoustic treatment. I figure it would be highly wasteful to get such quality speakers and then not treat a room at least modestly even though many of us have to respect domestic dual purpose requirements.

Good Luck! Try trusting the artists and musicians and sound engineers themselves...pick an artist or a record label with outsanding audiophile quality productions and then find out what they gear they are using...for example Bob Katz of Chesky uses Lipinski monitors....

Since we're talking about microphones, does anyone have a copy of the first Stereophile test CD? On it, J. Gordon Holt reads one of his articles through a series of changing mics. It's only a slight exaggeration to say that he sounds like a different person on different mics. The differences are really ear-opening

You can buy Mic and A to D converter test CD's here

Since pros know a bit about audio reproduction, researching what pros use is a viable alternative to making your own tests in a room with a microphone and a cymbal (unless you are prepared to test hundreds of consumer speakers I am not sure if this approach could be very productive - and what if a speaker does a cymbal well but many other things badly?).

There are pro audio forums such as Gearlutz where they discuss gear. Of course, they have individual differing opinions and a large number of pro speaker models are all considered acceptable (with of course a few very odd individual choices thrown in too!)...however there is often a general consensus on what sounds really good.

Shadorne, the real question is how many recording engineers use the same equipment in their personal systems.

Tbg,

Some do use the same speakers at home - of course many may not feel the need given what they have all day at work - why even bother to compete with a pro setup....why take your work home. However, some artists/engineers do buy speakers after encountering them in high end studios...not that like you or me they won't have five or ten other pairs of ordinary consumer speakers at home....they will. Of course domestic requirements may mean that they do not put ugly behemoths at home in a small room or the kitchen or the patio....but I hope you get the idea.

The needs of a recording studio are different from those used for entertainment.

I agree, home playback does not require the same in terms of electronics (no mixer/compressors/limiters and all manner of expensive tube and analog processors and no need for hundreds of mics etc.) I also agree that studio near-field monitors with narrow dispersion that are used for mixing are ill-suited to the home where you want good sound in a wide area with a lively reverberant soundfield rather than a vice-grip position for your head and having the sound beamed at you (clinical sound).

However, I believe that a good speaker is important to both home and studio. The studio "main monitors" are generally the ones that are designed to be the most "impressive" - this is what the artsists hear themselves on. These are designed to make the artists/conductor pleased about the decision to use the studio....they are the usually the best quality speakers in a studio that is cluttered with many smaller two way near-fields (so guest engineers can use whatever near-field they prefer to mix on).

Honest1,

You give but one example why you should leave recording to professionals and keep amateurs away.

You are completely correct that a recording using a microphone will record NOT just the acoutic instrument itself but ALSO the reverberation response due to the room. The biggest effect will be ceiling or floor (esp if floor is hardwood). Audio engineers play with microphone heights and surfaces to modify this reverb effect. Studios even buy large expensive panels for vocalists to sing next to and add interesting effects (these are called "microphone plates").

To record ONLY the instrument you would need to use an anechoic chamber...just as you describe. Only then would the playback be closest to the instrument sound - but even then......there are still other issues that are not worth going into here.

Cymbals have a lot of room reverb effect. I agree they would be very difficult. I suggest MrTennis try the Shefield Labs Drum Track to test for realism. Why mess with making your own recordings when Doug Sax has already made a good one (without the usual compression on drums that let you know that it is not real). Note that you will need extremely high peak SPL capability in order to reproduce the dynamics on this recording. The surprise of uncompressed drums is that they do not sound louder.....they sound softer! Yes you get way more peak SPL's but the transients (from stick impact) are so brief that it does not register as loud.

...and all I did was ask for a few speaker recommendations!

-Bob (OP)

Faithful reproduction => go active speakers like Ajahu suggests - preferably a pro studio model.