speakers for classical music

I love most kinds of music, but listen to tons of classical. (Symphonic, like Mahler's 6th last weekend, chamber, wind ensembles, solo piano, solo cello, etc.) I play trumpet in regional community orchestras and lead trumpet in a big band, as well as rhythm guitar in big band. I attend tons of live concerts and probably listen to 2-channel 10-hours per week.

My favorite speakers are by Vienna Acoustics. They've got speakers in almost all price ranges. The bargain of the bunch, as far as being full-range and floor-standing, is the Beethoven Baby Grands for $3500. (I own these). If you've got a large enough room and budget, then the Mahlers are incredible.

The VAs are very dynamic, tonally balanced and transparent. My little Baby Grands are only down about 4dB at 31Hz and very smooth in the 20 to 200 hz response. There's no ugly high end peak from the wonderful silk dome tweeter, so even old string recordings sound very nice.

BTW, they'll slam when it comes to listeng to jazz, funk, rock and soul as well. Still, one of the biggest wake up calls you can receive is in the 4th movement of Mahler's 6th when the whole double-percussion section hits everything they've got coming out of a ppp section. I almost fell over backward. It was like being on stage.

Dave

Vandersteens (all models), Magnepans (all Models), Quad 57s,63s and 988(9)s.

I listen to classical symphonic and chamber.As fr large symphonic music stick to dynamic speakers,electrostatic like quads do not have the dynamic range.I listen at home to two different speakers both are good but one is outstanding,provides the sense of been there in the orchestra hall.This are the German Physics Lorerely speakers too draw backs ,cost,and require large room.The second speakers,ie bedroom set are pretty good non fatiguing full range and these are the JM Lab Utopias,much cheaper than the German Physics.What ever you do you will need large speakers with well integrated sub section,separate sub woofers are seldom integrated properly.Sufficient audio output and speed/impact at the low end is essential for the sense of realism in combination with non fatiguing midrange.
Good luck.

If the speaker does classical music well it should do rock and jazz just as well, else it has some sort of rather serious flaw. It would only a matter of time before a classical recording would show up that flaw big time (try an original press of side 6 of Das Reingold conducted by Solti on Decca- if a speaker can play that right it will be good on any kind of music made). Trust me on this one- the speaker had better not care too much what flavor of music you listen to! As soon as it does, it is revealing its colorations/deficiencies.

BTW this is the same for all parts of the reproduction chain.

I am now totally off B&W speakers, because I kept destroying them! I had the 803D.

David,

If you like to drive speakers loud and particuarly realistic dynamics/spl then this is generally what happens. Go horns or pro speakers would be my suggestion. Consumer designs generally are never required nor do they claim to reproduce realistic music levels so it is unfair to push them so hard.