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Speakers that do pianos really well

I recently had the good fortune to listen to a half a dozen pretty well-regarded speakers back-to-back. For these kind of sessions I like using piano recordings - either solo or jazz trio - as a measure because, to my ear at least, it seems that speakers that can reproduce piano really well seem to be pretty well sorted on everything else. The surprising thing was how many of these speakers did NOT do piano well. Of the group there were only two - Vandersteen and Verity - that I thought really captured the big chords, shadings, timbres, and reverberations cleanly and naturally. The rest - and I'm not going to call them out by name - offered a mixed bag of over-brightness, distortion, and general unnaturalness. I was very surprised by the results as I expected better from some of these speakers based on their reviews and reputations. So my question is, Does anyone else use the piano as a litmus test, and what speakers do people use that they think do pianos really well? Regards.
grimace

Showing 1 response by omsed

omsed
145 posts
 
Been doing this for 3 decades professionally. I have heard some very flawed loudspeakers sound pretty darned good on piano. If I had to reliably test a speaker in a short period of time piano would not be one of the first 3 albums I would put on. If piano is really important to you then certainly run it by any speaker you are thinking of. But use other music to flesh out flaws that can be hard to hear on piano recordings.

I have had a speaker perform beautifully on piano and organ and fall apart on upright bass. I've had good piano repro with horrible, shrieky violins. Good piano and clumsy mid to tweeter transition. Good piano and ear sawing trumpet. Good piano and cloudy voice.
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