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

08-06-13: Bigkidz
IMO the sound from your speakers has much to do with your preamp. Decay, heft to the notes, blending, can all be attributed back to the preamp.

More to do with how your loudspeakers interact with the room i'd say. Remember here, your listening room is a like a giant tone control.
MAGICO MINI 2 great piano reproduction.Eveyhing else is wonderful as well!!
Sony SS-AR1s do piano amazingly well (well, it helps they're always demoed with hi-rez multichannel, I suppose).

Another affecting piano rendition I heard once was an all active Meridian setup. That surprised me a great deal, but they excelled at piano.
Apart from the ones you (&others) mentioned, many (most?) up-scale active speakers acquit themselves OK with piano. The dynamics of a piano & of course the nuances are hard for most speakers.
Interestingly, Bosendorfer also makes speakers...
Thanks Marty. BTW, I like Christy. "Steppin'" is the only album of hers I own and I've never seen her live. Perhaps one day I'll have a chance to.