Best Speaker for classical music

fair enough, they did though use elctric guitars and keyboards in the studio as far as I can tell. My point is actually about frequency band overlaps and phase shifts as a result of crossovers and electronic enhancements in the transmission chain,, both on recordings and playback. Most studios don’t even care about absolute polarity much, a significant number of recordings are out of polarity and you hear it on a good system.

Guitar amps don't have crossovers. Guitarists are incredibly picky about their 'sound' and go to great lengths to get exactly what they want- which is a combination of effect pedals, the amplifier and its volume and tone settings (and tubes), and finally a speaker deemed appropriate, not to mention the actual guitar and whatever pickup and other mods it might have.


Being a keyboard player, I know how important it is to have clean sound so my keys go directly into the mixer without any speakers involved- that's how most of them do it. The exception is something like a piano or Fender Rhodes that is either directly miked or has to be played through an amp to get the 'sound' at which point the mic is in front of the speaker.


You are correct about polarity, this is true of all recordings which is why a switch to invert polarity can be nice on the playback preamp, since 50% of recordings are inverted polarity. That's hard to hear if the recording is multi-miked though, which includes a fair amount of classical recordings (most of which I don't regard as 'reference'). 


@mozartfan I've been playing around a lot with 'full range' drivers over the last 20 years. If they do alright with classical they do alright with rock and anything else too. FWIW there's plenty of information coming from an orchestra below 60Hz!! I played string bass in orchestras for decades- low E is 41 Hz. Bass drums can be in the low 20s, organ pedal tones can go to 16 Hz (32 foot pipes). When I recorded Canto General I insisted to the producer that she arrange for the largest bass drum in the state, which was a good 5' in diameter. Its simply not something you can experience on a 'full range' driver :)  When played back properly on a good system, that drum shakes the walls, which is what its supposed to do.

while your argument is fundamentally sound, only Jazz and Classical are typically performed without electronic support. Rock, Pop, Reggae, and even ELP always went through large speaker arrays with multiple crossovers and other electronic aids in the transmission chain.

@antigrunge2

If the bands were performing live that's likely true. But when recorded, often not. The bands are keenly aware of how PAs wreck the sound! We don't use a PA when recording our band. When you listen to that King Crimson LP I just mentioned its obvious they used a minimal mic'ing technique. Pink Floyd recorded an album for the BBC that used only a Decca tree, same as they might have used for an orchestra. That album is arguably their best recorded but they've always had a good studio technique.


If you get a nice import copy of the Beatles stuff, even though its not real stereo its obvious they cared a lot about the sound. I've used Porcupine Tree as demos at shows for years. I also use the first Its a Beautiful Day LP because everyone seems to have heard White Bird- and its nice to demo what it really sounds like.


Some years back on this thread I mentioned Black Sabbath- their LP is a solid demo of how you don't have to have acoustic instruments to nevertheless get a good recording. What is important in recording regardless of the genre is **intention**. 

Any speaker can play R&R, blues, grundge, hiphop, reggie
Jazz requires a bit more finesse.
CM (at least full blown symphony orchestra) requires even more finesse/nuances/fidelity vs all other musical genres.
Full symphony orchestra requires a ~~special speaker~~Midrange demanding.

@mozartfan Any speaker can play classical too. The more finesse the speaker has, the better it plays all genres. Seriously- if you could find a way to make a speaker genre specific you'd be a millionaire overnight. The reason it can't be done is musicians all use the same set of frequencies and all humans have the same set of hearing perceptual rules.


Its simply a mistake to lump all 'R&R, blues, grundge, hiphop, reggie' into the same spot when there is so much variety and nuance in modern music- and so much variance in recording quality, just as we've seen in classical music since the dawn of hifi. You want a nice rock recording- side one of King Crimson's Islands- you'll hear nuance, detail (if you have a good pressing) - it sounds like they are in the room. Or try a Pink Island edition of ELP's first album... Keith Emerson BTW was a master at the keyboard and integrated a variety of classical pieces into his compositions. And not surprisingly, if you want to hear these recordings at their best a speaker that does classical very well is going to do it, simply because the speaker does not care what music you play- and neither do the amps or preamps!

How about the following?

The widest variety of instrumental textures and vocal ranges?
String, woodwind, brass and percussion.
Soprano and alto, baritone and tenor.
Often all of them at once!

That is why I mentioned the Soria series recording in my last post.

The greatest dynamic range?
Classical (along with jazz) has probably fared best throughout the loudness wars.

That Taiko recording I mentioned has similar dynamic range (that is why audiophiles play it), and that Black Sabbath recording can shut most systems down regardless if you try to play it at a lifelike level. OTOH a lot of Deutsche Grammaphon recordings from the 1960s and early 70s seemed to have hardly any dynamic range at all.

The most meticulous recording quality?
For years and years classical was the ONLY genre that many engineers and producers paid careful attention to.

The Beatles got a lot of attention too- which is why its so worth it to find the UK pressings of their material. There are many other good examples of care and attention in recording. It is true that the hifi era was ushered in with classical music. But if found its way to other genres soon enough!

Even today it’s the classical fans that tend to complain the most about the reduction of digital radio bitrates.

I know plenty of people that complain about that! But it would be interesting to find out who the listeners of what genre are that actually complain the most. I didn't know there was any polling about that.


Anecdotally speaking, a friend of mine founded the metal scene here in the Twin Cites (Earl Root, RIP). He was also **way** into vinyl. He told me that when metal heads came into his record store (that's how he actually made his living) they really loved the fact that he had vinyl because it could get the cymbals right that the digital stuff just didn't.

Cerwin Vegas were built to be loud and durable. They are just as bad for rock as they are for classical. They are not genre specific any more than the JBL L-100.

Classical music is a far more demanding genre

It isn't. It is just as demanding as any other genre though. One recording that can bring most systems to their knees is the Soria series RCA recording of Verdi's Requiem (2nd track first side). But another recording that can do that with ease is the Vertigo white label pressing of Black Sabbath's Paranoid (first cut side one). Taiko drumming on Sheffield is certainly not western classical music either, but you need everything right in the speaker to play it.


Again, what makes a speaker good for one genre makes it good for another. You can't point to anything about classical music that makes it particularly harder to reproduce.

Your taste in music will have nothing to do with the speaker, since what makes it good for classical will also make it good for rock, metal, jazz, folk and so on. This is because its impossible to make a speaker favor a certain genre; if someone is able to do so they would be a millionaire overnight!!

The ability to play loudly without effort and full range is not a particular qualification. All forms of music sooner or later will be loud and have deep bass.


If you want good bass without breaking the bank, a set of Swarm subwoofers from Audiokinesis are very nice for the task. What’s nice about this is the main speakers are then freed from having to go deep in the bass but otherwise don’t have to take a back seat for either resolution or efficiency. This is because below 80Hz bass is omnidirectional due to the physical length of the bass notes in the room. Using the Swarms (which are a Distributed Bass Array system) the bass will be correct to 20Hz everywhere in the room and no one sub has to work all that hard. So you can set up a state of the art system without state of the art pricing.