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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 tubegroover

tubegroover
2,320 posts
 
Marty you touched on an interesting point, more than you might realize. There is a world of "pianophiles" that debate the merit of the tonal characteristics of different pianos as we do speakers whether or not you are aware of this. Check out the forum "Piano World" to see, passion abounds not unlike this forum. Steinway, Bluthner, Chickering, Fazoli, Steingraeber, Baldwin, Boesendorfer Yamaha and many others. They all have a different presentation so in that context, an audio system that might have the ability to differentiate the differences in tonality and harmonics, beyond generic realistic piano tone would indeed be extra special. One can always dig a little deeper to realize that it is seldom deep enough!

I do have a question though, can anyone differentiate the differences between piano manufacturers through an audio system? I generally get the Steinway because it has been widely used in classical recordings throughout the 20th Century and the harmonics of the instrument is unique not to say the best!
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