What are the best loudspeakers under $4000 to re-create lifelike piano


Over the past 4 months I've spent time with five loudspeakers.  On a scale of 1-10 I'd rate them as follows in their ability (with my equipment in my room) to recreate a lifelike piano.  Tekton Lore - 6.5 (great scale but tonal accuracy and clarity somewhat lacking),    Kef LS50 - 7.0 (moderate scale but slightly better clarity and tonal accuracy)  Kef R500 - 8.0  (great scale and very good clarity and tonal accuracy), Spatial Audio M3TurboS -8.1 (great scale and very good clarity and tonal accuracy and very smooth)  Magnepan 1.7i - 9.0 (very good scale with excellent clarity and tonal accuracy - very lifelike).

In your room with your equipment, what loudspeakers are you listening too and how would you rate them for their ability to recreate a lifelife piano and if possible a few comments as to why?
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As always, whart's comments are right on. As for recordings of piano's, direct-to-disk LP's really capture the attack and decay of that instrument like no tape recording I've ever heard. A good piano recording contains an almost instantaneous huge wavefront that instrument creates when struck hard, and reveals the timbre of the instrument changing as it fades away, between notes. The different timbre of specific pianos is a product of the varying levels of the harmonic overtones of the root note---the fundamental. The change in timbre varies amongst different pianos, the relative strengths of fundamental and overtones being unique to each.

IMO, to reproduce the timbre of an instrument with as wide a frequency spectrum as a piano, the loudspeaker itself requires it to have an exceptionally-even octave-to-octave balance. There is no better way to achieve that than to use one driver to reproduce as much of the piano's frequency range as possible, not chop up the keyboard amongst multiple drivers. Achieving even octave-to-octave timbre accuracy via multiple drivers and x/o filters is a very tricky, difficult thing to do. Lifelike timbral reproduction is one reason the original Quad ESL is still as highly regarded as it is. That speaker's ability in that regard remains superior to all but a small handful of competing products, regardless of price!

Great speakers those Bolero’s.  I never modified my set and owned them for 2 years I think. Loved them. Very easy to listen to with no listener fatigue at all. Great imaging and a warm inviting sound. Beautiful to look at also! Very smooth highs.  Mids were a tad recessed as I recall. 

The DI is really a different speaker. It is more full range with much deeper and more impactful bass. The DI is more resolving of the Micro details and of the instruments themselves. They sound more live and alive.  The DI does this without sounding bright or aggressive at all. The DI speakers are more dynamic and easier to drive.  

The Bolero speakers sound warmer and darker.  They are more romantic sounding and that is certainly very appealing to many of us. The Bolero is a more refined sounding speaker. The DIs can be upgraded/modified to sound as refined.  They simply need better quality crossover parts. 

I think the Bolero would open up more in the mids with simple XO upgrades. It would be a very easy speaker to upgrade. Very easy. I would place the XO outboard and use better wire. Don’t change the XO parts values, but just use Mills MRA or Path Audio resistors and Jupiter copper foil caps. Keep the same inductors. 

The Boleros will always hold a special place in my audio memory. Beautiful speaker in many ways. 
RTR @ 15 ips, Threshold S500II and Danley SH50's.  Quoting Country's poet-laureate Mr. Toby Keith... "Don't knock it till you tried it, and I tried it, my friend".
@bdp24 - I’d settle for being 1/2 right 1/2 the time, but thank you.
There was a pretty serious piano restoration house near me when I lived in Westchester, NY- they had a warehouse full of big old grand pianos, some virtually shells, others complete but in need of work. Two otherwise "identical" pianos from the same manufacturer that were set up in the same room could sound vastly different from one another, depending on how the piano was voiced, the materials used for the hammers, action, etc. I’m hardly a guru on that stuff, but I know when I was struggling to maintain an ancient Bosendorfer, the piano swami would spend hours tweaking it- it was like a voice from heaven for a week, maybe two, and then began to slide into disc(h)ord.
I kind of miss having a big piano here. Gotta find a solution to that, though I don’t play very much any more. (Have a Nord, which is a decent electronic keyboard but it ain’t even close- even the Rhodes sound isn’t really very convincing (though I suppose there are downloads or tweaks one can do, I dunno).
I used to steal away when I was a youngster to play the grand piano in the large school auditorium when it wasn’t in use-- it was fabulous to play in a big empty hall as a kid, and I never had to worry about the audience. :)