Recommendation on speakers for listening to live music

Personally I leave live music to the musicians and venue.

At home, one system should be able to handle all types of recorded music, be it recorded live at an acoustically challenged venue or in a controlled recording studio. Be it hard rock, pipe organ or chamber music.

Any system that can't reproduce all types of recordings is less than ideal.

Don’t laugh. If you want to play your live music heavenly real and not extremely loud, I’d say Quad ESL 2912. In my opinion the worlds’ best and to some extend affordable, speaker to experience music at home. If you want to enjoy music live in full size (suppose you have no neighbors and your listening-room is big enough) I’d go for the Magnepan 1.7i (minimum) or better the 3.7i. The ’i’ as an important upgrade to ’full quasi ribbon’. Meaning that the wires of the former models are replaced by metal ribbons. Far better sound, practically indestructible and no more ’wire loosing’. These Magnepans though, do require real beefy amps to fulfill there power needs. But there are more roads that lead to Rome, so I wish you lots of wisdom and succes in this difficult quest. ;-)

You are not listening to live music, you are listening to recordings.

Just use your regular speakers.

Exactly as clearthinker says. It's a fallacy to conclude that because the recording is of a live event, that you need speakers that employ similar technology to those used at the event itself. PA systems are driven by the need to go as loud as possible with as few watts as possible. (The watts bit is less significant nowadays with class D designs, admittedly.)

Also, as clearthinker says, what's been listened to is a recording. If it's rock music, it's most likely a feed from the mixing desk, with possibly a bit of hall sound mixed in.

Jazz recordings are more likely to have been room sound with possibly a few spot mikes.

In either case, what you want is to reproduce the sound of the recording, so all the usual sonic criteria apply.

I am a grateful dead fan and I agree that you want the system to have a very clean tight base to reproduce Phil‘s baselines. I just recently replaced my JL audio subs with a swarm sub system. I really like it. Very clean and tight and integrates well with my speakers if you have the room for it, I would consider that. You can Google it.

*Bass

Sorry, someone had to say it........🙄