01-05-14: Wolf_garcia
The distinction between types of music relative to speaker design is silly. A well recorded jazz piano trio has every bit as complex and demanding a tonal pallette as symphonic music, and is only constrained or affected by level and room acoustics.
I disagree based on experience to the contrary. It's relatively easy to find speakers that sound compelling with an acoustic jazz trio or quartet. Feed them a 100-piece orchestra and listen to them serve up inarticulate mush. Throw in a pipe organ and 8-part choir and it's just sonic wallpaper.
I have just come off a fairly extensive speaker search. The Totem Arro's were compellingly alive, fast and transparent with small group acoustic and jazz. Throw them an orchestra and they sound just like what they are--small speakers struggling to resolve all the complexity, never mind the dynamics. The soundstage disappeared with the change of scale.
I chose Magnepans. They were the only ones in my price range that could keep Mendelssohn's "Elijah" cantata sorted out, what with full size orchestra, four vocal soloists, and a chorus singing eight distinct parts. Before I got these Maggies it had gotten to where all I was listening to was Holly Cole Trio, Diana Krall, James Taylor, Miles Davis, Gary Burton, Brubeck, etc. After I got the Maggies I was rediscovering my classical library, pulling out Beethoven's Eroica and other symphonies, Respighi's Pines of Rome, lots of Big Band (Buddy Rich, Stan Kenton, Count Basie, etc.) Bizet opera suites and Carmen itself.
Line arrays of all sorts (whether cones'n'domes, ribbons, planar magnetic or electrostatic) have certain advantages for large scale orchestral music relating to radiating surface and how it affects low level detail, control over inertial effects (ringing, overshoot), dynamic range, radiating pattern, and room interaction.
I've heard the Vandy 7s and 4s, Wilson Sophia 3s, Sasha W/P's, Alexia, Maxx, Alexandria X-2 and Alexandria XLF, plus B&W 800 and 802 Diamond. The Wilsons can do it, especially the big ones, but for a lot less money, so will Magneplanar 20.7s flanked by a pair of JL Fathom F212s. This is a room-filling full-range system for about $26,000, with phase coherence and a very low noise, highly dynamic presentation.
