cornelius said:
A stereo system sounding like a live band is an illusion created by audio components sitting in your home. Recently I heard a flea-powered tube amp and a pair of $2K monitors that sounded more like music, than the mega-watt solid state system with very expensive $14K floorstanders (from the same company) in that same room. Most of the $20k-ish speakers that I've heard were so ruthlessly revealing, that all I ever heard were recording/mixing/mastering flaws. So, for the sound of a live band in your listening room you don't necessarily need $20K speakers.
Excellent advice and report, Cornelius.
And OP, I've said this in a few other posts and am gonna keep saying it until someone explains differently....money spent on speakers is absolutely irrelevant. There is no 'up' in speaker performance. At all of those price points (taken together), it's all lateral choice, and all that matters is
whether or not YOU like the sound. Speaker improvements, at best, are incremental, bearing no linear relationship to cost. (An exception to this rule might be poorly designed speakers that have poor off-axis response, for example, that would be improved by a more expensive design. Another would be a speaker's ability to handle very high spl levels without distortion. But again, these are small 'improvements' ... you may actually LIKE distortion in your speakers.) There isn't a system made that will duplicate "live", for reasons stated by Corneilus. And who cares? I've heard some live performances, like Joan Baez in a cafeteria that sucked. (Poor example, I know. But generalize the example and you have my point.)
IMHO, hearing is so significantly subjective as to render speaker preference relatively immune from price differences. (Aesthetics are a different matter, however.)
