How to meaningfully audition speakers??

Good question Charles; tone, timbre is very important is music. One of the reasons why I like Pass Labs a lot is also about the tone, tembre and the harmonics as well. When I bought the XA100.5 from Pass labs I heard many things what I also heard at my friends house during a classical home concert. A recording with different acoustic guitars let me hear the difference in sound of these guitars. For the first time I could hear why some recordings used 2 or 3 voices togheter. The change it gave in hammonics was never this clear. When you listen to many systems and audio stuff you understand and keep in mind that what you love. All the things I loved I wanted to use in 1 system. So it is all the parts togheter. That is why I say: I try to sell emotion instead of audio. Emotion in music is getting bigger when the harmonics, tone and tembre gets better. It influence our brains. The same about the freq. in the lowest octaves. When a system can go lower ther will be more emotion. When you get a 3 dimensional image instruments and voices become fully touchable. When voices and instruments are smaller and have the right and small dimension as in real you get closer to the music. This is what I call intimate sound. I know that it influence people emotionally. When you are a perfectionist like me you want every single part what is important for the absolute sound in your system. But also in other people there system. I use the same perfectionism for my clients as I use it for myself. because I want every single person to enjoy there music as best as possible. These parts can be understand by every person. It is easy to understand. My clients Always say; Bobby's words are the same as the sound he creates. I like things to be clear and simple as possible. Before I let people hear a speaker, amp, source, conditioner, cables etc I explain very simple what it is and what it does. After this I let the music do the work. The music played by a system is like a copy of the words I used. So it is more easy to understand for everyone. My new Olive 06HD with the Purist Audio powercable and brand new Audioquest Wild Blue Yonder give me even new qualilies. It made the stage of my system wider and deeper. So instruments and voices become more loose from eachother. The sound realims is getting to a higher level. Like classical music. The sound of a violin or cello is even more like in real. Harmonics in voices become more clear to hear. For example; Timshel from Mumford&Sons. When I heard it the first time with the O6HD I became very emotional cause of the harmonics. I love Diana Krall and I have all here albums. The Olive with the stunning cables give a lot more air around the voices and instruments. She is singing there as she is in your room. I can hear her breathing and I hear here opening her mouth because I hear her lips. Recordings like Kraftwerk and Yellow are extreme holographic. I also hear many parts of recordings I thought I knew well moving from behind to more forwards. So my set is a combination of all the parts which I loved when I auditioned many sets. And the classical concerts at my friends house play a very important part in how big I want instruments and voices to be comming from a system.

I agree with your comments Dover, this has been my experience listening to other's systems as well some of which might benefit from "polite, inoffensive sound" IMHO.
I also agree this is the reason there are so many diverging opinions on this site about what constitutes "good sound" when it is obviously driven by preference more so than necessarily attempting to accurately represent what's on the recording.

Me too Charles, accurate tone and harmonics I mean :)

I haven't taken the time to read most of the posts in this thread, but fwiw here's my take on the two questions that seem to be under discussion:

1)Re the original question, I'm not sure if it has been mentioned yet that some speaker manufacturers who sell directly provide in-home audition privileges, usually less two-way shipping and a restocking fee. Daedalus, for example, provides 30 day return privileges, less two-way shipping and $300. I believe that Salk and Audiokinesis, among others, also offer return privileges on at least some of their models.

2)Re the discussion of accuracy vs. emotional appeal, etc: It seems to me to be self-evident that if the goal is to allow the (sonically) best recordings to sound their best, the system should be as accurate as possible. While if the goal is to allow the majority of recordings to sound as good as possible, the accuracy of the system will have to be compromised to some degree, in a manner that is consistent with the preferences of the listener, and that is best suited to the kinds of recordings he or she listens to the most.

Regards,
-- Al

Dover, I agree completely with your comments. Personally, I think it's an unfortunate state of affairs. A few thoughts re some other recent comments:

- I don't understand the notion that because absolute fidelity is not attainable (it isn't) we should not bother striving for it. Makes no sense to me. I am not willing to "dumb down" the excellence in a minority of my recordings in order to make the majority sound a little "better". I suppose I am in the minority, but I like to hear how a performance was recorded; warts and all.

- We shouldn't confuse the emotional content of a performance with the emotional reaction that "impressive audio" can elicit. Dimensionality ("3D sound") in audio has nothing to do with emotion in music. When an artist performs he is not thinking about how "dimensional" his sound is going to be.

- As usual, when we discuss emotion in music we omit the aspect of music which communicates emotion: dynamics. Not how loud something is or can be, but HOW it gets from soft to loud and every micro-step in between. Is the increase (or decrease) in dynamics from soft (p) to medium soft (mp) every bit as exciting in its seamless (perfectly continuous) quality as the very loud? That is where emotion in music lives because that is what communicates a performer's phrasing and feeling. Then you have subtle tonal color variation which is a performer's second most important way of communicating emotion. If we don't strive for fidelity those things suffer; if only because the end result is not what the performer intended.

- Yes, there is a reliable reference: live, acoustic sound. Anyone who has not made a commitment to listen to a substantial amount of it on a regular basis simply has no basis for claiming otherwise. The idea that because we all have "different heads", different hearing apparatus, or simply hear differently the concept of a reference is invalid is mistaken. Think about it: sure, we each probably do hear differently. So what? If a given listener hears live sound with (for example) a dip at 10K cycles and an emphasis at 2K cycles, that listener will hear a recording of that sound with the exact same dip and emphasis; so, using live sound as a reference is certainly valid. Of course, some will be quick to point out that if we weren't at the original event we don't know what the recording is supposed to sound like. This is where familiarity with live acoustic sound comes in. The more we are exposed to it, the more "common threads" we learn to recognize no matter the venue, recording equipment, or recording engineer. The differences in sound between an oboe and an English Horn are obvious even over the crappy speaker in the elevator. Yet, that "component XYZ made those differences inaudible" as I have heard stated several times only means that the listener simply doesn't know what either instrument really sounds like. There really is no shortcut: if you want to really understand "accuracy" you have to attend live performances. Of course, not everyone has that as a goal.

Dover, you and Frogman are right on. I especially agree with the last part of Frogman's post: "The differences in sound between an oboe and an English Horn are obvious even over the crappy speaker in the elevator. Yet, that "component XYZ made those differences inaudible" as I have heard stated several times only means that the listener simply doesn't know what either instrument really sounds like. There really is no shortcut: if you want to really understand "accuracy" you have to attend live performances. Of course, not everyone has that as a goal."

People may not like to hear this on this board, but this right here is a large part of the reason why many musicians don't give an audiophile's opinions the time of day. It is a sad thing that not everyone has that as a goal - for a musician, no other reference point makes any sense. If this is not your goal, you are just sitting at home playing with your own toys, and while you might like the sound you have created, it probably doesn't even come close to what a musician would call "accurate."