I love most kinds of music, but listen to tons of classical. (Symphonic, like Mahler's 6th last weekend, chamber, wind ensembles, solo piano, solo cello, etc.) I play trumpet in regional community orchestras and lead trumpet in a big band, as well as rhythm guitar in big band. I attend tons of live concerts and probably listen to 2-channel 10-hours per week.
My favorite speakers are by Vienna Acoustics. They've got speakers in almost all price ranges. The bargain of the bunch, as far as being full-range and floor-standing, is the Beethoven Baby Grands for $3500. (I own these). If you've got a large enough room and budget, then the Mahlers are incredible.
The VAs are very dynamic, tonally balanced and transparent. My little Baby Grands are only down about 4dB at 31Hz and very smooth in the 20 to 200 hz response. There's no ugly high end peak from the wonderful silk dome tweeter, so even old string recordings sound very nice.
BTW, they'll slam when it comes to listeng to jazz, funk, rock and soul as well. Still, one of the biggest wake up calls you can receive is in the 4th movement of Mahler's 6th when the whole double-percussion section hits everything they've got coming out of a ppp section. I almost fell over backward. It was like being on stage.
Dave
