speakers for classical music

I don't think the peaks are lasting long enough to lead to significant compression when listening to actual music in my system.

What a speaker can do with a sine wave for several seconds is not of great interest to me, if it doesn't correlate with my actual listening experience.

I don't expect anyone to agree with me. Especially those with dynamic speakers. I think you bring up some very good points on thermal compression, such as the lengths of the peaks. For sure some music will be more forgiving than others.

Have you considered though that driver non-linearities above Xmax are another form of compression (as the voice coil travels further outside the linear region of the magnetic field with large cone excursion). Again horns tend to have an advantage there too.

A demo at RMAF is a great idea - if they will allow you to play that loud. Sheffield Labs Drum track is a good stress test.

Salk HT3 or any Salk according to your budget.

AV123 according to your budget.

If more bottom end is desired, a Rythmik servo sub for a tight, precise, accurate, musical subwoofer.

Hi Atma, now that you mention a hint of Karl Orff. . . I remember listening to Cantos General on the radio. . . quantitatively, a most impressive work.

"quantitatively, a most impressive work"

I must give this a listen. Surely must sound better in digital/CD format than in phono/analog!!! I'd also like to run a sum check on the file and compare the total to other works!!!!

Now I think I've discovered how to truly quantify the merits of any partilular piece of art, as long as its in digital format!

Guidocorona and Mapman, Mikas Theodorakis was there to conduct, and said that in over 200 performances worldwide, it was the best sound that he had heard. So I think we did OK on the production and recording side. It is available on CD and I just recently found a few more sealed LPs (made from the analog master tapes), which we had thought had sold out 15 years ago!

It is a challenging piece to reproduce so I often have it at shows as a demo. I've seen a lot of speakers and amps fall flat on their collective faces trying to reproduce it.