FWIW...
Yesterday while picking up some products at an audio store I was able to spend some time listening to a couple of speakers, and then went home to compare with my Thiel 2.7s.
First was, the Monitor Audio Platinum II
This store had really well acoustically treated demo rooms, and the speakers were well set up. In the case of the MA speakers I didn't play my own music, only sat down to listen to a bunch of full-res songs being played.
I generally like the Monitor Audio sound. My father-in-law has a pair of huge monitor-looking Monitor Audio speakers from either the late 70's or early 80's I believe and they are still one of the most impressive speakers I've heard. They have a gigantic, full sound but also an amazingly beautiful, clear, realistic tone. Trumpets sound so realistically brassy, strings so much like strings, etc. Experience with other MA speakers (I use some for my sound work, and have a pair of MA Bronze surrounds for my home theater) has left me with the impression the MA speakers are one of those rare line that can sound "tonally colorful" for lack of better word. It's one of the reasons I'm so enamored with my Hales speakers as well (and why the MA bronze surround speakers mesh so well with my Hales L/C/R speakers).
Though in recent years as MA has tried to up the resolution with ribbon tweeters etc I've noted a tilt upwards toward a bit more "whitening" of the tone. That said, at a recent audio show some MA speakers produced one of the clearest and most realistic drum sounds I've heard.
The MA Platinum speakers had that super clear, precise sound I've heard from their modern speakers. But it was also tonally colorful, acoustic guitar sounding warm and woody in the lower registers, sparkly in the top. There was a rewarding sense of "surprise" to the timbral characteristics of different voices and instruments, from metal bells, to bass guitar, to wood blocks etc. Bass was decent, not amazing in tonal terms - a bit warmish. There was also a sort of boxy, speakerly quality in the lower midrange. The resonating body of acoustic guitars for intance seemed to sort of flatten in the soundstage, sound hard and not so detached from the speakers. Moving closer or further to take out room influence didn't change this character.
There were some really beautiful moments of female background vocals that sounded so tonally pure and clear!
On to the next speakers, ones I've heard briefly but wanted to spend some more time with (I'm always willing to kick out the Thiels should I hear a speaker I like more). The new Focal Kanta. They are mighty stylish and benefit from all that focal driver/tweeter technology.
These were also in a very well treated demo room. This time I played my own test music selections from my USB thumb drive.
Impressions: Yep, that super clear, clean Focal Beryllium, drivers sound. These had more tonal color than the smaller stand mounted Focal speakers I've demoed (e.g the Sopra), which had sounded too blanched of timbral color. Also, though clear and extended, I didn't find the sound particularly fatiguing. The room filled with absorbers/diffusors no doubt helped that somewhat.
It was a similar presentation to the MA speakers, except I found the Focal speakers less timbrally colorful and suprising than the MA speakers. Just a bit more of an electronic cast overall. Piano, though, was particularly well served - really precise, clear transient quality and ringing tonality. I could really hear all the different layers of acoustic guitars and how each one was being played on some of the Johnny Cash's "Won't Back Down." It reminded me of my recent demo of the Paradigm Persona speakers, though I recall the Paradigms being just a bit more liquid and sophisticated...just a touch...though after time I seemed to fatigue more from the Paradigms than these Focals.
I wasn't terribly impressed with the bass of the Kanta speakers. It seemed a bit thick and detached in character from the rest of the spectrum. The more tracks I played with lower bass, the more incoherent the sound seemed to me, like a brilliant. clear upper frequencies riding on a slightly different sounding, darker, more turgid and slightly boxy lower frequencies.
I'm sure this could be ameliorated in certain room set ups.
My take away thoughts when driving home where:
Loudspeakers have been "progressing" at a glacial pace. By that I mean, as I've gone through various new contenders, very little has stuck out as being advanced over the older speakers I own, certainly including the Thiels. Do I hear "more detail?" Eh...not really in the sense of "Hey, I never heard that little detail before, finger picking, instrument at the back of the hall" or anything else. It seems more about reduction in "hash" insofar as tones become more pure. But even then, only incrementally.
Of the two speakers I'd take the Monitor Audio speakers, for the more beautiful tone.
That said, the biggest, most in-my-face impression of both systems was:
"Hi-Fi" in the derogatory use of that term. Virtually every track, instrument and voice sounded distinctly artificial - an electronic hardness, sharpness, crispiness, and an icy electronic sheen to everything that consistently told me "this is artificial."
When I got home and replayed the music on my Thiels (including some tracks I heard on the MAs) it was just another world in terms of how natural things sounded. Surely some of this is going to be attributed to the fact I've dialed in my speakers at home, and also to the difference in using Conrad Johnson tube amps vs the solid state amps used in the store.
But...voices sounded sooo much more relaxed, dense, and natural. Strings, guitars, cellos, all so "woody" and rich and organic. Stand up bass which on the Focals had a sort of hard, whitish, artificial almost-sampled sound, sounded on the Thiel/CJ combo so obviously like the big wood resonators they are. Plus, the sound was so much more detached, controlled and unboxy from top to bottom on the Thiels.
And the overall drive and pitch control on the Thiels, especially in the upper bass to the bottom, was so superior. I was listening to tons of music last night and the punch and musical "drive" of the Thiels is just amazing to me.
So...I'm still holdin' on to them :-)
As usual this experience re-enforces to me: 1. How much I prefer tube amplification like my CJs to most solid state. I never really seem to want to sit long listening to an SS based system like I do with certain type of tube amplification at home 2. How much more choice of speaker, placement, room etc impacts the sound over anything else.
In both the demo rooms the speakers were hooked up to very high end equipment. The Focals for instance played off of Naim's high end server and amplification, giant garden-hose thick audioquest speaker cables, and a crazy high end AC conditioner that the salesman seemed convinced had transformed any system they'd used it in, including this one. "Veils lifted, life-like vocal sound achieved, dynamics improved, etc"
And none of that added expense - thousands and thousands of dollars! - seems to translate to any more impressive performance than I get at home, my speaker cables and interconnects being nothing extravagant, my gear plugged into cheap power bars, etc. It makes me really happy not to be worried about putting big sums of my audio budget in that direction. I know I've rung that bell before, but I can't help but notice this every time I return from a high end system with all those expensive accouterments and listen to my own system.
