Musicians?

Eric - have you ever heard a horn system do percussion - stunning realism - percussion on my Klipsch Cornwall's sound better than on any other speaker I have yet heard, except for even bigger horns. At least a couple of percussionists I know would agree.

Nnyc, as for your latest question, in my experience the digital recording of large ensembles where there are many more microphones (even sometimes one on every instrument, believe it or not) are usually terrible sounding. I would agree with Rballdude that this is normally the fault of the recording itself, not the system playing it back. As I have said here before, if I had a dollar for every audiophile who has heard a bad recording job but thinks that something must be wrong with his system.....

IMO the best, as far as most realistic sounding, orchestral recordings were made back in the 50's and 60's when they just stuck a couple of mikes out in the hall (or perhaps far above the orchestra as Mercury was fond of), and there was as little mixing as possible. Part of the reason for this is because then you get a much better sense of the original recording space, and it's ambient noise, and of how the music filled it. More mikes are not usually better, they usually greatly diminish this sense of space, which is very important to the realism.

I have yet to find a system (that I can afford) that reproduces drums with the visceral impact of the real thing

That is quite normal with consumer speakers. You really need to look into pro main monitors. The kind of speakers you see built into walls in this site AAA Group Ltd.. And as Learsfool mentions - you'll see horns as well as other designs but you'll most often see at least one if not two 15" woofers per channel. If you look at the client list you will see some familiar names.

These systems do not simply play louder - they are able to convey the dynamics of real instruments - something most systems cannot do.

My axe is a 1927 Luigi Mozzani. I've never heard a music reproduction system capable of producing the actual timbre, depth, power and lush sound of a violin.

There is a good explantion about this problem from Dr. Floyd Toole in his recent book about loudspeakers. Violin is devilishly directional as a function of frequency - different sounds go different directions....this instrument is a tough one to record - perhaps near impossible!!

FWIW - it just so happens that on this very page right now - there are comments on four systems all with Evolution Acoustics MM3's. I haven't heard one yet but I 'd hazard a guess that drums sound pretty good on them (they have what it takes...)!