Minbean,
Never did I say ONLY GMA was good. I have not listened to the TSM, but I would expect them to sound very good....perhaps a little up front. They use excellent drivers, good cabinetry and are well designed. Fullrange speakers have more phase shift than 1st order crossovers exhibit. I am not confusing hi-fi speakers with musical instruments, I feel the job of the speaker is to reproduce what goes into it with flat frequency response, good dynamic response and phase response. As far as the recordings go, some of them have distortion, i'm not arguing that fact. All one need do is listen, right? Here's what i'm saying, and i'll try to put it as plain as possible. If your speaker has phase shift (most do) when you playback a distorted recording, the speaker's phase distortion is distorting everything that comes into it,including any recorded distortions, so your hearing distorted distortion. It's a multiplicative process, not additive. It's similar to using a distored signal coming out of a source and feeding it into your amplifier. Your multiplying distortions, except in the speakers case, your adding a different amount of time delay to every frequency, something no amplifier does. All you really know is that there are many "poor recordings" you can't play, can't enjoy. Many performances "you just don't get" You stated this in your previous thread. I had the same problem until I purchased GMA speakers. I now find myself listening to music I would have never listened to before. Why? It never connected with me on a musical level. Do my speakers mask sounds? No. I can easily pick out a ribbon mic or individual mic feeds in recordings. What they don't do is add phase distortion to already distorted recordings. THAT is why they make so called bad recordings more listenable. Can't say it any simpler than that. Hope that makes sense. I don't want to argue with you.....i'm trying to tell you why, in my opinion, some of your recordings are harsh. One way to find out is to play these harsh recordings thru some electrostatic headphones, as they have no phase shift. If the recordings are still harsh, it's the recordings. If they sound less harsh, perhaps i'm right.
