Best Loudspeakers for Rich Timbre?

Daedalus Audio

the entire line

solid wood speakers and very natural and engaging

Sound is not in technicolor.  But it sounds like you are looking for warmer speakers.  Harbeths are good for that.  Too many audiophiles assemble systems lacking in midbass warmth and then complain about it later.  

Depends what exactly you are looking for when you want Rich Timbre.


To some richness evokes a fullness of tone, where you really feel for instance the weight and presence of a tenor sax in the bottom registers or whatever, that may be thinned out in other speakers.


It that is what you mean by timbral richness, I'd throw the Devore Fidelity 0/96 and /93 have  in that camp.  That's their specialty.  Big, Rich, Thick full sound, so you feel that a piano or acoustic guitar has a vibrating sounding board,  low strings vibrate the air,  voices have a "chest" projection and not just disembodied mouths.


On the other hand my you mean something more like Timbral accuracy, in the sense of bringing out the specific timbral characteristic or tonal color of voices and instruments - e.g. that a brass cymbal really sounds like brass, a struck triangle silvery,  a trumpet warm resonating metal, the special combination of reedy/breathy/bell of a saxophone, wood sounds like wood, etc.

I've always looked for "Technicolor Sound" in the sense of a speaker producing a wider array of timbral colors, because through most speakers I immediately hear a homogenization, an imprint put over everything by the speaker.   Once I hear a sax, or trumpet, or cymbals on a speaker it's not long before I pretty much know what those will tend to sound like forever more on that speaker - unlike the truly endless element of "surprise" found in real life in that regard.



In that case, among the best I've ever encountered are the Joseph Audio speakers.  They are very accurate but with a particularly grain/haze-free sound.  Just the way colorful pebbles are more richly revealed through a clean, clear stream than through one full of fine silt, I find the timbral colors of voices and instruments seem more finely and purely revealed from the JA speakers - a greater "rainbow" of timbres and tonal colors seem to get through.   At least that's what I hear, though that seems to be echoed by a great many other people who hear them as well.  

Legacy Audio. They tend to make more recordings listenable, don’t break the bank, and surely fall into the rich sound camp of speakers.

Brilliant responses, really impressed. Audio Note (Hemp?), Harbeth and DeVore are names that often come up. Joseph Audio sounds like one to watch out for. Tannoy, I'm quite familiar with.

By rich timbre I guess I mean that you can clearly hear the harmonics in a voice or in an instrument as as you can hear the pitch, loudness or edge detail. Many speakers can do the start of a note well but not it's body - all attack and little decay. All frequencies of sound including Bass can have beautiful harmonics (I find that the ones around 4-8kHz can be particularly delightful).

Perhaps it's not strictly accuracy I'm after - I'd much sooner have exaggerated tonal colour than slightly muted. For some like me it serves as a drug when it comes to listening. Of all the critiques trying to explain the lasting popularity of the Beatles music, the best ones for me focus on their diverse use of timbre and tonal colour. Compared to many who followed their recordings (admittedly in an age of analogue recording and valve/ tube desks) do seem to exhibit 'a greater "rainbow" of timbres and tonal colors' especially from Rubber Soul onwards.

I find that Classical music and Jazz really become captivating when it's easy to distinguish the sound of the instruments rather than just the notes they are playing. Wood sounds like wood, metal has it's natural sheen, wind instruments sound different again. Piano can either sound plain and two dimensional, or it comes alive as you get to hear all the tones and micro tones. A real sense of someone at work.

Tonal colour is not merely edge detail, it's infinitely more than that. Plenty of speakers can do leading edge detail well, and seem lightning fast whilst they do it, but few seem to handle the body and decay of the notes as well. 

It is difficult to speak about tonal colour without also speaking about warmth, especially in the midrange (Bose anybody?), but I don't think it's necessarily dependent upon warmth. It's just that cold sounding systems can often expose their monochromatic nature far more readily.