Best Loudspeakers for Rich Timbre?

audiotroy writes:So the reason why timbre is so difficult is that all systems are colored and true accuracy accross all freqencies is very hard to achieve.

True enough as stated, but I submit that the speaker/room interaction and the resulting radiating patterns have a profound influence on timbre.
It also has a profound influence when speakers have radiating diaphragms that approximate the instruments they are reproducing.
In my experience, the X.7i series Magnepans with their large dipolar radiating surfaces reproduce piano better for less money than just about any other speaker I've heard, including earlier Maggies.
I grew up in a live music environment; my mom was church organist and pianist for 20+ years; so was my sister. Her son competed in the Tchaikovsky piano competition. I used to hear him practice extensively on their family's grand piano. In 1991-3 I worked part time at a mega piano store that carried Steinway, Boesendorfer, Schimmel, Seiler, Falcone, and Mason & Hamlin concert grands. They also were skilled piano restorers, and I heard plenty of 100 to 180 yr. old restored grand pianos.

A well-recorded grand piano played through my Magnepan 1.7s astounds me every time. A part of it is the radiating surface size, but so is the radiating pattern and how the audio output energizes the room as a piano would.
If you disagree, fine. YMMV.

kosst_amojan writes:

Lots of things aren’t huge radiating surfaces. Flutes. Horns. Human voices. I certainly think dipole speakers have advantages you can’t get any other way, but they have disadvantages unlike any other speaker too.

Well, the funny thing about my 1.7s is how well it reproduces the very things you cite--flutes, horns, and voices.
I first noticed it when--soon after installing my 1.7s, I played the LP version of Holly Cole’s "Temptation" album. The song, "The Briar and the Rose," is accompanied by the Canadian Brass. The rendition of this brass ensemble was stunning, the best I’ve ever heard in my house, and only (maybe) bettered by a demo I heard of the Wilson Alexandrias.
The Magnepans are more than just dipoles. They are boxless panel speakers. They are also line sources, and their radiating patterns have nulls to the sides, keeping the rooms side walls largely out of the equation (true also of other dipoles).
There are several things about the Magnepan x.7 series that supersede all the dogma about previous maggies--grainy, lack of low level detail, hard to drive, etc. The first in the current series, the 1.7 wound up being the proof of concept of the new generation, and soon Magnepan offered the .7, 3.7, and 20.7, and a few years later, the very ambitious 30.7.
Whatever the new Maggies do for piano reproduction (which is hard to ignore), it does not affect their ability to provide stunning reproductions of a wide selection of instruments and voices.
I have been listening to mine almost daily for nearly 5 years.

@analogluvr + @prof 

I'm glad you both brought up the issue of that "warm woody" sound. What prof writes about DeVores I found also applies to many of the larger Tannoys (even the slim floor standing Revolution 3s share this quality. When you first hear it you immediately think it must be wrong, too much mid bass, too warm, can't be right, and yet...it sounds so lovely, so real that convinces you that most other speakers must be wrong.  

I have to agree that the line 'you start to notice a warm colouration in all pieces of music that is being imposed by the speaker.' also applies to my experience. It's just that it's so emotionally satisfying, especially with some classic EMI 1950s and 60s recordings where it feels like everything has aligned and this is as close to perfect as you're gonna get!).

In my experience this is the best I have heard at home and almost the best anywhere else. However things might change as I'm hoping to get to the Audio Show 2018 next month at Leamington Spa. It will my first in about a decade and the good news is that Vivid Audio and Audio Note UK will be there.

If we get to hear some exotic US brands at the show, well that would be the 'living end'. Yes, I know, I have read too many Stan Lee comics.   

cd318 wrote (in part):

It's just that it's [playback through the larger Tannoys] so emotionally satisfying, especially with some classic EMI 1950s and 60s recordings where it feels like everything has aligned and this is as close to perfect as you're gonna get!).

An astute observation. Perhaps a factor in this sonic chemistry is that the EMI recordings were likely monitored and mixed on large Tannoys, such that the recordings and the playback speakers are figuratively speaking the same "language."