Best Loudspeakers for Rich Timbre?

Since I’ve installed 32 Synergistic Research HFTs, my slap echo and other room acoustic anomalies have abated. Each HFT appears to broaden the reflection soundwaves, probably increasing the reflection times. They certainly don’t shorten the soundwave reflection times.

In the typical concert hall, seats closest to the rear wall don’t usually sound good because of the hard rear wall surfaces with quick reflection times and in the front rows there is little reflection, nearly all direct sound.

As a music reviewer for the UCLA Daily Bruin back 45 years ago in Royce Hall, I swapped my front row ticket for rows 10 through 20 to get the best sound for a combination of direct and long reflective sound. So many people wanted the front row seats there despite the inferior sound. It was probably a visual preference for them.

I was so lucky to have heard Ashkenasy, Arrau,  Bachauer,    Ciccolini, Kubelik/Bavarian Orch and so many other great classical musicians in ideal conditions from where I sat.  Royce Hall was renovated maybe 15 or 20 years ago and the balcony has good sound now and more consistent sound except in the front 3 rows.  

This is interesting stuff. I will grant that absent near field listening, timbre and reverberant energy are to a degree intertwined. The topic needs to be assessed with the idea of "average listening rooms". Most but not all speaker designers design their speakers for real world conditions in average listening rooms. To do otherwise is commercial hari-kari. With this in mind, and with the concept of all real-world speakers being comprised of strengths and weaknesses, design goals and compromises, the topic of truth of timbre divorced from all this conversation about room design is a valid one. That said, I am skeptical that any DSP, present or future, can make a badly designed-for truth of timbre-speaker sound like a timbre champ. I am very biased. I bought my Devore 0/93's when I heard them at Don Better's home based listening room with my vinyl copy of Gillian Welch's The Harrow and the Harvest playing on Don's SPU-equipped deck and could hear the strings of David Rawlngs guitar hit my brain with the texture of his Martin Darco 80/20 bronze light strings sounding just as haunting and full of soul and ghosts as he could possibly wish to convey. I know that my Devore 0/93's have their strengths and weaknesses. There's a slight discontinuity in the midrange that bothers me at times. But for truth of timbre over most of the frequency range, in an average listening room like mine, it is a champ. 

@fsonicsmith Have you heard the Audio Note AN-E's, which just happen to be Devore's principal inspiration?  To my ears the originals are still the best in that category that matters to you, truth of timbre.