Best Loudspeakers for Rich Timbre?

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.

audiokinesis,

Ok.

Though I still find it interesting that my experience, at least with regular speakers (as opposed to a multiple array as you described) lead me to apparently the opposite conclusion.  I've never heard more room sound contribute to more accurate timbre.  (With the sort of exception that I alluded to earlier, that a more live room can make the sound more realistically bright/lively, though at the expense of homogenizing timbre among the various instruments/voices in a track).