Speakers that reveal bad recordings? Not for me.

"Why is it ever desirable to have speakers that simply reflect whatever they are fed, for better or worse?"

For me, the real thing is better than a synthetic replica of the original. I personally therefor enjoy getting as close as is possible to the original event. That goes for my video experience as well. I like to try and duplicated the video playback of my visual systems as accurately as possible, to properly display what is intended to be viewed.
My thinking is, why would I want to not have as accurate of a sound system or display device that is possible, just because much of the audio or video source material out there is less than pristinely recorded or mixed? Well because I'm not going to try and take away from the potential of the better material, just to try and mask some of the worse stuff! That makes no sense.
Of course, what you're implying is that there's way too much poorly master material out there, of which you otherwise enjoy the content.
To that I say, simply listen to this crud on your portable boom box or cheap MP3 player, and watch those lousy dvd's on your 19" 80's tv you haven't throw out yet! Otherwise, you can't tell me listening to what sounds like a real performance in your living room, is better with your computer speakers, because it sounds the same with the rest of your compressed downloads and over produced CD copies.

IMO, the quetion is not why would you want speakers that reveal whats really going on in the recording..The question is why wouldnt you???..I mean the whole idea of listening to recorded music is to reproduce a "you are there experience"..and that doesnt happen with junk!!!In the recording process or the equipment you have..Pretty simple,if that doesnt matter to you then get a boom box or listen to car radio and spend your money elsewhere...

You can actually control the quality of the recordings in Joyoshare Streaming Audio Recorder. Adjustable settings include sample rate, bit rate, channel, codec.

2 posts and you feel like you have to revive a 12 yr old thread?

Nice debut!

jaybo,

"its been my experience that the most neutral loudspeakers i've heard throughout the bandwidth are also the most enjoyable with all recordings. its no coincidence that many of the ones with dynamic drivers are also acoustic suspension"

Me too.

I'm sure most of us have at one time or another heard examples of very expensive loudspeakers which may have been good in one facet or another, but unfortunately strayed unacceptably far from neutral at one frequency or another. 

Sometimes the result would be a thin sound in the mids, at others a little too muddy. The real train crash tended to happen when the recording also suffered in a similar way to the speakers.

For example the U2 albums The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree and Acting Baby! could all give certain loudspeakers real issues as also could the Pogues third album If I Should Fall From the Grace of God. 

All 3 were very system dependent. Of course those 3 examples are just the tip of a Titanic sinking iceberg.

In my experience the attempt to fix things via cables or amps hardly ever succeeded for long term satisfaction. 

On the other hand well recorded tracks such as Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust, simply defy any system at any price to make them sound bad.