Care to offer comparisons? Wilson, YG, Magico, Stenheim, Rockport, Audio Note

@audphile1 ...to tune it more towards warmth and musicality.

Yup. Some amp/speaker designers strive for this, and know how to, which I prefer.

While others push for fast, transparent, hyper-detail which can be quite fatiguing.

@decooney @audphile1 

The question becomes, are there some speakers that no amp can do much to warm up? Are there limits to the kind of tone character an amp (or preamp) can affect with a given speaker?

@hilde45 i.e. if you read over the Axpona report here on the other Agon thread, you might note that well known amplifiers and well known speakers that sound warm and good were paired up, and reportedly did not sound good for unconfirmed reasons other than "seating" position, etc. There is more to it, lots of testing required, to find the right matching and setup it seems.

Yet in other rooms, at the exact same show and time apart within 30 minutes, the same pair of speakers sounded amazing in one room, and bad or not so inviting or engaging in an adjacent room down the hall. Why so? Room? Components used?

My local 53-year-in-business dealer obsesses with system setup and matching of amps, speakers, cabling, and fine tuning with sources like few I’ve seen before. Then we came home from shows on year, and go listen to his steps and wallah. Its there. I still tend to believe there is some real value in striking a balance with matching of components. I’ll never forget the 2019 show in NorCal. Two well-praised manufacturers got paired up in the same room and it sounded absolutely horrible to me. Everything about it sounded way off, was bummed for both Mfgs.

They had an idea, it did not work at all, did they test it before the show, maybe not.

Good matching is everything. Takes a lot of time, trial, and error to find it. Only way to know is to try different things, and why many members buy/sell/rotate gear as we see all of the time right here Agon. My .02 cents at least fwiw. Wishing all good luck on the journey and hopefully some good music listening along the way.