Real Music vs Audiophile Mumbo Jumbo

Yahoochaz - I can certainly see (and hear) the appeal of these speakers. I was a professional musician myself for many years and did a considerable amount of work in a fairly prominent recording studio that used K-horns for monitors, in addition to Auritones and Yamaha NS-10m(s) of course. The Klipsch have tremendous dynamics and impact that escapes many other speakers, which can make them extremely exciting and enjoyable to listen to. However, to me, and I think I made it clear in my post that this was my opinion only, the k-horns have a nasality that sounds like one cupping their hands over their mouth and nose. Perhaps it was just that room, but I have heard others with a similar opinion about those and many other true horn speakers. All speakers I can afford have compromises and I choose the compromises I can best live with. I assume most of us do the same. Enjoy the music.

Live unamplified sound is a great tool for judging a system's accuracy, but it is not the only measure. The fact is most audiophile oriented systems cannot deal with concert level rock music. An electric guitar is an amplified instrument. Does it really matter that the PA system is an additional level of amplification? I don't think so. Does anybody participating in this forum have a system that can handle a Marshall 100 watt head driving dual 4 x 12" cabinets? Of course not! The fact that so many concert venues do not sound good is irrelevant. The fact that most popular recordings don't sound very good doesn't mean that a great sounding pop recording cannot be made. It's the same with live sound. If the promoter wants to spend the money, time and talent to get good sound it's not that hard to do.

Regarding using sound reinforcement equipment in a home setting to get the concert effect -- it's not likely to work. It's not so much about the equipment as it is the acoustic environment. A concert hall is a big space and your listening room isn't. I don't understand why, but the sound doesn't scale down to the smaller space effectively. This is true whether the sound is amplified or not. To get an accurate reproduction of a loud instrument filling a large acoustic space requires at a minimum a similarly large acoustic space.

If you really wanted to reproduce the concert effect I think you would be better off trying large studio monitors type speakers in a fairly large, well treated room. Zu, JBL, Tyler and Classic Audio Reproduction also make audiophile oriented speakers that would be applicable.

Apogee speakers sounded kind of live to me when I had them.
(Stages, 1995.)

Actually, Broadway does a much better job with music. Hair on Broadway last year in a small theater sounded really fine; I really appreciated the intimate acoustics. But I usually need earplugs at rock concerts and can't listen to music for a day or two after I go to one.

Of course, when I listen to the Beatles, most of that never existed live in the first place. So live is usually a fabrication anyway with popular music, which only lives in the matrix anyway...