Most forgiving speakers?

castle,gradient,vanderstein,spendor,harbeth,ohm

Of the 20 or so different speaker I've owned, the only ones that I truely enjoyed for old, poorly mastered Classic Rock CD's were the Swan's Diva 5.1 and the Fried A-6. My system is pretty revealing and poorly mastered rock CD's sound, well, poor! But, that's OK with me because most of the music I listen to sounds great on it. But, I do remember thinking that if I listened mostly to older rock CDs, I would be really happy with both of the speakers I listed above.

Enjoy,

TIC

get an affordable tube amp - maybe a refurbished vintage scott or fisher - nothing sounds really awful through tubes!

IMHO Boom box are more forgiving than anything else

Often a speaker that is especially "forgiving" has a somewhat recessed upper midrange/lower treble region. This is the region where the ear is most sensitive (as indicated by the Fletcher-Munsen curve), so any coloration in this region is especially annoying.

The BBC-spec LS3/5a design was I believe among the first to intentionally incorporate a dip in the 3 kHz ballpark region for psychoacoustic purposes - now commonly known as the "BBC dip". It can result in what some would consider an overly sweet and laid-back sound, but it certainly is forgiving. Silverline (among others) offers several models with a significant "BBC dip" in the response, and they are indeed very forgiving and relaxing.

Maggies 3.6 and below are voiced with a broad, shallow dip in the midrange which serves to psychoacoustially balance out the lack of deep bass, and as a side benefit Maggies are exceptionally forgiving.

Also, in general a speaker with a wide radiation pattern tends to be more forgiving than a narrow-pattern speaker. Examples include models from Shahinian, Dueval, Beveridge, Sound Lab, MBL, old Epicures, and Bose (yup - that and a severe BBC-ish dip are Amar's secret weapons).