How to meaningfully audition speakers??

I have no experience, first hand or anecdotal, in recording studios but I can see certain types of individuals gravitate to certain fields and endeavors and bring with them their disciplines. These disciplines may seem or appear to be stereotypical and not true as a whole but they do serve as a basis.

Type casting is a no-no as there are always exceptions to the rule: long haired rockers who always use 11; studious geeks who defer to exactitude; free thinkers who tend to experiment.

I'd love to hear what the pros say as well and shed some light on why they think certain genres of CDs sound better and those who broke the mold or went against the grain to get the best sound they could.

All the best,
Nonoise

Is Walter Becker's (Steely Dan bass, guitar, writer) latest solo CD rock? Because I think it's sonically astounding, and perhaps a reference of sorts. Modern pop music producers might insist on high gain compressed sound because they think that's what people want, and that approach is controversial but shows up all over the place. Hippity Hop/Rap and Norwegian Death Metal don't cater to audiophiles anyway, nor do Miley Cyrus and any other "modern" pop things, but I have only a vague idea of what that stuff sounds like anyway as life is too short to waste listening to music I don't like. I listen to a lot of modern jazz from Jason Moran and Jon Scofield to Bad Plus, etc., and it is often of reference sound quality...only meaning the producer has caring ears.

And Frogman, it would also be interesting to hear your thoughts regarding orchestral recordings in the modern stereo era where there seems even a greater variance. From the origins of the great recordings of RCA, Mercury and Decca to a seeming complacency as stereo took hold for the masses. I guess there would have to be a historical perspective of this that would probably take a volume or two to understand what really happened and why.

Wolf,
I understand the notion of pleasing the mass public, but I'd think most would appreciate bettet sound of their preferred music if given a choice. My preference is jazz on both major and obscure labels . Most of my friends who love jazz aren't audiophiles by any stretch of the imagination, just music lovers from all walks of life. I don't know what being a so called audiophile has to do with it.l own hardly any "audiophile" labels , the music most often is bland and un involving. So have the recording engineers decided that only jazz and classical music listeners care about the sound quality? If that's the consensus I say they're wrong. There are good sounding pop recordings just a smaller percentage than is surely possible.
Charles,

Hi Charles - your question has been touched on in a couple of different threads, including that jazz one. I think I'll let Frogman take a stab at it here if he likes, as he writes much better than I do. A short and flippant answer would be that almost all recording engineers are untrained (meaning self-taught, basically), and most really don't have any idea what they are doing. I am more than half serious when I say that, unfortunately.... Modern digital techniques have enabled any idiot to think they can make a great recording now, and there are many of them thinking they are doing so. They just stick a bunch of mikes all over the place and mix it however they think sounds cool. Even in the classical world. The musicians almost always have a much better basic understanding of how to record their own instruments properly than the sound guys do. But we almost never have any control over that whatsoever - this is true of musicians in all genres. The recording labels drive the bus in general. The musicians are lucky to be consulted at all, and in the orchestral world it would only be the conductor getting consulted, maybe a soloist too if there is one, except in very rare circumstances.

Yes, I could give a more serious reply, but this is actually an issue that very quickly makes me very angry. This is why most professional musicians roll their eyes at audiophiles that say they want to maintain "fidelity to the recorded signal" above all other priorities. Much of the time, the recording job was crap - why the hell should we be faithful to someone who we know did not record us well? Instead, the reference point for a system, auditioning speakers being the most important part of that, should be to the actual sound of un-amplified live music, as Frogman said.

Another flippant answer about why the older orchestral recordings sound much better would be that it has everything to do with analog vs. digital recording techniques, particularly the differences in the miking, but let's not start that argument here. OK, I'll shut up now.