How to meaningfully audition speakers??

Some great things here - first, I knew that Frogman would write a much better response than mine, and I am pleased to see it does not conflict whatsoever with mine, either.

Charles, I believe his post answers your next question to me, I think?

Bifwynne, I think that is a good point you make. With digital editing techniques as they are now, an engineer who knows what they are doing can pretty much make anything sound like whatever they want. This is another big reason why there is not much standardization.

Onhwy61, while I understand your point, I have to disagree. Unfortunately, one thing Frogman and I are basically saying is that there is not much aesthetics involved at all in recording nowadays, particularly the really commercial pop stuff. I think you are giving the engineers too much credit there. As Frogman said, recreating subtle tonal colors and balances of acoustic instruments, no matter what the ensemble size, just cannot be done artificially with multi-miking and a mixing board. So yes, those things do matter very much in the equation. Multi-miking and mixing tends to almost completely obliterate spatial cues, for just one example. That's why they add reverb, to make it sound more "live" again - but all sense of the actual recording space (assuming it was in a decent concert hall or jazz club or church) is gone, and with it many other important aspects of the sound. This unfortunately applies to all but a very tiny percentage indeed of the digital recording that has ever been done, so that does have quite a bit to do with it, too. This is not to say that you can't mike things for a digital recording the same way for an analog recording - you could. But this is almost never done.

Bifwynne/OP: As many have already said, it often boils down to buy and try, prefereably used, so as not to take too big a financial hit. Right now I am A/B/C'ing three different pairs of monitors. All three are great speakers, but each is unique. I think it is worth reading all available reviews and user comments, but our experience invariably is that, in our system, in our listening space, a speaker's performance (or most any component's performance) is always a bit different from the write-ups, sometimes to the better, sometimes not so much. Having three pairs compete side by side at the moment is a bit nuts I guess (and not cheap), but sooner or later two of those pairs will find new homes, where someone else will have a good time finding what works best for them.

Learsfool, perhaps your disappointment with modern recordings is inherent with what constitutes a modern pop/rock recording. With rare exception they are purposely not trying to capture a acoustic instrument in a real space. Modern recordings are multitrack collages rather than some document of a real event. The tools used to construct these collages while not unique to pop/rock, don't really travel well to recording other music types. It's not that these techniques, methods or aesthetics are "wrong", but rather they are not artistically appropriate in other musical categories.

Outside of audiophiles you won't find too many people obsessed with the sound of real instrument in a real space as a critical goal in music reproduction.

Hi Onhwy61 - your last post expresses exactly what I was saying. However, it is not just rock/pop recording that uses multi-miking and tracking - ALL modern recording does this, whether appropriate or not. There are very few exceptions, even in the jazz and classical worlds. That's exactly the problem - these techniques DID travel to the other music types, very soon after these digital techniques were possible in the 80s. I have never seen less than seven or eight mikes at any recording session I have ever been a part of, even of a small ensemble (professional recordings, that is). As I said before - this shouldn't have to be inherent in theory to modern/digital recording - yet the fact remains that it is in actual practice. These techniques, as you say, have nothing to do with the sound of real instruments in a real space. They have everything to do with ease of editing and mixing, and almost nothing to do with the actual sound of the music being made by the musicians. This is why musicians laugh at the concept of "fidelity to the recording."

I wouldn't refer to appreciating the sound and beauty of well played
acoustic instruments an obsession. Is it too much to ask for instruments
and voices to sound as realistic and natural as we know they actually do?

Why do we have to settle for the lowest common denominator (well the
generalmpublic doesn't complain) . Yes I can enjoy music with my clock
radio if it's music I connect with. We know how wonderful skilled musicians
sound playing their precious instruments(and years of practice to reach
this level). I find it dismissive and disrespectful to the musicians to say the
sound they produce is a trivial concern. Shame on the tin eared sound
engineers who can't appreciate what they're recording. I want these
engineers to make a honest effort to preserve as much of the original venue
instrument sound as they possibly can. Anything less is short changing the
musicians and the listener.
Charles,