How to meaningfully audition speakers??

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,

It sounds like what Frogman said. Jazz and classical for some reason have engineers that care more about the music and its end results. This is one of the reasons I gravitated towards these two genre of music after being a rock head for many years. I appreciated the difference in quality and I actually could hear the instruments the way they should sound. I was hooked in a very short time.

"It sounds like what Frogman said. Jazz and classical for some reason have engineers that care more about the music and its end results. "

Maybe. They definitely have priorities that tend to align better with the textbook "audiophile".

I shy away from better/worse judgements like this though. Its a matter of opinion and personal preferences to a large extent. Classical/jazz and popular music are two different beasts marching to two different drums. Good to very good recordings that enable one to enjoy what they hear seem to be more the norm I hear these days in general than in past years, at least since the mid 1990's or so.

I have read things about digital recording techniques and technical standards improvements over the years that explain why.

Not to say that many a modern recording targeting purely a large pop audience these days is not largely reduced to a fairly low common denominator in all regards including sound quality that keeps its market as open as possible.

I would not doubt jazz/classical music attracts more musical "purists" in all regards, including production, but I would probably just leave it at that.

"Monkey Business" by Black Eyed Peas is a somewhat modern pop CD with good production quality overall I would say that has a lot of music FBOFW packed into it and serves as a good challenge to determine if a playback system is underpowered and can deliver the goods without clipping or not.

Clipping is public enemy #1 IMHO in regards to good sound. Effects of clipping can range from subtle/hard to detect to blatant distortion and/or lack of large scale dynamics. No system that clips will sound as good as it might, high end or otherwise.

Inefficient speakers with extended bass often require surprising amounts of power to NOT clip with many recordings played at even moderate volume levels.

Public Enemy #1

In order to "meaningfully" audition speakers, clipping must be avoided.

The best insurance policy is to start with the biggest best amp possible for the initial audition, as an insurance policy against clipping.

Most smaller speakers that promise any kind of flat response below 50 hz or so will require amps capable of delivering 250 w/ch or more into 8 ohms (doubling to 500 w/ch into 4 ohms) for that "insurance policy".

More power is always better than less to establish an initial reference.

From there, you might find less power suitable in the end, but not until you have a performance reference that is best assured to not involve clipping.

Most tube amps and some SS amps "soft clip". SOft clipping has less offensive distortion characteristics than "hard clipping" but clipping is always a form of distortion and best to avoid altogether to the maximum extent possible, unless the best dynamics possible are not a concern.

I suppose that my distaste for studio recordings in general is the mixing involved which is readily heard and certainly not appreciated by me. This being the primary reason I gravitate more towards live recordings. Case in point just the other day a friend sent me a youtube link to a live clip of Melody Gardot singing "Baby I'm a Fool" recorded during a TV show. I liked it so much I spent time trying to find a live disc with this cut. I ended settling for the studio album "My One and Only Thrill" which I just received last night. The mixing involved in the studio version with the overdubbed orchestra robbed the immediacy and connection of the live performance. To most folks maybe many audiophiles, this wouldn't matter but it did to me as my first experience was that live performance which so much better communicated that song to me than the studio version. The mixing that these "sound engineers" use often times robs so much of the magic of the live performance, this one was no exception. The voice was certainly there but the recording just sounded so disjointed and pieced together and didn't have the same magic.

It does seem there really isn't enough interest outside of audiophiles that obsess over these matters. If the artists don't insist on a better end product it seemingly won't happen downstream.