Onh,
I suppose it depends on ones goals and corrsponding perspective.
If you just want to hear the recording, headphones are probably the best way to do that.
Any stereo speakers take it to different level by nature of the resulting sound heard being totally dependent on room acoustics in all cases, with the exception perhaps of an ideal nearfield setup.
If you consider the recording to be more than just a recording being played back in stereo on two speakers though, in other words a technical abstraction of live music, the sound of that too is always affected by room acoustics and those spatial cues from direct and reflected recorded sound is in the recording to various degrees. For teh best recordings, they tend to be there A LOT!!!
So the reflected sound of teh room during playback is needed in order to attempt to best reproduce what might have been heard live rather than just what is in a 2 channel stereo recording.
Of course playback room acoustics will be different than what existed during recording, so the two may never be exactly the same, but can come pretty close when both are similar.
You might get a pretty good idea what the jazz quartet sounded like when recorded live in a small jazz club in a decent sized room at home, but that symphonic recording is less likely to have the room to breathe that the original players did.
I suppose it depends on ones goals and corrsponding perspective.
If you just want to hear the recording, headphones are probably the best way to do that.
Any stereo speakers take it to different level by nature of the resulting sound heard being totally dependent on room acoustics in all cases, with the exception perhaps of an ideal nearfield setup.
If you consider the recording to be more than just a recording being played back in stereo on two speakers though, in other words a technical abstraction of live music, the sound of that too is always affected by room acoustics and those spatial cues from direct and reflected recorded sound is in the recording to various degrees. For teh best recordings, they tend to be there A LOT!!!
So the reflected sound of teh room during playback is needed in order to attempt to best reproduce what might have been heard live rather than just what is in a 2 channel stereo recording.
Of course playback room acoustics will be different than what existed during recording, so the two may never be exactly the same, but can come pretty close when both are similar.
You might get a pretty good idea what the jazz quartet sounded like when recorded live in a small jazz club in a decent sized room at home, but that symphonic recording is less likely to have the room to breathe that the original players did.