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Speakers that do pianos really well

I recently had the good fortune to listen to a half a dozen pretty well-regarded speakers back-to-back. For these kind of sessions I like using piano recordings - either solo or jazz trio - as a measure because, to my ear at least, it seems that speakers that can reproduce piano really well seem to be pretty well sorted on everything else. The surprising thing was how many of these speakers did NOT do piano well. Of the group there were only two - Vandersteen and Verity - that I thought really captured the big chords, shadings, timbres, and reverberations cleanly and naturally. The rest - and I'm not going to call them out by name - offered a mixed bag of over-brightness, distortion, and general unnaturalness. I was very surprised by the results as I expected better from some of these speakers based on their reviews and reputations. So my question is, Does anyone else use the piano as a litmus test, and what speakers do people use that they think do pianos really well? Regards.
grimace
robsker
132 posts
 
Grimace:

I am sure you were comparing apples to apples and I was not implying anything.

I was after a general point that I thought some might appreciate --- that being that piano reproduction is demanding upon the whole system and that often the culprit (in bad sounding piano reproduction) is the CD player and/or pre-amp --- that some of us likely have speakers that, if fed the right signal, would reproduce a fairly convincing piano --- and, as well, that great speakers fed bad signal sound bad.
italian
126 posts
 
In a modestly priced monitor the GMA Europa. As a reference I use the St Elsewhere Theme with the piano played by Dave Grusin (GRP Records). Wonderful. Also Kei's Theme by David Beniot. The Europa's does a great job on both and generally treat piano as to me a piano should sound.
ptss
1,964 posts
 
To do a piano well requires a speaker with mass. Otherwise many subtleties are drowned in the vibration of a smaller lighter speaker. Of course sound can be beautiful w/o being reasonably accurate. $ + sense are factors as always.
I reinforced and mass loaded my 200 lb speakers to 470 lbs and the delicacy and dynamics became startling and most enjoyable.
Steinway just sold. I hope they maintain/improve quality-pianos, of all instruments, deserve the finest. Most creators of music still use them.
bander's avatar
bander
504 posts
 
Don't know if they were mentioned already but if you can, audition Audio Note
speakers. I dropped something off to be repaired and piano music was playing. I was floored by the realism of the music coming through the Audio Note's. Gorgeous.
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,891 posts
 
Tonian Labs. Like Audio Note, they go counter to the "built like a vault" way of speaker building and still end up sounding very realistic.

That, and I agree with what Robsker says about what's upstream as well.

All the best,
Nonoise
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