beheme-it isn't a so called 'audiophile recording'. like most modern recordings, it is however meant to be enjoyed on a quality playback system. the 'notion' that 'the better a system is-the worse most cd's and lp's sound' is about all any consumer has left to hang their hat on, when they find themselves with tens of thousands of dollars in equipment that they can't enjoy anything on. accurately reproducing the recording and enjoying the music are not different goals. no recording engineer sets out to make peoples ears bleed. unfortunately most high end speaker designs are not made to be listened to for hours on end. they are built specifically to impress a potential buyer using an audiophile quality recording. one that does not really 'test' the speakers at all. loudspeakers that do not favor one frequency over another, and maintain that balance with any ss or tube amp make just about any commercial recording listenable. ar, allison,hales,avalon,ohm,gradient,shahinian,castle,harmonic precision,harbeth,snell(the originals)chapman,enigma,totem,duntech,etc. are just a sample of speakers that are well engineered at all pricepoints. if you can't enjoy the history of recorded music from the dawn of high fidelity until today, you've got a problem that no amount of tweeking and component changing(other than speakers) can solve. those pearl jam recordings are not only historically significent-they rock. giving up the history of rock music alone based on a demo with a patricia barber or jennifer warnes cd(which don't sound bad even on a boombox)is nothing short of a bad purchase.
