Ever heard speakers which sound like live music?
IMO a good approximation to experiencing a life-like performance in your room from your hi-fi is when you can't hear the music is actually coming from a pair of speakers but is simply born in space in front of you. a feat that only few speakers can do in your listening room. unless your room is an anechoic chamber. so yes, you've got a point mentioning room acoustics (in your previous post)...
I'm not sure about that, at least the bit about only a few speakers being capable. All of my hifi systems have managed to provide a perfectly good stereo image, right down to the 10 year old Kenwood midi system in my kitchen. Again though, stereo image is largely down to the mix and how the engineer/producer wanted the final sound to be presented. If you can hear separation between the artists/instruments, that's how the track was mixed. No matter how good the speakers, they will not create something that was not already there.
You can only ever compare a speaker to live, if the speaker is heard in the same environment as the live recording or performance, so any other comparison is rather pointless.
the problem is I never mentioned stereo imaging. that was never the point of my post. more, a perfectly imaging speakers may never bring you closer to what I had in mind. don't try to figure what I had in mind and just read my words literally. what I meant is; can you really tell that you're hearing a band playing live to you in your room from your mini monitors or from your Kenwood midi and not a bunch of hobbits floating in the middle of your room playing on kids toy instruments? can you tell that grand piano gives an impression of being grand and not the size of a music box?
the problem with most monitor - like speakers is that (unless they play in an anechoic chamber) they will reveal their true miniature size due to room reflections being correctly deciphered by your brain. moreover, the brain will see them as the source of sound and not the apparent soundsources they create in stereo image. it is then up to your concious self to fool yourself into thinking that a band is playing in front of you. but what I'm after is that you don't have to fool yourself into believing there are no speakers. and this is the ultimate goal of sound reproduction IMO.
IMO a good approximation to experiencing a life-like performance in your room from your hi-fi is when you can't hear the music is actually coming from a pair of speakers but is simply born in space in front of you. a feat that only few speakers can do in your listening room. unless your room is an anechoic chamber. so yes, you've got a point mentioning room acoustics (in your previous post)...
I'm not sure about that, at least the bit about only a few speakers being capable. All of my hifi systems have managed to provide a perfectly good stereo image, right down to the 10 year old Kenwood midi system in my kitchen. Again though, stereo image is largely down to the mix and how the engineer/producer wanted the final sound to be presented. If you can hear separation between the artists/instruments, that's how the track was mixed. No matter how good the speakers, they will not create something that was not already there.
You can only ever compare a speaker to live, if the speaker is heard in the same environment as the live recording or performance, so any other comparison is rather pointless.
the problem is I never mentioned stereo imaging. that was never the point of my post. more, a perfectly imaging speakers may never bring you closer to what I had in mind. don't try to figure what I had in mind and just read my words literally. what I meant is; can you really tell that you're hearing a band playing live to you in your room from your mini monitors or from your Kenwood midi and not a bunch of hobbits floating in the middle of your room playing on kids toy instruments? can you tell that grand piano gives an impression of being grand and not the size of a music box?
the problem with most monitor - like speakers is that (unless they play in an anechoic chamber) they will reveal their true miniature size due to room reflections being correctly deciphered by your brain. moreover, the brain will see them as the source of sound and not the apparent soundsources they create in stereo image. it is then up to your concious self to fool yourself into thinking that a band is playing in front of you. but what I'm after is that you don't have to fool yourself into believing there are no speakers. and this is the ultimate goal of sound reproduction IMO.
You are either listening to live music in a venue or you are listening to a recording on some sort of sound system. If you truly want to imerse yourself in the music from the latter to make believe that you are in the former, then some amount of use of your imagination or foolery is going to come into play.
You can of course fool yourself into thinking otherwise. 
P.S You did very much imply stereo imaging, intentionally or not.
There's a common theme in most opinions here - bass (or lack of it) and sheer volume. Even in a detached house, to get the system to sound as loud as the real thing requires some pretty hefty speakers and something to drive them, in any case most of us would cringe at it anyway.
The second most critical cue I think is spatial positioning - the ear is extremely good at positioning the direction of sounds to create a 3D model. Any system that gets these two things right is on the right path. Personally I don't think tonality is that important, you quickly get used to any deviation, unsurprising when room acoustics change the timbre of sounds so much we're able to adapt to it.
You are either listening to live music in a venue or you are listening to a recording on some sort of sound system. If you truly want to imerse yourself in the music from the latter to make believe that you are in the former, then some amount of use of your imagination or foolery is going to come into play.
You can of course fool yourself into thinking otherwise.
P.S You did very much imply stereo imaging, intentionally or not.
I'll say it once again. the ultimate aim of a sound reproducing system is to mimic sounds born naturally, by natural sources. where no imagination nor self foolery would be necessary. I'm not saying we got there yet. but some speakers are definitely better at this than others.
You are either listening to live music in a venue or you are listening to a recording on some sort of sound system. If you truly want to imerse yourself in the music from the latter to make believe that you are in the former, then some amount of use of your imagination or foolery is going to come into play.
You can of course fool yourself into thinking otherwise.
P.S You did very much imply stereo imaging, intentionally or not.
I'll say it once again. the ultimate aim of a sound reproducing system is to mimic sounds born naturally, by natural sources. where no imagination nor self foolery would be necessary. I'm not saying we got there yet. but some speakers are definitely better at this than others.
I'd say the ultimate aim of a sound reproducing system, is to be as true to the recording as possible, whatever form it may take. It is always worth noting that almost all recordings have had some form of manipulation before coming to press, so the best you can hope for is either as neutral sounding a system as possible, if absolutes are your thing, or something that simply sounds right to you.
Granted, part of all that would be a portray a fair likeness to acoustic instrument sounds. As long as you're happy, that's all that matters.
Personally I don't think tonality is that important, you quickly get used to any deviation, unsurprising when room acoustics change the timbre of sounds so much we're able to adapt to it.
I would find the opposite. If tonality isn't what I consider reasonably accurate, I don't get used to it, but dislike it more by the day (even if I've tried to convince myself otherwise).
Tonality is crucial to the reproduction of acoustic instruments in my opinion. However, I haven't yet heard any hi-fi which fully re-creates the experience of hearing an acoustic instrument played live. My own instrument, the piano, is very difficult to record and reproduce and although some systems do better than others, I'm not convinced that any hi-fi will ever be able to do a completely convincing job (even if anyone manages to do a completely convincing job of recording a piano in the first place). However, I am especially picky when it comes to the piano as I work with them every day, from small 2nd hand uprights all the way up to 9 foot 3 concert grands, and we are especially focused on the tonal and dynamic capabilities of different instruments. Interestingly, I also get to hear lots of acoustic guitars and find that even really good hi-fi struggles to totally capture the experience of hearing one played live.
I am going to try a pair of these at some point in the future they are an infinite baffle type speaker with bass frequency response down to 28hz to and a cabinet made from cast aluminium an tensioned with rods to 2500N .
say what?!
Sorry I don't understand 
I am going to try a pair of these at some point in the future they are an infinite baffle type speaker with bass frequency response down to 28hz to and a cabinet made from cast aluminium an tensioned with rods to 2500N .
say what?!
Sorry I don't understand
You're not the only one.
I am going to try a pair of these at some point in the future they are an infinite baffle type speaker with bass frequency response down to 28hz to and a cabinet made from cast aluminium an tensioned with rods to 2500N .
say what?!
Sorry I don't understand
You're not the only one.
baffle is the face of the speaker, plane at which drivers are mounted. so infinite baffle means you can't really make such an enclosure to meat that requirement, there's no infinity in reality. however, the rules don't have to be so strict to meet the requirement because the longest length of a soundwave is still finite. advantage of infinite baffle speakers is that enclosure dispersion variations are nonexistent. so in order to have IB speaker for down to 20Hz you'd need to have baffle at least 17m. so for instance a speaker mounted flash in wall is essentially an infinite baffle.
sometimes IB term refers to large enclosure speakers but it's not really right. and it's definitely not right to use this term in case of such small speakers as from Electrocompaniet.
I'll say it once again. the ultimate aim of a sound reproducing system is to mimic sounds born naturally, by natural sources. where no imagination nor self foolery would be necessary. I'm not saying we got there yet. but some speakers are definitely better at this than others.
I'd say the ultimate aim of a sound reproducing system, is to be as true to the recording as possible, whatever form it may take. It is always worth noting that almost all recordings have had some form of manipulation before coming to press, so the best you can hope for is either as neutral sounding a system as possible, if absolutes are your thing, or something that simply sounds right to you.
Granted, part of all that would be a portray a fair likeness to acoustic instrument sounds. As long as you're happy, that's all that matters.
one and the other don't necessarily have to tread separate paths. if you have a good recording where a lot of attention is put into conveying the real sound of the musical event, regardless live or recorded in studio, you'll be able to hear that. likewise a poor or overprocessed recording will show its shortcomings very soon.
my point is that in case of well recorded music, where it's recorded as close to natural sound of the event you should be able to get fooled much easier into believing this is the real thing on a system that is more capable in doing so.
and it's not really about neutral or natural. I'm not banging about frequency responses and harmonic distortion of audio gear. I'm just saying that almost every speaker on this planet don't excite the air as instruments do. that's why music played through those speakers sounds like that, like it's played through a speaker. with only one exception - rock music - where amps and speakers are musical instruments for this kind of music. for every acoustic music dynamic speakers as transducers are simply an abomination.
Personally I don't think tonality is that important, you quickly get used to any deviation, unsurprising when room acoustics change the timbre of sounds so much we're able to adapt to it.
I would find the opposite. If tonality isn't what I consider reasonably accurate, I don't get used to it, but dislike it more by the day (even if I've tried to convince myself otherwise).
By tonality I mean frequency response - a little bright or a little recessed. Timbre for me is a component of detail and is altogether different.
The added bonus is the lack of annoying people talking over the music and just being there because they think they should, spoiling it for other people. Alcohol is cheaper at home too, without the travel costs.....
Why not throw headphones into the debate as some swear by them instead of speakers. Just a thought.
What nonsense! Infinite baffle is a sealed box enclosure. It is a speaker term and not the literal meaning of an infinitely large baflle. Obviously!
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+1 overdose. My thoughts too.
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