Ever heard speakers which sound like live music?

IB is commonly used for sealed box speakers since the 70's but it is the wrong term to use really.

Its more accurate to use it for in wall speakers that have a room behind, like IB subwoofers using attic space for the rear chamber for example.

Taken from wiki (with a pinch of salt)

"A variation on the 'open baffle' approach is to mount the loudspeaker driver in a very large sealed enclosure, providing minimal 'air spring' restoring force to the cone. This minimizes the change in the driver's resonant frequency caused by the enclosure. Some infinite baffle 'enclosures' have used an adjoining room, basement, or a closet or attic. This is often the case with exotic rotary woofer installations as they are intended to go to frequencies lower than 20 Hertz and displace large volumes of air. “Infinite baffle” or simply “IB” is also used as a generic term for sealed enclosures of any size, the name being used because of the ability of a sealed enclosure to prevent any interaction between the forward and rear radiation of a driver at low frequencies."

From the original OP - No! but to continue the theoretical debate...

Live band - Set up recording mic and play back using the same speakers in the same hall - I guess the result would be pretty realistic.

Orchestra/acoustic instruments - set up mics in the position of your ears. Playback with a good system in same venue. - result should be also good.

Outside these parameters ones brain interprets 'realism' and is therefore totally subjective.

ANY recorded music played in another location can never be 'realistic'.

Thats my views for what they are worth - but this should not detract from OP where it is interesting to find some 'realistic' sounding systems.

Cheers all

I was under the impression that "infinite baffle loudspeaker" was a technical term for sealed box loudspeaker .

http://www.loudspeakerdesign.co.uk/infinite_baffle.php

I only mentioned the type of construction because most speakers that go down to a solid 28 hz have some type of reflex port or transmission line .

As far as I know this speaker is unique in its method of  cabinet construction and design .

http://cybwiz.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/electrocompaniet-nordic-tone-1.html

As far as I can see, its a closed (sealed) box made from aluminium with some fancy stuffing out of airplane fuselage and some tensioning rods.

Nothing new in any of that but might be the only speaker using a combination of the 3 technologies.

like I said before; some call sealed boxes infinite baffles, but they are not. you get true infinite baffle enclosure when the speaker don't suffer from baffle step response anomaly. and that happens when sound wave is longer than the baffle size. so you see, you need really big surface to shift this effect very low in sound spectrum. therefore in real life the only true IB speakers would be wall mounted speakers with large cavity behind drivers.

one more thing about sealed boxes. with relation to those speakers open baffle  is used with relation to speakers with big enough enclosures so that drivers don't benefit from air spring suspension effect, i.e. they are easy to drive and don't loose efficiency, but drivers may ring more. I don't think those Electrocompaniet fall even in this group. they are rather small speakers with low internal volume.

http://www.tnt-audio.com/edcorner/prat_e.html

Interesting read, I had always thought of PRAT as something subjective (which is it is of course) but not something you can measure, which you clearly can. I'm of the opinion that the electromechanical transducers are the least sophisticated in terms of accuracy, presenting the biggest challenge, to my ears by far the biggest difference between boxes is a change of speakers. The difference between the Spendor S6e and the D18s is so much more obvious that any DAC, CDP, or even amp change.

One thing I am discovering with this round of home demos is that the source has the least effect on the enjoyment in terms of £ for £ changes. It takes lots of £s to make a significant change with electronics, but nowhere near as much is you change speakers and to a lesser extent the analogue electronics. Maybe jitter has been effectively conquered, and it's time to focus on phase acuracy instead.

Very readable and incisive article....and the best explanation I've seen as to what PRaT actually is. 

Many moons ago I studied music and played an instrument, so this particular explanation hit home - so thank you for the link.

With regard to the importance of the source and its relative importance to the rest of the system, I partly agree. 

Speakers have the most obvious effect on the sound, but the amp has a huge bearing on whether they will reach anywhere near their potential. Generally speaking, I would rather have cheaper speakers really well driven, than expensive speakers poorly driven.....though I realize that leaves a lot of middle ground.

For me, the source is vital, but only in relation to the quality of the rest of the system (which allow it to shine). In the digital realm, excellent results can be achieved at modest levels of outlay; but as you rightly say, things get very expensive if you want to get big gains.

Yeah mine.   . 

Thank you for the great discussion, I've been only reading so far so as not to distract from the original topic. In my opinion, in hifi you can go 3 extreme routes in order to achieve what you think represents live music accurately. 1) A preamp and massive power amp coupled with huge speakers 2) A fleawatt amp anything from 2-20 watts coupled with some highly efficient speakers 3) the active speaker route.

Having recently heard the audiolab 8000 pre/power, BnW 683 and Rega Planet combo which is a good setup by most measures, my opinion is that it does big very well, it throws a big soundstage with big dynamic swings and it has big bass with bags of control. However, I do not think of that to be an accurate representation of a live venue playing jazz, it just doesn't have that subtlety, the soul and the emotion. It does electronic music rather well and is very comfortable with the likes of Massive Attack, Nicolas Jaar etc.

Then come my Cayin amp, custom Avatar speakers and my humble Dac-magic. It has no deep bass what so ever but goes as low as the lowest note on a cello, it is uncomfortable with hugely complicated bassy tracks. However, it has subtlety, sophistication, timbre and conveys the size of musicians in my room accurately (they don't appear to be 10 feet tall). Not to mention the soundstage is even more precise than the previous combo. It works magic with jazz, classical and acoustic but is absolutely sub par with electronic....I cannot play them with electronic at all. 

Then is the active route, I think its the best compromise, it has power when needed but subtlety when not. However it doesn't do either as well as combo a or b.