Audiophilepure

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/jbl-hdi-3600-loudspeaker-review

Easing into something a bit more subtle and quiet, I streamed harpist Mary Lattimore’s “Til a Mermaid Drags You Under” (16/44.1 FLAC, Tidal), a track from her latest release, Silver Ladders. The song’s dry, cascading layers of harp, mixed with reverb-heavy guitar (from Slowdive’s Neil Halstead), were conveyed with impressive clarity by the JBLs, and there was a notable sense of spatial depth. When the song’s bass synth drones are introduced about halfway through, the sound becomes anchored with a massive foundation that serves to enlarge both the horizontal and vertical scale. The HDI-3600 towers rendered this perfectly, disappearing into an endless-seeming soundstage that somehow reminded me of sitting in a planetarium.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/paradigm-persona-b-loudspeakers

This speaker sounds superb with anything you care to throw at it. The Marshall Tucker Band’s live recording of ‘Everyday (I Have the Blues)’ [The Marshall Tucker Band; 44.1kHz/16-bit FLAC] is ramshackle and riotous, the group at times clinging onto its blues rhythm with levels varying wildly. The Persona B conveyed it sublimely, placing crowd claps and whistles at the back of the soundstage, and capturing every half-pitch bend and leading edge of Toy Caldwell’s guitar playing.

Changing tack entirely, Chase & Status’s dance anthem ‘All Goes Wrong’ [Tribe; 44.1kHz/16-bit FLAC] benefited from the speaker’s precision timing and bass handling. The continuous deep notes that carry the chorus had a purity that spoke of a cabinet and driver working in perfect harmony. Less all goes wrong, more all goes right…

https://www.stereophile.com/content/bowers-wilkins-705-signature-loudspeaker

I always turn to solo piano recordings to judge a loudspeaker’s midrange quality. I recorded Canadian pianist Robert Silverman live in concert in 1992 with a spaced pair of omnidirectional microphones, so the stereo imaging on the subsequent CD (Concert, Stereophile STPH005-2) is diffuse (footnote 2). But Robert’s performance of Schubert’s six Moments Musicaux remains a favorite all these years later. The rich, warm tone of his Steinway that was captured by the microphones was reproduced in almost full measure by the 705 Signatures, only the lowest notes—in the middle section of the first Moment, for example—lacking body. However, the image of the piano was more forward in the low treble than I am used to, both with my Silverman recording and with Murray Perahia’s 2017 performance of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” piano sonata (24/96 WAV file, DG 4798353). This didn’t get in the way of the music, but it does suggest that the 705 Signatures won’t be an optimal match with source components or amplification that themselves have balances on the forward side.

The Klipsch Cornwall IV Speakers

“Addressing tastes of listeners who bought into certain buttoned-down principles promulgated by audio tastemakers who never negotiated the musical sea changes that occurred once the 70s revved into gear, the market overflows with speakers that nail classical, small-scale jazz, low-key Americana, and close-miked vocal music—only to run with their veritable tails between their legs when called to unpack information in dense, complicated recordings. All-rounder designs “are rarer. Cornwall IV excels with rock, metal, R&B, rap, electronic, and jazz. Still, the manners in which it handles classical and acoustic-based fare please, and hint at both delicacy and sophistication.

Not to suggest Cornwall IV suits everyone. It certainly does not—and will not suffice for those exclusively bent on critical listening and/or playing the role of recording engineer. But, if you listen to a variety of genres, place a premium on the sound of live music, value engagement over crack precision, possess the requisite space in your room, or, alternatively, want to construct a second system devised for concert-like experiences, you could do far, far worse—and will likely spend thousands more in the process

Mellow Acoustics FrontRo hybrid electrostatic loudspeaker

“Ultimately, this is a speaker for those who play music in rooms that don’t like loudspeakers! Electrostatics tend to thrive in large rooms, and the FrontRo is the exception. In small to mid-sized rooms where electrostatics usually struggle, the Mellow Acoustics FrontRo delivers a fine standard of performance, especially with speech. I’ve concentrated on vocals in part because the FrontRo shows how poor many loudspeakers are at reproducing the human voice, but it’s not simply designed for speech replay; a loudspeaker that gets the human voice right tends to get music right, and unless you are a fan of trouser-flapping, filling-loosening organ music or genres that include the word ‘dub’ played in barn-sized rooms, this is the antidote to rectangular wooden boxes and the limits they impose on sound. 

https://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/equipment-reviews/1502-kef-ls50-meta-loudspeakers

After I’d listened to more music through the LS50 Metas and found nothing that contradicted what I’ve said above, I brought in my original LS50s for some comparisons. “I’ve Got to See You Again,” streamed from Norah Jones’s Come Away with Me (24/192 FLAC, Blue Note/Qobuz), let me suss out the differences pretty well. Through the Metas, Jones’s piano, which begins this track, sounded a little farther back on the stage, and her keystrokes were a tiny bit cleaner — not a big difference, but it became obvious after repeated comparisons. Then there was the violin — Jenny Scheinman plays it throughout this track, but it’s most audible just after 2:20, when it was more prominent through the LS50s. But that prominence came with a hint of stridency the Metas didn’t have; overall, this track sounded better through the Metas.

I heard the biggest differences in the reproduction of Jones’s voice, which is front and center on every track of Come Away with Me. It sounded almost the same through the two speaker pairs, but Jones’s sibilants — they’re how her voice was recorded — were more emphasized through the LS50s. This got me thinking that the original LS50 has a bit more lift in certain parts of the treble. Through the Metas, her voice also sounded cleaner, less fuzzy, and its image was placed more solidly in the center of the stage. This tighter vocal image appeared on a soundstage that floated completely free of the Metas’ cabinets — the original LS50s’ cabinets don’t “disappear” quite as completely. I never heard sounds coming directly from the LS50s’ cabinets, but when I listened intently, I could occasionally sense the cabinets’ precise positions. But things like bass and high-frequency extension, as well as scale and output, were exactly the same through both sets of speakers — though I did think that the kick drum in “I’ve Got to See You Again,” even if it had the same weight and the same low-end extension, sounded slightly cleaner through the Metas.

As with the original, the Stilla’s tweeter is fitted with a dispersion cone to eliminate unwanted effects in the top octave, and also to fix the middle of the dome tweeter section against resonance. The membrane is driven directly by the voice coil as with any other tweeter but with a larger flexible surround than is the norm and with its center point fixed in position. That is something that I am not aware of anyone else doing. For the Stilla specifically, the acoustic lens was optimized by using fast 3D prototyping to make it work with even more demanding (smaller) rooms and to adjust time alignment of the slightly less tall speaker to best fit the various possible listening heights.

The mid-bass unit is made from mineral-filled PP and is fitted with a super-high-speed ferrite motor. The unit is mounted in a closed section with a tapered backside to avoid parallel walls and minimize the returning sound waves from the rear of the cabinet. Special Baileys longhair sheep wool is applied to dampen some of the remaining energy without the loss of natural and high sensitivity reproduction of
midrange frequencies.