Audiophilepure

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/tannoy-stirling-iii-lz-special-edition

Tonally, these Tannoys sound lean and short of natural warmth through the midrange, leaving voices and instruments sounding thinner and harder than they should, which also contributes to a cluttered feel to the sound. We play around with the front panel settings for tweeter energy and roll-off but none of it helps as the issues have to do with quality rather than level.

Bass performance is also flawed. Tannoy’s engineers have worked hard on the porting arrangement in the cabinet, but the results aren’t great. The Stirling can dig relatively deeply, but compared to the ATC SCM50 speakers when playing bass fests like Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar OST or Massive Attack’s Heligoland set, there is a notable shortfall of grip and definition. A better grasp of rhythmic drive and greater timing precision in general would be nice too.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/goldenear-t66-loudspeaker

he result is a loudspeaker with a better balance overall. Not only is the sound less dense and compact in terms of imaging, but fine detail is presented in a more airy and open fashion. In other words, while never quite displaying ultimate resolution, the GoldenEar T66 has the audiophile character its designers were aiming for. Anyone used to the erstwhile ‘American’ tuning, which sometimes seemed more suited to home theatre than hi-fi, will be pleasantly surprised. The interplay between the T66’s passive drivers and its active woofers delivers spacious detail on an expansive soundstage that has the rock-solid foundation you would expect from a son of Triton. A benefit of the semi-active DSP-controlled approach is that the T66 generally remains in equilibrium, even at lower volumes.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/klipsch-nines-integrated-loudspeaker-system

I closed my eyes, forgot I was listening through little wooden boxes (and worked hard to ignore the vinyl ticks and clicks). Lo and behold, there he was in front of me, to my right, blowing that wonderful solo.

But can these speaker-gadgets rock? My acid test for speakers—for determining whether they have any hope of compatibility with my listening tastes—is the Rolling Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” from Sticky Fingers. The version I have preferred lately is on the Japanese SACD, which claims to be a “flat transfer” of the master tape. It preserves the dynamics I remember from the LP—nice, crisp drumbeats and distinct and varied guitars—as opposed to recent CD reissues, which are superloud with almost no dynamic range and so sound mushy. To my surprise, The Nines played the DSD file on my hard drive (ripped from the SACD by a friend who knows the “PlayStation method”) through the Foobar2000 player with the DSD/SACD plug-in.