Music Lovers Speaker vs. Audiophile Speaker

In my mind an Audiophile is a person and a speaker is a speaker.
Of course all speakers are not Audiophile worthy, so I understand calling a speaker an Audiophile speaker, but beyond that, not so much.
Analytical vs Musical?
A detailed speaker that plays music very to the point, without a real flow can certainly be considered analytical, but I have changed equipment in front of such speakers and found that they were very involving.
As mentioned above,  sometimes peaks and dips are designed into the speakers frequency response,  other times they are hard to get rid of and the speaker builder chooses to leave them rather than adding complicated networks to try to remove the issue. This is the case with many (but not all) High sensitivity speakers (zu and tekton come to mind).  Overall,  once you are into a speaker that makes it to the Audiophile level... as all things with our bunch.  Its all subjective. Tim

I try to avoid this trap of categorizing things using these labels as if they're ideologies or political parties.   I don't care what a pair of speakers costs - if you like them, and you feel they present the music accurately, then guess what...they're audiophile speakers.   The alternative is that we project our own standards onto other people...those speakers aren't expensive enough, or exclusive enough, or detailed enough, etc.    At the end of the day, it's just about enjoying music.  However you get there, good for you.  I still remember my first AM radio, sitting under a tree in our yard listening to '70s music.  I must have been 8 years old.  That radio cost my dad $6 - I don't know if music ever sounded better than it did from that $6 radio.  

In my quest for a new set of speakers to replace the Paradigm 5se I’ve had for 25+ years I’ve come across a couple of terms I’d like clarified: the musical speaker and the audiophile speaker.

What’s the difference?

I’m sorry but i think there is a difference & I seem to be also thinking along the lines of lowrider57 & sbank.

IMO, an audiophile speaker is one that has all the attributes an audiophile would like: soundstage height, soundstage width, imaging, PRaT, attack, decay, deep bass response, blah, blah, blah... but the sound is sterile & playback thru such a speaker does not emotionally engage the listener. This sort of speaker creates excellent sound but does not create music.
A musical speaker has all the audiophile attributes listed above without calling any attention to these audiophile attributes & at the same time also makes music. In my experience a musical speaker rarely wows the listener (unlike the audiophile speaker which is designed to wow the audience but after a while the wow factor disappears & the listener is disengaged) but it definitely engages the listener from the get-go (there’s that foot-tapping, dancing in your seat, pretending to play the drums, pretending to be the symphony conductor while listening) & you forget about the audiophile attributes & are drawn into the nuances of the music. Upon further long term listening you discover that all the audiophile attributes are present; just not in your face.

Going one step further, in my experience, all the musical speakers that I’ve heard are to some degree or another time-coherent speakers which almost always use 1st-order x-overs. Examples from my listening experience: Green Mountain Audio, Vandersteens, Meadowlarks, SoundLab, Sanders Sound Systems, Apogee, some stand-mount Audio Physic, single driver speakers (the range of music you can playback on these Lowther, Jordan driver speakers is (very) limited but in their music range the sound is simply superb). There are others such as Eminent Tech but I’ve not heard one.

I kind of have a gut definition for this one. If the speaker/system makes me think, "What a great speaker," then it's "audiophile." But if a speaker/system makes me think, "What wonderful music," then it's musical.   :-) 

It all comes down to taste...what you listen to, and how you like to listen to it.  Speakers, IMHO, all have different 'voices', much like us.  Room acoustics vary so much that a given unit in one room sounds terrific, whereas in another sound like garbage.  And then there's the option of 'ignoring the room' and  going to active eq.

I've opted for the latter, going 'flat' as possible.  It sounds a little odd at first, but in a short time you wonder why it's not a more common approach.

I've two sets of speakers, BTW.  A more conventional array, and a set of DIY Walsh omnis.  Both lean on a sub for a bit of bass extension.

Anyhow...let your ears be your guide, and let your wallet follow. ;)