Laid Back Speakers amps, players etc


I've heard this term so many times, usually describing a speaker but I can't seem to understand what it actually means. I've heard so many equipment in this hobby the last 8 years but I have never heard something that I could describe as "Laid Back".
I would be very interested to know your definition of this term...
argyro
Let's take a poll. Maybe we can find out what "musical" means too. ;)

Classe30: Not familiar with Nola. ML, Maggies, IRS and Genesis are the dipoles I've spent some time with.
Mrtennis, I would be hesitant in this case to take the face value of the phrase for its actual meaning; if you think of someone who has a laid back demeanor I think you get a better idea of what I am talking about.

As to your question, we avoid coloration by avoiding synergistic effects. None of our gear is built to synergize with another piece, be it one of ours or someone else's. IOW there is no voicing of any kind. We don't have to worry about the effects of a transformer, so it comes down to the quality of the coupling caps, how many stages of gain (one), that sort of thing.

Being able to compare against master tapes helps.

Getting rid of negative feedback turned out to be a fairly easy way to get 'laid back' sound (in this case, my meaning for the term, see previous posts) without sacrificing bandwidth. That **does** mean that certain speakers just will not work with our stuff; turns out there's a set of rules about how to predict that- see

http://www.atma-sphere.com/papers/paradigm_paper2.html
Something I thought and wanted to share with you.

Could it be that a laid back speaker gives you the impression that you are where the event was performed while a forward speaker gives you the impression of the event being performed in your room?

In that case I think laid back is more correct, due to the ambience of the reconding...
i think laid back means a greater distance between listener and musicians than the distance between the microphone and musicians, while forward is the opposite of laid back. both are departures from the accurate reproduction of a recording.

thus, there are 3 possibilities, laid back, forward and neither laid back nor forward.