Best all around speakers

DcStep: Actually your phrase was "How can adding distortion on top of distortion replicate a performance say, "Sympathy for the Devil"?" You would have been better off in your most recent retort by not inserting the word "live" in "replicating a live performance" - at least then you could have argued that the use of the word "performance" was not intended to mean "live" as opposed to "studio" or "live""studio". As you have clarified, you were brought the term "live performance" into the discussion - while neither I nor the OP mentioned a live performance. It is your post that became fixated on live performances in any regard whether it is the live performance itself or replicating the live performance.

Go ahead, extract whatever you want out of context, the fact is I said, "replicate a live performance". Your just being argumentative for some reason.

Dave

I simply see no reason to accept an obvious misconstruction of the text that I posted.

lets look at the issue from a different perspective.

the first principle of audio is do no harm. when evaluating a speaker system, one approach is to try to detect flaws. thus, select "average" to mediocre recordings for that purpose.

if you can listen to any recording , even one of poor quality without running out of a room, you probably have found an "all around speaker". thus the quest for an all around speaker might be to seek one that minimizes unpleasantness. while i admit this approach is the antithesis of the conventional way of thinking, it certainly keeps you from suffering when listening to "bad recordings".

are there any speakers that come to mind ?

i lived with one for 7 years, namely, 2 pair of stacked quad 57s. i don't recall ever being displeased with a recording played through that system, which also included the original quad amps, a mac c22 preamp and a thorens tt, ortofon arm and cartridge.

my motto: judge a stereo system by what it sounds like with the worst recording, not the best recording.

here's another idea:

a speaker which is compatible with many components, is an all around speaker. a speaker which is compatible with a select set of components is not.