Your favorite musical non fatiguing speakers?


I've been auditioning speakers in the $5k to $8k range. I liked some of the Dynaudio, Sonus Faber, and even B&Ws in that range. Maybe it was the setup but in the back of my mind thought all of these could sound exciting but also fatiguing long term. And I'd hate to spend that kind of doe with that being the case.

I'm looking to use a solid state Cary amp and the tubed Cary SLP 05 pre for electronics FWIW.

From other threads I'm hearing Proacs Joseph Audio Aerials Harbeth and others may fit the bill. What are your favorite speakers for musicality and lack of listening fatigue? I'll be traveling to the next state to audition more next week.
larrybou
Wow, Alex, blowing your own horn is a specialty. Look, leave it to others to do that. Self-reporting is notoriously unreliable. And very, very unflattering.

Larrybou , I personally feel that the Mozart Grand is the sweet spot within the Vienna Acoustics Grand series line up. It just has a little smoother of a top end compared to the Beethoven Grand and Baby Grand to me.
Listerner fatigue primarily comes from clipping amps, which 3 out of 4 "piles are running whether they believe it or not, and you brain saying
"enough already" I 'm wasted from converting all these 1's into sine waves for hour after hour.
Listener fatigue also comes from digital artifacts such as jitter and bad phase relationship, and from tweeters that suffer from excessive overshoot, ringing, and "oilcan" resonances. It can also come from a persistent strong "one note" resonance, most commonly in the 100-200 Hz region.

There are many contributors to listener fatigue, but a little room ambience and reverb is pretty far down the list. When you consider that indoor live music is largely defined by the reverberant field, and that some of the more reverberant concernt venues are highly prized (e.g., Boston's Symphony Hall, Cincinnati's Music Hall, etc.) then the idea that room interaction is the primary cause of listener fatigue borders on the preposterous.

Add to this that dipoles such as the Nolas, MarinLogans, and Magnepans all rely on the backwave, as well as highly regarded bipolar and omni speakers such as the Mirages, Ohms, Shahinians, and MBLs, and it's obvious that--while bad room interactions can contribute to listner fatigue--there are plenty of examples of speakers that rely on beneficial room interaction with very pleasurable results.

Note also that in the latest iteration of Sonus Faber speakers, (which as a group are regarded as *very* fatigue-free), their top line $200K "The Sonus Faber" and $120K Aida models feature front and rear-firing drivers for a bipolar radiating pattern. This obviously brings the room reverberation into the playback presentation.

Taking room interactions out of the radiating pattern doesn't remove listener fatigue; it makes it easier to hear more precisely what's on the recording like in studio monitoring, which may or may not be fatiguing due to other factors.