Generally, I think a lot of decent speakers reproduce human voice well - well known ribbon speakers, well known stats, giant cones, good horns, etc. But when you play the piano things get more exposed. Crossovers are easily visible. The hardness of SS amps can sometimes be heard as compared to valves (unless you have extreeemely good SS amps). Sometimes it lacks the bass, sometimes, it sounds broken through the crossovers (e.g. Logan hybrids, which can do female vocals extremely well, cannot do piano).
Violins - again many of the speakers that do human voice well (e.g. stats do violins well when played with valves). But with violins, it is more easy to make out the difference between digital and vinyl. With trombone, it seems to be a combo of speaker bass integration and vinyl. Vivids do trombones very well.
With drums, I have never heard the bass impact of a tympani, or that of a kick drum, be produced like a restored apogee. Unfortunately most speakers produce a taut and tight bass, or on a dime bass. Classical bass is an impact in the vertical plane, towards you, a bit thick rather than taut, and it decays. Apogees create that vertical plane, rather than a woofer-from-below kind of sound. Till I heard this sound, I ignored drums somewhat. Most speakers if they went down low enough and had a big cabinet were equally good (or equally bad). DRC seemed to make a difference in cleaning the sound for drums, and controlling it.
I am just quoting what Ron Resnick wrote after his visit to Henk (the dutch apogee restorer) who, along, with Rich Murry of the US, are the two best restorers. He wrote about the Apogee Grands and compared the drums to those played with the Wilson Alexandria X2S2.
"Postscript: I visited Steve today to catch up with I'm before I go back to London. I brought with me a CD of the Genesis album with the “Drum Duet” track -- with Phil Collins playing the drum kit on the left side of the stage and his colleague playing a drum kit on the right side of the stage. (Henk very kindly gave me his CD of that album.)
When the track was finished at Henk’s place my wife and I turned to each other and each of us basically said “Oh my God, that was amazing!” So I was really curious to hear this drum track on Steve’s very full-range and bass capable system. (Steve supplements his big Wilsons with JL Audio Fathoms.)
On Steve’s system the drum track today was very good but it was not involving and mesmerizing like it was on Henk’s system. Listening to the drums on the Grands seemed to my wife and me like an experience.
This is absolutely no criticism of Steve’s system. As I have written many times I love the sound from Steve’s system. I am very confident what I heard from this track on the Grands versus on conventional cones means that Kedar was correct about the amazing bass reproduction on the Grands: the woofer panel on the Grands -- which covers about 70 Hz to about 250 Hz -- is the best reproducer of that frequency range I have ever heard in my life. I do not think any dynamic driver speaker -- not Wilsons, not Genesis woofer towers, not Pendragon woofer towers, not any set of cones -- is going to reproduce 70 Hz or so to 250 Hz or so with the articulation and realism and power of those big, trapezoidal woofer panels on the Grands."
I quoted Ron just because I believe that's true, and what I had been saying. I also sensed the same thing that he did on the Genesis drum duet when I played the Holst Planets Mars on the Grands
