You don't mean that all piano recordings sound the same, do you?
I once had the privilege of listening to recordings for about 90 minutes with Peter McGrath, the director of sales for Wilson speakers and an accomplished recording engineer. Most of what we listened to was piano and all of the equipment remained the same. Wilson speakers, of course, although I forget which model. I was being polite, but one recording I thought was especially poor and I said so. Veiled. Uneven response across the instrument's range in a way that seemed to remain consistent regardless of what the performer was doing. A thoroughly confused presentation that didn't justify the use of the word "image"; certainly nothing I've ever experienced in a performance space. He switched to another recording that met every standard the previous recording had failed. A McGrath recording.
Pianos differ, even the same model from the same maker. I happened to see an item in the current Downbeat about Oscar Peterson's wife donating his Bosendorfer to some Toronto institution and she briefly described the afternoon she and Oscar spent picking out that piano at the Bosendorfer factory.
Venue choice, placement of the piano within the recording space, choice of mics and their placement will all have an effect too. Not to mention mic pre-amps and the mixing board, if one is used. And, what the hell, may as well throw in the mic cables and the recording medium, not just analog vs. digital, but if it's analog, what tape recorder and what brand of analog tape is being used.
I've come to think of selecting amps & speakers as a lot like picking a seat for a concert subscription series. Orchestra level is one perspective; box seats or the loge is another, and first row in the balconies will also provide alternatives. One season I sat in about the 10th row in the orchestra level, right in front of the bass section at the Chicago Symphony. You'd definitely want subwoofers to begin to approximate that perspective. And I still remember the sound of a Duke Ellington concert nearly 50 years ago when I sat in the first row of the uppermost balcony of the Lyric Opera House in Chicago. A great seat! While I wait for Louis to finish my Alnico monitors, I'm listening to a little PSB desktop system that actually comes close to that miniature perspective on some recordings, although the PSBs have more detail and a much more precise soundstage.
Based on my listening to the 3i and the Alnico monitor, I'd say that the sticky thread describing "THE SOUND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VARIOUS OMEGA SPEAKER SERIES" is the best start to begin to understand how the speakers differ from each other. Pick a recording you love and listen to it through all the models you're considering. The speaker that makes that recording sound the way you think it should is the one to buy.
