norwitz and peter's essay doesn't need to be as complex as some read into it. If you have five piano recordings and on one system the tone and dynamics are quite a lot different from each other - perhaps one has a small pinpoint center stage - one recording is 25 feet long, one has excellent dynamics and one sounds compressed - the system is differentiating the recordings. If the other system makes everything sound compressed or 2 dimensional then it is clearly not differentiating or contrasting the differences and clearly isn't accurate.

That's within one type of genre which to me is harder to listen for - so before you even compare those kinds of music genres I would first start with hard rock and nuances well recorded classical and Jazz. The system that can play Beethoven BRILLIANTLY and can also play AC/DC (who have some very good recordings) and can play harder hitting techno - and do it all well is the speaker/system that is better able to contrast recording differences.

If the speaker bottoms out doing the harder stuff then it has some serious issues. Now certainly with Magnepan 1.6 every speaker in this price range has issues - so you have to choose the strength that works for your musical taste which is why the 1.6 is a good value if you are a classical guy. But when you get to $15k like the 20.1 and it still only does classical well then it deserves some consideration more seriously that something else is probably money better spent.