Hi Romy,
I have found that the Apogee loudspeakers ribbon drivers can quite successfully reproduce correct tone. The reason why is this: They have very little coloration from the driver materials themselves (no nasty resonances as the resonance is at only a few Hz), They are very linear (very low harmonic distortion), and are in an open baffle (so they do not excite cabinet resonances). The planar magnetic bass driver in Apogees is slightly more colored but it gets the fundamentals (since it handles up to around 500 Hz) pretty correct. If driven within its limits (depends on the size of the Apogee) the distortion is extremely low, again no box coloration, and very low noise from the driver itself. One can get some idea of how colored a speaker will sound if on looks at the on and off axis response, the harmonic distortion, and the waterfall plot of a speaker. An ugly waterfall plot nearly always guarantees a colored sound as all that stored energy is being released.
I think ribbons are capable of the purest tone and this also is the case in recording technology. The most realistic tone I have ever heard on a recordings comes from ones that I know were made with ribbon microphones. Normal condenser mics (ie. electrostatic) are good but they tend to wash the intensity of the tonal color a bit. Ribbons preserve this intense natural color better and preserve very subtle dynamic contrasts.
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