I think this may be down to the Polyglass woofer on the first generation Alphas being... not great, if I'm honest. It's an older and relatively speaking (for Focal, who have a seemingly blinder-like focus on super-low distortion) high distortion design. Either that or what you mentioned.Plucked instruments sounded more correct. Not sure if it's the narrow vertical dispersion, but there might be less going on with the Adam vs the Focal reflecting off of the mixing bridge when I compared the two.
Anyway, OP: For headphones, HD650/HD6XX would be my choice because of the very smooth and even top end, but they lack in extreme bottom end (but this can be added via EQ). For speakers, I'm inclined to recommend the Kali IN-5 over basically anything else in this price range - though perhaps the Focal Alpha 65 Evo is decent (I've not seen any measurements of it as they're so new, however).
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