Spectral printing is a well–established part of imaging that can boast of a rich body of literature. Nonetheless there has been limited commercial uptake of this approach to visual content reproduction, in spite of its clear benefits. The aim of the present paper is therefore to explore what may lie behind this apparent mismatch by looking at how colorimetric (metameric) and spectral reproduction compare on an 11–ink printing system. To aid the above exploration, the paper proposes a new metric for evaluating spectral reproduction in a visually meaningful way and presents an analysis of the spectral properties of colorimetric and spectral reproductions of a variety of original content including spot colors and fine art.