Analytical or Musical Which way to go?

It used to be when a speaker was bright it was considered to be a speaker designed for marketing. When comparing speakers in a stereo store the brighter speaker gets your attention, but when you get it home you change everything in your system in an effort to get better sound. These are now called audiophile speakers.

Slightly off topic - It is interesting that the holy grail is live music. For me, many of the venues for live music are far from optimal. Many major concert halls are wonderful, but the lessor ones can be pretty mediocre. And a major orchestra in an old gymnasium/auditorium can be dreadful. Many jazz clubs have reflections all over the place. And, anytime you have amplification you have already colored the sound. Then their are the concerts in basketball and football arenas, baseball parks, etc. with 20 foot speakers blaring at you. Even if the speakers are pretty good, the acoustics can be awful.

I love the ambiance of live music and the chance to experience the musicians in person. But, except in a few venues, I am not looking for optimal sound.

Un-amplified music in a great venue is awesome. It is just not that common.

Live music in general is just a different experience than music at home. Fortunately, I live near Boston and we do have many fine venues.

That said, "musical" home setups are what I look for.

I am not a fan of distinguishing audio in terms of musical or analytical. I just do not find much value in this distinction.

HEy, its music! Of course it should be musical! But so what? Ask 10 people what musical means and you will get 10 different answers.

THat leaves us with analytical. WHo would want to listen to music that is analytical but not musical? Data from STTNG maybe? OR Mr SPock? Not people.

SO in the end this distinction really serves no purpose. Listen with your ears and decide what sounds good or right to you. Once you have it, then you can let the adjectives flow to describe it. Analytical is not likely to be one of those if it sounds like music to you.

I agree with the OP`s choice of terms and find them applicable. I`ve encountered speakers/components that do present a character that can be categorized as "analytical". They do sound clinical,sterile,dry.flatten.bleached.Simply amusical and artificial.This sound is completely devoided of the emotion/joy music provides and strips the life from it. Some like that type of presentation others don`t.

Consider this:
I use protective glasses when I ride a bicycle. Thier primary purpose is to avoid damage to my eyex form projectiles like bugs or gravel. They also keep my eyes from being dried out by the wind. They usuaully come with four sets of lenses.
1. Dark shades
2. Clear shades
3. Amber shades
4. Yellow shades

The dark shades are to filter out bright sunshade and UV rays.
The other shades also filter out UV but are designed for low light levels such as clouds/rain and dusk/dawn.
We see then that the shades are acting as filters.
Intuitively we would think that the clear glasses would aas the medium of least filter. That is if we wanted to see things as they are actually are we would choose that one. thhen we choose yellow for early morning light/dawn, amber for evening light. Dark glasses for the brightest sunlight. Nowdays we have glasses thaat automaticall adjust as the light changes.
certisnly then we can us gleasse to ditort our back to 20/20. We can also amplify light or decrease it to bring it back to "a normal range."It would appear then the optimal speaker would be the replica of the clear glasses. How then do we define the "clear glass speaker?"

If we try and transfer this to speakers Ideally we want the that lets the music through. Empiraclly we would