Years and years ago the default for most listeners was a poor quality and distorted sound, and the exception was revealing accuracy and low distortion. The hobby was to push out of distortion and get as close as possible to accuracy.
It seems what is happening now is a switch of the defaults.
It is easy and cheap to get very very accurate, high quality, low distortion, revealing sound. So of course the hobby has pivoted - it now chases its preferred distortion. The big money is spent on kit which deliberately distorts but in a way that some really like.
The one area yet to pivot is speakers. This always was by far the most critical, and most inherently flawed, link in the chain. Differences between speakers still massively dwarf any choices made anywhere else in the chain. Nobody yet, I think, is deliberately selecting speakers to build distortions in like the way they select (for example) a tube amp, are they?
It seems what is happening now is a switch of the defaults.
It is easy and cheap to get very very accurate, high quality, low distortion, revealing sound. So of course the hobby has pivoted - it now chases its preferred distortion. The big money is spent on kit which deliberately distorts but in a way that some really like.
The one area yet to pivot is speakers. This always was by far the most critical, and most inherently flawed, link in the chain. Differences between speakers still massively dwarf any choices made anywhere else in the chain. Nobody yet, I think, is deliberately selecting speakers to build distortions in like the way they select (for example) a tube amp, are they?