Fidelity vs. Musicality...........Is there a tug of War?

pauly

Everybody will have their own definition of what fidelity is ...

What’s wrong with the commonly accepted definition?
fi·del·i·ty noun: fidelityfaithfulness to a person, cause, or belief ...sexual faithfulness to a spouse or partner ...the degree of exactness with which something is copied or reproduced ...

There’s no reason to make this more complicated than it is. Conversation is impossible if we can’t agree on simple terms.

2nd order harmonics is not distortion, 5th order harmonics is.

Anything not present in the original is distortion, by commonly accepted definition.

@bpoletti 

"Define what is "musicality" and what is "fidelity."  

Be very specific and use objective terms, not subjective terms.  "

This is an audiophile forum, not law school.

@noske20

If you can't define it, then you have no clue what you're talking about.

Perhaps we can find a way to kill off all acts, concepts, and aspects of individualism within the scope of humanity and all these disagreement thingies will finally go away.

To put all these overly animated meat objects a nice neat simple (and quiet) box.

I demand the right to stay outside of that box, of course, and do my own thing. But the box awaits you, all you problem children. Commoditization is your future.

It would make my life a lot easier if you would just get in the dang box and stay there.

Anything added is distortion. Piano, for instance, has overtones stretched over harmonics.

… best we agree to disagree on that one. Technically you are correct of course, however in music reproduction I prefer an amp that adds 5% 2nd order harmonics over one which adds 0.01% 5th order harmonics. The vast majority of posters here will make the same choice in a listening test.


I’m looking at distortion in the context of how we experience music vs. what a scope will show.