Is a highly discerning system enjoyable?

"One sees what is in back of their eyes, not what is in front of their eyes". The same holds true for the ears. I would guess most often we hear want we want to hear....what we fabricate in our mind. Most people who would listen to Bose 901 speakers may have already decided how they sound before the speakers produce sound.

Slight hijack about quality of recordings. I’ve had the time and funds lately to add an ESS Sabre DAC equipped Bluetooth receiver while breaking in my Lintons. This led to extra music time than typical.

Been impressed with musicality of recent acoustic Americana recordings…the sphere around Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan is producing cuts with really good sound stages, mixing acoustic and amplified instruments and vocals that go back and forth between coming forward and blending with the ensemble.

Improving my DAC and speaker has made these artists more interesting.

Most early pop music was mixed for car or jukebox listening.  Listening to a Phil Spector production on a fancy rig never does right to me.  That’s not the fault of the system

Most "older" audiophiles have switched from SS to tubes because they simply are more "Musical".....less detail but more pure enjoyment...and isn’t that really why we’re here.......And there’s lots of high quality speakers that run on that lower tube power. If the First Watt isn’t good...who cares what the rest of the watts are doing.

It’s easy to start thinking we have audio mostly figured out simply because it’s 2023. But that’s not true. Audio gear continues to fall far behind live music in real spaces, primarily in dynamics, scale and bass.

With the exception of the lucky few with massive rooms & audio installations totaling millions of dollars, the rest of us make do with a subset of what music IRL sounds like.

My theory is that given all this, audio designers often go after "low hanging fruit,"  objectives that are at least theoretically attainable given the best test gear and well sourced components: things like lowering measurable distortions of all kinds; increasing apparent resolution (detail and treble "air" being the usual targets); and trying to address macro-dynamics to whatever degree is possible at a price-point..

Results are pretty mixed. A lot of audio gear chases sound qualities that aren't much like the real thing. Striving to hear the violinist’s smallest breath sounds or the exact type of resin and bow used are intellectually interesting, but not comparable to experiencing violin music in real spaces.

I’ve heard a lot of live music in my life (different genres). Speaking of classical, choral, and opera (which tend to be performed in spaces with above average acoustics), I can’t remember ever actually focusing on resolution, detail or "plankton" in what I’m hearing. The experience of live music is too palpable and impressive for that kind of navel-gazing, at least in my experience.