Audio companies don’t want you to know!
In 60’s and 70’s, hi-end audio companies tried to recreate the natural reproduction sound and they were pretty close. Listen to the music of those times. Those music made us to fall in love with the music. Many music are closer to real music and more real than modern music. Then they all gave up the effort to the natural sound since 80’s. They must be tired or too old. Or reproducing the natural sound is that hard.
Hi-end audio companies since 80’s are all about the sound. Not the music. Since audio companies don’t have the natural sound, they changed the marketing from the natural sound to the deep sound. They always talked about a deep sound stage since they couldn’t make the human voice in front like a real live music. The human voice in modern hi-fi (or hi-end) is not laid back but it is just far (too far!) and vague (no soul). The audio industry keeps away a’philes from the truth which they can’t make the natural sound. They don ’t want you to know that. Nowadays, they talk only the technology but glare/veil is still there.
The characteristics of un-natural (veil/glare) sound is grain, harsh, bright, thin, confused, vague, veil, etc. They hurt/irritate our ears always. So, many a’philes believe that the good sound is not irritating sound. Not the musical sound. Many A’philes wants more bass. They believe the bass can cover irritating sounds but the bass will not cover irritating sound. Irritating sound is not high freq and they don’t know it. They will merry-go-round for a long time.
Some people say many audio systems sound too forward. Yes. The vocal/music is too far back but the glare/veil/brightness is very forward and punching the listener. These glare/veil prevent the vocal/music to be more forward. Glare/veil means the sound signal is broken and once the signal is broken, it can’t be restored. And almost sound signals are broken from the source. If forwarded glare/veil/brightness is removed (by making a right CD player or streamer), then the hi-end audio will be more consistent, predictable, and closer to the real natural music. Alex/Wavetouch