Real or Surreal. Do you throw accuracy out the window for "better" sound?

@asctim 

Curious that you would use the word impact. Your father may not have been going for impact. Impact sounds like the image has an aggressive quality where the it 'pushes' at the viewer so that the viewer is impressed. The artist adds saturation, brightness, and sharpness so that the image stands out and attracts the viewer's attention.  I can see this as being superficial with the appeal quickly fading and the viewer hungering for something with even more pop. Your father may have wished, on the other hand, for the viewer to be drawn into his photograph rather than impressed by it. I find naturalness tends to achieve that.  All of this is analogous to music playback. An obviously enhanced blue sky will take me out of a photograph just as a metallic edge to a cymbal hit will take me out of a song.  

brev  How can a "metallic edge' to a cymbal hit take you out of a song?  I have yet to hear an audio system that ever comes close to the true metallic edge of live cymbals!  I know.... I own over 20 cymbals.  There's simply no way a 1" tweeter can generate the energy of a 20" piece of brass being hit with a stick.  I think it's why many musicians don't obsess over audio systems... they are not even close to what the actual instrument sounds like live, when you are playing it.  

@mirolab 

I also play the drums, just not very well. You are right. It is impossible for most systems to produce the sound and volume of a crash cymbal, at a distance of one meter. Some horn systems can do it. However, at a concert you are not one meter away from the cymbals. It is very possible for a system to reproduce the volume of a cymbal at 10 meters. As a matter of fact, it is not even the treble that is the most difficult to get right, it is the bass. If you want to hear cymbals that make one squint, listen to any early ECM record. In the era we did not use any tone controls or EQ some of these records were not listenable. Violins and female voices can do the same thing, it is called sibilance. It is so common in systems that many people think it is normal! Many PA systems are also sibilant. Humans do not play instruments that hurt to listen to. They would toss them in the bin. Female voices are attractive for a reason. Sibilance is not normal and if you hear it in a system there is a problem. My definition of system includes the room. With EQ you can get rid of it buy programming in a Gundry Dip. When I evaluate systems I always play a string quartet that I know really well. If there is a problem it will find it. 

It is not that a system should be perfectly accurate, this is impossible. But, a system, given the right recording, should, and can make you feel, with eyes closed, that you are listening to a real event. I have heard exactly three systems that could do just that, bass included. I have also heard a few that could do it with certain genres of music, acoustic stuff. Some of us prefer systems that are so colored any semblance of reality is nonexistent. It is not my cup of tea, but everyone is entitled to their own flavor. 

When I play Waiting for Columbus for audiophile friends they are almost universally taken aback by the power of Richie Hayward's drums. The last one commented," gee, I am not used to this! 

Perhaps metallic was not the right word to use to express my sense of the falseness of the sound. Metallic edge in the same sense I would use to describe the taste of a diet soda. But it does sound appropriate when literally describing a cymbal hit! Harshness might be better and it might have been better to use the term to describe the overall treble presentation. "Cymbals that make you squint" is even better! This was the case when I demoed a pair of B&W 702 s2s. Curiously enough, the B&W 705 OG version, doesn't give me that impression.

For me cymbals attack and decay, piano and vibraphones are important index qualities of the timbre soundfield...

Cymbals are the hardest thing to get right in my experience even more than violin ...😁

Their attack , rise, and decay ratio reveal how our system is able to restitute timbre in the time domain for the ears ...We can recognize piano timbre as acceptably good at some time in our optimizing process  but if the cymbals are not right , the system is not optimal yet ...