Should We Prioritize Detail In Our Assessment Of Audio Quality?

Visit the sound board?   Take up residence.

I hear detail just fine behind my ESL dipoles.

Another lame argument...

I was telling someone recently about being loaned a pushpull 45 amp a few years ago. A pretty great sounding amp but with my speakers at the time the level of detail was annoying. So yes detail is important but too much of any one spectrum of sound is a bad thing.

millercarbon, I agree with your assessment that imaging is a prioritizing factor. I disagree however with the your comment stating that digital sources don't in general have more detail. Personally, I have heard digitally remastered recordings where noises, coughs , etc.. are heard from the gallery. Those coughs are not noticeable within the original analogue sources. This doesn't make detail bad, mind you, because there are other aspects to the nature of digital versus analogue that in most circumstances makes digital preferable. I'd venture to say that very few analogue rereleases are free from digital remastering and details within those recordings are considerable versus there analogue originals. 

I'm listening through Quad ESL's and they can be a little forward and revealing. Hearing detail isn't an objection of mine, otherwise I wouldn't own Quads. But I generally think about revealing details as being extraneous. Imaging however is central to lifelike sound, IMO.

In the glory days of LP we used to speak well of those components that provided low level information. That was the air, the imaging, the detail. For classical music especially I want the detail for the music can be especially complicated. An orchestra of 100; a chorus of 100. I’ve been listening recently to the new Pappano Aida. Yes in a concert hall you will hear more detail in row C than in row P.

But it was Harry Pearson who suggested that detail on a record is more important on records than in person for with the record you have no visual clues.

Today you can find it all: detail, imaging, soundstage, fulness and body in the sound. And you can find it at a reasonable price. Which is to say that detail does not have to come at the price of giving up other desirable qualities. 

i don’t feel a complete, enlightened, well rounded discussion about sound quality of hifi gear would focus heavily (much less exclusively) on the notion of presented 'detail' in the music ... relative noobs tend to go for that, but if they stick with it and learn what’s important over time, experience real music, they start to include many other sonic qualities in their criteria for what's good music and sound