Silver-plated or single metal IC's?

Art, halls may vary but live music is full, smooth, crazy dynamic, distortionless, full of bloom and tonal shadings and alive at any volume level. It is also rather rich and subdued on top..probably because it is ripe with texture and lacking in overemphasis as well as distrortions. Bass is always a revelation...so deep and full and seemingly out of control at times! Can't get it at home but one should have a goal. What it is that people expect they should hear is often perplexing...in the hall it is an enveloping sense of sound as a living thing...a living organic presence that you feel but are never offended by..it's just effortless yet powerfull. You also hear coughs and some shuffling...you do not hear the fingering of every musician nor the breath of everyone playing a woodwind. At least if you do hear non musical information it should not stand out in bold relief...it should not distract from the performance.

Tennis,
Music= "musical"

I get plenty of music through my Tesla cables- I have no idea what you are talking about- sorry.

Dave_b,
Yes crazy dynamic is one of the major differences between live unamplified music and recorded music- so too is the sense that music is simply emanating in concentric circles from each individual instrument or singer on stage. I do not however always find live music to be smooth in the audiophile sense of the word- far from it. One needs only to listen to a horn section at the symphony to understand what I mean. I find music mirrors life- some days are sunny, comfortable, and beautiful. Others are cold, windy, and brisk. As with life I enjoy a brilliant and diverse pageant and as with life I prefer not to view my surrounds through rose colored glasses.

Well, we will just have to agree to disagree then Leica man. As for me, I have never heard an acoustic instrument(s) that have sounded brisk or cool...even a high school band playing full tilt 20 paces away sounds wonderfull...deafening maybe, but not harsh or cold. I choose not to inflict an analytical perspective on any of my music. Over the years my experience has shown that it is possible to put together a system that is not flawed by the inherent design errors found in most audio equipment. In fact, for awhile I bought into the notion that the CD was a medium that was seriously compromised...not so! The problems were with the companies designing for an engineering aesthetic and not for musicality. The digital playback gear is undergoing a rennaisance currently and some companies offer state of the art products without accentuating or in many cases corrupting the reproduction chain in the name of accuracy. Accuracy should allow the medium of choice to convey the most natural reproduction possible from a performance. As I have sought out these companies who design by ear as much as by principled engineering, my enjoyment of my vast collection of redbook CD's has increased tremendously. In fact, I have many redbook CD's that would destroy most audiophiles bias toward the need for new formats. Even in my current simplified system I have a hugely layered textured harmonicaly complete and dynamic window on almost anything I put on. It sounds every bit as clear and complex as live music while retaining the sense of ease and lack of harmonic distortion that causes many systems to impart an edge or stridency that is not actually on the recordings. I may go deaf standing in front of a horn section or a drum kit (which I don't recommend),but I would not do so from exposure to the sonic elements.

hi leica man:

musical=timbre, pitch and dynamics. all recordings when reproduced by a stereo system are inaccurate with respect to timbre and probably dynamics. recordings are definitely a problem.

your synergistic cable may emphasize the upper frequencies too much.

we can agree to disagree.