Trade offs?

"If the majority of your recordings sound harsh, then it's your system or source component, not your recordings."

I'd have to agree.

Mr Tennis,

Let me be clear about this. Yes, you can have a high-res system that sounds "musical," and you can even more easily have a "high-res" system that makes a lot of recordings sound poor.

But the two are not mutually exclusive... you just really need to know what to do in order to set up a system to be both extremely musical and extremely revealing. It is my experience that a lot of so-called "high-res" systems that are so revealing that they make most recordings sound bad are actually systems with "high-res capable" components that are put together in such a way that they lack the synergy needed to sound musical. It's a big complicated equation... how may of the variables have you addressed and how many have escaped your scrutiny?

My system is exposing more detail than it ever has, and it sounds very musical at the same time. So, as I said, musicality with high resolution is an attainable goal. Some audiophiles have apparently attained it and some have not.

That said, the redbook CD format has a definite resolution ceiling and floor, but it can sound quite detailed and musical within its envelope. One need only look at the many comments from 'philes who know CD as a first language and were disappointed when trying to get equivalent or better performance out of a turntable-based system.

Wide dynamic swings, low-noise, and low-bass extension are the CD format's good points, while great analog excells at midbass through high-frequency definition. It seems that the highs can be smoother and more extended with vinyl, and that is the basis for a lot of what we audiophiles perceive as "fine detail and/or immediacy."

I've been told that the Chesky downloadable HD tracks are very promising, but have not been successful at setting up that system as yet. Hopefully I'll be able to check it out in the future. To date, I've had no luck getting Chesky to answer my e-mails about system requirements or set-up issues. They seem to do a lot of promoting, but are not at all good about answering e-mail regarding trouble-shooting their software.

I'm with Plato on this.

there is either a semantic issue or logic issue.

first, let's discuss musicality:

music refers to pitch, timbre and harmonics. other by products are dynamics and tempo.

achieving musicality requires recordings which are accurate respect to timbre and harmonics. no recording can be accurate , as in 100 percent accuracy, because of the recording process. thus, one is left with an inaccurate recording. when listening to an inaccurate recording through a stereo system, the result is some degree of error with respect to perfection . can you call some presentation musical ? it is a matter of opinion. it all depends upon one's standards. it is my contention that if you don't have perfection, you have something less. calling something less musical is arbitrary. there are too many variables.

resolution is another matter. there is resolution, inaccurate resolution and accurate resolution. since stereo systems are inaccurate, the resolution attained has errors, with respect to the recording.

thus, an inaccurate stereo system, produces some level of resolution which is not 100 percent accurate and certainly not 100 percent musical.

calling something musical when it has timbral errors is not very useful.

since our hobby is enetrtaining, it could be sufficient to say that a stereo system achieves inaccuarcy of resolution and musicality but its errors do not prevent one from enjoying the music.

unfortunately it is not possible to quantify how inaccurate or how far off from 100 percent musicality any stereo system is and it is difficult to compare stereo systems with respect to these variables.

if the term "musical" has another connotation, please define so that i understand what is meant by that term.

after my long rant, i forgot to add the following:

if a stereo system is highly resolving, it can't always sound "musical", because all recordings are not in themselves, sufficiently "musical", to reveal the attributes of music.

if instead, a stereo system always sounds "musical", whatever that means, it cannot be highly resolving, as colorations intrinsic to a stereo system will render problem recordings "musical" in their presentation.