"Audiophiles need to recognize that musical instruments are designed to convey all kinds of sounds - including stressful or unpleasant sounds and feeling - even explosions and war. Music is not purely a contest in making the most "pleasant" sound. Any system that makes everything sound pleasant is robbing you of a whole dimension to music."
That is a very true and excellent point!
Still, practically, its hard to discourage someone from going for "pleasant".
After all "pleasant" infers pleasure and who doesn't want that, even if it does infer a watering down or artificial filtering of reality in this case to achieve it?
The best situation is for your system to be able to reproduce things as realistically as possible, even producing very high SPLs when demanded, but then being able to just turn down the volume as well when needed if things still start to become unpleasant after a while.
That is a very true and excellent point!
Still, practically, its hard to discourage someone from going for "pleasant".
After all "pleasant" infers pleasure and who doesn't want that, even if it does infer a watering down or artificial filtering of reality in this case to achieve it?
The best situation is for your system to be able to reproduce things as realistically as possible, even producing very high SPLs when demanded, but then being able to just turn down the volume as well when needed if things still start to become unpleasant after a while.