What is a high end stereo SUPPOSED to sound like?

"If your system can recreate that "you are there" effect or "they are here" effect, then you are knocking on high ends door. Just don't expect this effect all the time since most recordings aren't made that well."

"You are there" versus "they are here" is a tricky one but a topic worth some additional analysis and discussion in order to understand what is possible and what is not practically in this regard.

Bryon hit the key point when he mentioned that sound is inherently omnidirectional. As such it is also inherently a 3 dimensional (actually 4 including time) phenomenon.

The reality of home playback of recordings that capture the spatial queues of what was performed live is that the acoustics of the room we listen in is never the same as where the recording was made. One of the biggest difference is often that of scale, ie a musical event in a large venue, like a symphony orchestra now occurs in a smaller one, your room. The original scale of what occurred cannot be matched accordingly in this case, but what can happen is an accurate "scale model" of the original can be reproduced in room at the smaller scale required.

Often if the scale of the source and target listening venues match, like say a small club setting to a decent sized listening room, the best results are possible in terms of accurately reproducing the original at the same scale.

So this is just one prime example of how recorded music can still sound like teh original live event if everything is done well. Often though, the best one can hope for is an accurate scale model of what was captured in the recording.

The perspective of the music from your listening position then comes into play as well. Sitting closer to the speakers might result in a perspective of the scaled down performance that makes it relatively seem as large as original (Hollywood plays this kind of trick all the time using scale models or CGI equivalents viewed from proper close perspective to make them seem as large as life).

Great point Mapman. I listen in the nearfield, allowing the illusion of virtually any perspective, according to scale, to sound convincing. Smaller, recorded venues come off more convincingly but the larger ones satisfy as well.

It also helps to turn off the analytical part of my brain when the spatial cues are convincing enough to warrant pleasure for pleasures sake. Imagination takes over and abets the process (the crime being believing something that is not).

I've also heard a better system in a larger, treated room pull it off much more convincingly. I wish I had that bigger, dedicated room to try it. It's all a trick, of sorts, and the better ones are more adept at pulling it off.

Most times, the less tricks used in a recording are the easiest to reproduce in the listening area.

All the best,
Nonoise

"High-end" has become a euphemism for expensive but I do not necessarily associate that with musically satisfying. I have heard many over the top combinations of equipment that provide an exaggerated, 'hyped up' version of reality that are neither musical nor satisfying and ultimately, aren't really 'systems' in the sense that the parts are working together effectively to create a natural sounding illusion. It may be an illusion that is more attractive, at first, but i think-long term- it would be fatiguing or simply unsatisfying. I suppose some of that is subjective, but often, in showrooms, you are supposed to be 'taken' immediately with how splashy the high frequencies sound and how deep and 'impactful' the bass is and none of this is what you typically hear with real music. There are any number of 'defining' attributes, such as 'imaging,' 'soundstage,' 'dynamics' and 'bandwidth,' but all of these describe attributes, or discrete facets of the sound, not the whole. I'm at a point where everything counts, even though all of it is a trade-off, compared to real music. (I'm not using hard rock as a benchmark, although I like it and listen to it, simply because very little of it is 'real,' in the sense of acoustic instruments or more naturally amplified ones-even in concert- lot's of distortion and over-amped drums and bass; granted a les paul played through a cranked marshall has a certain reality- but it's not the stuff i'd use to listen critically if I were trying to evaluate a system).
At best, we create an illusion that gives a level of musical satisfaction on the widest range of source material and compares favorably to what real instruments of the acoustic variety sound like. An impossible goal but one worth striving for. There are any number of approaches to get there. And i agree, the room is usually the last thing people address, when it should be the first.

I suppose it all boils down to how expensive to achieve musically satisfying?

The answer of course is: it all depends...on a lot of things!

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Spot on about how the highs and lows grab you when you first enter a "high end" showroom. It's akin to what you see when evaluating TVs: settings that look great but permanently burn out the rods and cones in the back of your eye if you look long enough.

On another thread I stated just how much I'm now enjoying my CDP just by swapping out some ICs. Enough to stop listening to my iMac. All the little things you allude to besides the highs and lows that grab your attention come into play now. Gone is the indistinct, the vague, the missing, replaced by all the pertinent cues that make it seem all the more realistic. My speaker 'seems' to go lower though I know it doesn't. It just now has all the cues necessary to complete the picture of an upright bass, realistically.

Ambient cues like hands gently tapping and strumming along on instruments,
musicians preparing to play as they adjust their hands on their instruments, entering lightly before playing forcefully. There are times now where I swear I can almost discern body language or position as they play.

Spooky times indeed.

I've gotten to where, due to my listening room, I prefer these type of cues and sounds to whether or not I have that giant recreation of an orchestra's venue. Even from an orchestra, one can catch these kinds of cues, making it more convincing, for me. The rest I can fill out in my mind, overlooking the obvious.

All the best,
Nonoise