What is a high end stereo SUPPOSED to sound like?

"is this hobby strictly a cognitive exercise? Improving systems simply moves toward certain sonic goals without any change in emotional response to the music being played? "

That's a good question!

I do not see it that way at all but I do not doubt it is sometimes the case.

One instance I recall recently was reading the recent online review of Capital Audiofest last weekend by Stereophile. I definitely got this impression that the writer was listening for some specific sound and that was his main focus for reasons unknown.

I recall in one room at CAF having a total emotional response to a demo that put it way over with me. Yes, part was the material being played but the system delivered in spades. I have read others including the gentleman from Stereophile found that particular system "needed work". Maybe. But no mention of anything resembling my experience. Maybe the wrong music was demoed in these other cases? Perhaps. A lot of demo music there was nice acoustic jazz and classical but nothing familiar that would be more likely to register in a more emotional way with me.

It's impossible to define an emotional response, because it is so subjective and cannot be correlated to the normal objective criteria associated with evaluating equipment. Newbee's plight- listening to the system, rather than the music, is a common one- and a trap i have fallen into myself. (My way out of that is to get the system to a level that surpasses my expections, through a combination of equipment selection, room treatment and tweaking and then just sit back and enjoy- sure I do 'reality checks' and sometimes get neurotic- am i hearing a spurious noise, is the VTA right, should i adjust the crossover, but, at least right now, my system is working to its highest level yet, and I can enjoy the music, and worry less about the set-up).
No system is going to reproduce all records with the same level of engagement- that goes back to the earlier comments about how a good system is revealing in the differences it demonstrates between recordings.
I've been around the 'high-end' (i use that term recognizing it is both loaded and meaningless) since the early 70's and have heard expensive systems that are not engaging and modest systems that are. How to predict what combination of components works? Leaving aside the subjective elements of what the listener prefers (more analytical, more romantic, emphasis on soundstaging/bandwidth/etc.), it all comes back to the recognition of a reproducing chain, including the room itself, as part of a system. (You can include within that the recording itself, but we have little control over that).
Get the basics right first, room, good AC power, and then its more in the nature of synergies among the equipment, including the cable. How to do it predictably? Pretty hard. We have a lot of anecdotal information, including on Audiogon, about what components seem to work well with each other.
Despite the ideal that a good amp or good speaker should play equally well with other components, I'm not sure that's true. And, invariably, certain basic choices in equipment are going to dictate the associated equipment and ultimate sound. For example, I'm using horns, not everybody's cup of tea, but apart from all the other 'hi-fi' attributes, i want a sense of 'aliveness' to the system. That in turn dictates the kind of amp that best suits the speaker (an SET tube amp) and so on. Someone else may not want to make the tradeoffs I do, and desire a different set of priorities in what they perceive as ideal.
Whatever the path, the system should engage you. Not on all records- that's too much to ask, given the wide range of quality of different recordings. What's interesting to me is that as I have gotten my system to its best level of performance yet, I can enjoy lesser recordings for their music, even though I can obviously hear the difference between the lesser recording and the 'better' one.

HEy, Whart summaarized and nailed it pretty well I would say!

"Get the basics right first, room, good AC power, and then its more in the nature of synergies among the equipment, including the cable. "

HEy, how about also getting the right fuse????

o--o

\__/

Map, to paraphrase somebody, i draw the line at swamis.

Ozfly,
I'd like to tackle your last question re: improving sonics in a system and is it independent of the emotional response, and I'll keep it short. :-)

In my experience, there is a certain amount of joy (Eureka!) when one element of my system takes me higher, closer to that elusive goal of audio nirvana.

That joy is not a constant. It increases along the lines of the hardware improvement and if it's a big enough improvement, the amount of joy I experience can be of a larger amount relative to the former.

It can cure me of my Quixotic endeavors for that last level of improvement that when reached, allows me to simply enjoy the music. I know when I reach it as days, weeks, months will go by and I'm still captivated by what I hear.

It only takes a few bad recordings to make me think that something was overlooked, wrong or missed but when a great recording is used, I'm reassured I made the right choice. There is some lessening of that joy factor when my system can't make every recording sound wonderful but it's only temporary since I also realize that they're just lousy recordings.

That, I believe, is the basis for our addiction in this hobby. It's not the quick fix or endomorphic high we can get from our fast pace, ever changing times which I, for one, am not a part of. Call me old school, better tempered, more disciplined, but the reward factor is still there and like when I correctly repaired an old car for my Dad, back in the days, there was that sense of joy and achievement. Such is the nature of our slow paced hobby and maybe the answer as to why participation is down these days as our youth are out for that quick fix, but that is for another thread.

All the best,
Nonoise