neutrality vs. realism

I read the original post as a restatement of the old question: "Do you want your system to make your music sound good (musical), or do you want your system to accurately portray what's in the grooves (neutrality). Tok2000 makes an excellent point about the quality of our music software being a major determinate of musicality/neutrality. Is a system really a high end system if it makes a shrill recording sound warm and pleasant? The accurate reproduction of an input signal should be the goal of all high end equipment (EQ devices excepted). Any sonic deviation from this definition of neutrality should be considered distortion. The problem with this line of reasoning is that we don't have a comprehensive set of tests and measurements that can accurately describe the human music listening experience. Some interpret this predicament to mean that we should ignore measurements and rely entirely upon our own individual hearing. Instead I think it merely means we, as both listeners and equipment designers, still have much to research and learn about music reproduction.

Indeed, Onhw -- but if you listne to a lot of acoustic music as I do, then a violin is or isn't. Badly or well rendered onto the support (vinyl, or digital). However, when you have electronic musical equip & sound effects, it's a different matter!

Gregm, I'm not sure I understand your comment. Are you saying a poorly recorded violin still sounds like a violin? Or it doesn't sound like a violin? To clarify my early post, "to make your music sound good", by that I mean should your system alter the music signal in such a way as to make even widely different quality recordings conform to the listener's preconceived notion of what a given instrument should sound like. In my mind this would make your system the equivalent of comfort food. It's emotionally satisfying and filling, but it's also non-challenging and eventually boring.

Onh, I agree with your rendition of "comfort food". But, yes, a poorly recorded violin still sounds like a violin -- because it's acoustic & you know, in conjunction with the other instruments, what it is: you have the live experience of the violin vs the cello, etc... But when I get to eletronic instruments, & heavy mastering, I can't really tell what the engineers have done. I don't have a live, sonic "benchmark" to refer to. There, the production qualities (or mastering "tricks"?) are part of the end product: heighten the 3-kHz region, give some boost to bass... how can I tell if my system is reproducing "correctly" what the producer(s) intenteded? Cheers

I totally agree that there is no live reference point for nearly all pop/rock recordings. However, I would take it even further for the case with even audiophile/purist recordings is not so clear cut. An experienced recording engineer can effectively control the sound of a recording by his/her choice of microphones and mic placement. Without using any EQ or other outboard processors the sound can be made upfront and forward, louder/softer, bright, warm or spacious. Regardless of the resolving power or musicality of their system, how can an audiophile know what particular sonic flavor the engineer was trying to acheive?