How do you get the "real" feel of music?

Sasha, what a beautiful post! When I started reading, I thought, prepared to be bored, well just another case of opinionated, self declared "expert" gibberish, however, what a joy, far, far from it! You are the first I've met, who openly stated, what I have also felt for quite some time, that apart from the hype, climbing to ever greater heights, there have been no essential breakthroughs in electronic design in the last 10 to 15 years. And yes, assembling a system which comes close to the real thing, you must be prepared to enter a labour of love which lasts for decades and actually never really ends....and you must know what the real thing sounds like. You must know it so intimately, that it is sort of engrained in your very being. Only then are you able to listen "right" and only then you will be in the position to appreciate the truth in every word you say, as regards speakers, wires, p.-conditioners et al...and the love for music, which is behind it all. As you say, dynamic range and presence from one end of the frequency sprectrum to the other, as well as what you call symmetry, are the things to strive for. It can be done, but in order to achieve this, you must both know and love live music in all its forms. Thanks Sasha for breaking you silence and sharing your experience with us! Cheers,

Yes indeed a beautiful post and not a shred of snobbery either.Cannot add much but listen to live music as much as possible all kinds of music in as many venues as possible and burn it into your soul.

Brucegel and Detlof, sorry, but I can't share your swell opinion of Sasha's post. Where is the iconoclasm in noting that the high end hasn't taken any quantum leaps closer to reality recently, or that everything - plus synergy - matters in a system, or that dynamic fidelity is a big issue? That's stock stuff, true as it may be.

What I notice more are his hard-to-defend comment implying that only seven or so brands of wire (which, interestly, bear little relation to one another in their product designs) can truly be called "good", and the claim that his customers "worship" him (what's so "beautiful" about that sentiment?).

More to the point though, Sasha's cliched exhortations about "magic", his declaration that "all high end [equipment] is great", and his claim that he can make a $3K system sound very nearly the equal of a $50K system (apparently through a mixture of mass-market electronics and speakers with high-$$ wires bought used, to judge from the rest of his post), make me wonder what exactly he means when he leads in by offering that the thread-head is "getting the run-around from these audio amatuers , and I'd like to help".

Gee, how gracious of him...Sasha, sorry to have so thoughtlessly provoked a selfless professional such as yourself to need to emerge from the woodwork in order to set us straight. Doubtlessly, the original poster will now know exactly what they need to do after reading your uniquely valuable contribution: Call you.

Zaike, I respect your opinion greatly and I grant you, that Sasha's post can be read and interpreted exactly as you indeed did, but I preferred to concentrate on the points he stressed to listen for, which possibly, as you stated, is "stock stuff", which however I find rarely mentioned here with the emphasis I feel they should have. I rather doubt, that many people realise, that their systems, good as they may be, simply cannot faithfully reproduce the dynamics within the entire musical spectrum of a given piece of music and I agree with Sasha, that only if you get that more or less right, apart from the other things he mentions, your rig will begin to sound musical in the sense of live music played in a real space. Not identical to, of course, but coming closer......
I did also wonder about Sasha's choice of wires, although I would agree with him, that cables are important to get your system to sing. It is probably also "stock stuff" that there are some people around, steeped in the experience of live music, who are able to set up a 5k system and make it sound better that stereos 20 times its cost. I've heard that happen more than once and I don't doubt, that you would agree with me in that point as well. So I wonder, what really irked you and tickled your sarcasm. Sasha's narcissism? His pride in his customer's "love"? Come on, Zaike, these pages are full of that sort of thing in one way or another. His point, that apart from speaker design, there has not been a real breakthrough in electronic design? Whatever, although I do see your argument, I still wonder, what was it that got your back up and I still contend, that Sasha's points are well made and although stock stuff indeed, they should be mentioned again and again, because they are so important. What I still find beautiful in his post is his obvious love for music, so I forgave him that little bit of selflove, because sometimes I'm tempted to think, that music lovers are a rare breed amongst audiophiles.....
Cheers,

Actually Detlof, I had to get halfway through your congratulatory post about Sasha's commentary before I realized it wasn't going to end up being sarcastic! :-) (And yes, I'll grant that anybody can screw up a $50K system as easily as a $3K system - maybe more.)

Anyway, no secrets here: I thought many of the other posts above were more perceptive - *and* more directly addressing of the question - than Sasha's. There was no need to come in with that deus-ex-machina attitude, and then contribute nothing beyond some worn-out warhorses and a passel of unsupportable claims. For the put-down, at least give us something more perceptive than "WIRES"!

Even so, there was one thing he said which I will fully get behind - "Stay away from direct advice, and use your common sense" (to which I'll add, 'And your ears'). He could have been addressing this to Rosypup or a few others, and I couldn't agree more. In one form or another, this is basically what I've been saying around here for two years.

[And just for the record - once more - I've never equated audiophilism with being a truer music-lover. Some are, a heck of a lot aren't. Sasha may be a better audiophile than me, but who's to say when it comes to caring about music...for any of us?]