Accurate vs Musical

How about the many parameters of accuracy? Tonal accuracy is different from accuracy with transients and decay. Electrostats do a great job with leading edges, while they fail to properly flesh out the "meat" of the instrument.

Phase problems can arise from crossover dissection. Once acclimated to wide-range drivers, XO'd speakers sound wrong even if they are fast and evenhanded with tone.

How about frequency coherency? The multitude of varying drivers found on multi-way speakers each have their own voice and dispersion patterns. A good designer can minimize these inconsistencies, but they remain. As a Zu owner, these problems are intolerable to me in the long term.

Some speakers like to play loud and their owners tell guests "THESE BABIES REALLY OPEN UP WHEN YOU PUT THE GAS IN 'EM". Other speakers simply will not play loudly without significant and horrible distortions. Frequency balance almost always changes significantly with volume.

How about speaker loading? One reason many people do not like Thiel speakers probably relates to the amplification used in auditioning, possibly which doesn't cater to Thiel's notorious load problems. Thus, the amplifier must be chosen to "hide" their brutally low-impedance loads in the bass frequencies. Properly matched, these speakers are ideal for some listeners.

Characteristics, above, always cater to some volume and music tastes better than others. There is no speaker which is unlimited by any of the factors, above, or others not mentioned here.

"Musical", to me, says "This component sounds very nice, and its errors are ones of omission. It does not try to extract the rats squeeking on Track 4 of AudioNervosa's 'Breakdown' record, but that's OK because it (they) sounded very nice and could be listened to for hours on end".

We audiophiles often scoff at such components, casting them aside as inferior. However, this might be just the ticket for the music lover who doesn't see equipment buying as a lifelong obsession. Is that listener more or less happy as they listen to their records? They listen and love, while we listen and obsess. Hmmm. . .

well designed speakers ALWAYS deliver on both counts. legendary brands names have 'many' examples that are proof...quad, duntech, dunlavy, rogers, dahlquist, ar, hales, chapman, essence, apogee, mcintosh, tannoy, jbl, advent, epi, ohm, harbeth, castle, spica, cizek.....and the beat goes on. the debate as well. each of these brands(i'm sure i've forgotten some) have built flagship and entry level speakers alike that still compete with the most expensive speakers today on the musical and accuracy fronts. they also don't fall apart with an even larger variety of tube or ss components. god bless this hobbyjaybo

Well how about that!?! We have no clear answer! haha.

Here's another view to add to the confusion. I used to have amps that drew images with razor sharp edges and I thought they were great until they were eventually replaced with ones that weren't quite as precise but tied everything together into a whole. I found the latter much easier to listen to and less distracting. While it sounded more natural, it lost some attention.

It's hard to listen to the sound with all that music going on. My system isn't trying to impress me anymore, despite the five and half foot tall speakers and 300 pounds of amps.

I without a doubt believe there is a difference. I have heard speakers that reproduce a recording perfectly but sounded sterile doing it. Musical to me is one that can reproduce these nuances with fluidity and emotion.

I still believe speaker building is one part science and one part art.