I have oftened used the very subjective terms "musicality" and "organic" in my GON reviews of pieces of equipment that offered something very special that allowed me to just relax and enjoy the music in a more natural way.
I really had this experience with the Accustic Arts Tube Hybrid DAC, the Pass Labs XA-100 monoblocks, and now with the Audio Valve Eklipse preamp. But, I have struggled with how to put this experience in an more objective/analytical set of semantics then just using the above stated terms.
Well, I want to give great credit to John Atkinson of Stereophile, who in the last edition was trying to describe what reviewers Micheal Fremer and Robert Reina meant when they used the terms "organic", "continuousness", and what I call "musicality", he really nailed the essence of these terms in my opinion.
I quote, "... I believe they are talking about the phenomenon: that quality in which no single aspect of the sound calls attention itself, but there is instead a seamless presentation in which the acoustic objects representing instruments and voices are naturally embedded within the whole while retaining their individuality, just as happens in real life. The whole is more then the sum of its parts; the music flows unimpeded by artifice."
Brilliant, on Mr. Atkinson's part, this much more conveys in an objective way, what I describe very subjectively as "musicality/organic" when trying to share what a specific piece of gear is doing in my system when I write my reviews.
Of all the preamps/linestages both passive and active, solid state or tube I have had in my system, the Eklipse offers more of this quality then any other linestage I have ever had in my system. I believe that pieces of gear that offer higher and higher aspects of this factor leads to a sense of relaxation and that the illusion of real music is being produced becomes more natural to the listner.
I really had this experience with the Accustic Arts Tube Hybrid DAC, the Pass Labs XA-100 monoblocks, and now with the Audio Valve Eklipse preamp. But, I have struggled with how to put this experience in an more objective/analytical set of semantics then just using the above stated terms.
Well, I want to give great credit to John Atkinson of Stereophile, who in the last edition was trying to describe what reviewers Micheal Fremer and Robert Reina meant when they used the terms "organic", "continuousness", and what I call "musicality", he really nailed the essence of these terms in my opinion.
I quote, "... I believe they are talking about the phenomenon: that quality in which no single aspect of the sound calls attention itself, but there is instead a seamless presentation in which the acoustic objects representing instruments and voices are naturally embedded within the whole while retaining their individuality, just as happens in real life. The whole is more then the sum of its parts; the music flows unimpeded by artifice."
Brilliant, on Mr. Atkinson's part, this much more conveys in an objective way, what I describe very subjectively as "musicality/organic" when trying to share what a specific piece of gear is doing in my system when I write my reviews.
Of all the preamps/linestages both passive and active, solid state or tube I have had in my system, the Eklipse offers more of this quality then any other linestage I have ever had in my system. I believe that pieces of gear that offer higher and higher aspects of this factor leads to a sense of relaxation and that the illusion of real music is being produced becomes more natural to the listner.