Evaluating a system - what do you listen for?

All good comments---everything matters! Reproduced music still, after all this time and effort, sounds very different from live, and undoubtedly will for the remainder of even the youngest of Audiogoners lives. But it can already sound close enough to allow the suspension of disbelief, and for the music to have an emotional impact on the listener. I can be brought to tears by Iris Dements singing even on my computer monitors speakers.

The thing about elements of music and it’s reproduction such as timing, is that we don’t necessarily know how a recording should sound in that regard---what the timing of the original music, as opposed to it’s reproduction, was like. We DO know what a voice free of vowel colorations sounds like, generally speaking. And we know what natural instrumental timbre sounds like. No, we don’t know how well any given recording has captured vocal and instrumental timbres, but ya gotta start somewhere, if that makes any sense.

Reproduced music can sound no better than the quality of it’s recording---source material is still the weakest link in the reproduction of music, in many cases by a wide margin.

Here’s a thought regarding the "timing" ability of a component: Being a drumset player, I value the "rhythm & pace" abilities of a component and/or system as much as anyone. Both Art Dudley and Herb Reichert make this ability a large focus of their component evaluations in Stereophile, even of electronics. Let me pose a question to ya’ll: How much do you think an electronic component can affect the timing of music? My opinion is that the effect on timing by electronics is far, far exceeded by that of speaker and listening room behavior, the effect of electronics being miniscule in comparison. In low frequencies especially, there is NO room which does not produce bass resonance modes, causing bass notes to linger after the signal has stopped. The result is the common bass-overhang (characterized as "slow", "fat", etc.) often blamed on the speaker or sub, when the real culprit is the room itself. Before you worry about the ability of an electronic component to effect timing, you had better have dealt with your rooms acoustical behavior.

Now speakers and turntables, being mechanic devices, ARE a genuine cause for concern and attention in regards to timing---cartridges, being an electro-mechanical transducer, as well. But electronics? Swamped by other factors imo.