Two Type of sound and listener preference are there more?

Ultimately what are we trying to achieve. Sound that is engaging, clean, clear, nothing harsh that hurts our ears? Two or three guys sitting around a campfire at night with acoustic guitars and a Cajon singing is as real as it gets. Trying to record that moment and mix it and replay that through an amplified system can never be exactly the same. IE your position to the live music, backround noise, mics, recording equip, ect. I am an audio engineer and mix live music. I ultimately change the way people will hear the musicians. Every event has its own acoustic challenges. I use my ears to accomplish this. I add and subtract different frequencies to make it sound as close to how I think it should sound using my lifelong experience as an avid audiophile. A different engineer will make it sound different because of his preferences. My point is that what we try to achieve in our home systems is very personal. I have spent a lot of money on my home system just because of my love of music. Every piece of equipment adds or subtracts some color in the experience. There is no right or wrong. Our brains perceive things differently. I can be from both camps depending on the music and situation. We are all unique with different ears and brains so its allot more complicated than that. Is there audio nirvana? I think I will only experience this in heaven.

I have long been fascinated by live vs reproduced sound. I have raw recordings I’ve made of myself playing acoustic guitar, my son practicing saxophone, family members voices etc, and I’ve used those to do direct live vs reproduced comparisons with many speakers I’ve owned. It’s been fascinated to find my acoustic memory is better than I’d guess: those speakers that, when I first hear them at a store, show etc stroke me as “getting it right” have indeed been the ones that hold up best in the direct comparisons of recorded voice/instruments vs the real thing.

Its amazing how well some speakers have reproduced the sound of my guitar and the impression of it being played in the room.  

The freakiest one is the recorded my pf
my young son practicing sax.   When played through my current Thiel speakers or through my MBLs from just outside the room you woulld swear someone was in there playing a sax, and I’ve filled a few people with it.

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture"…a quote attributed to more than one author, but could be applied to writing about audio. Any system sounds right when you decide that for yourself. I am professionally involved in live music, have been for over 50 years as a working musician and live sound technician, and I would never claim to know what sounds right for anybody, except that my taste is imposed on people attending the concerts I mix, and that's with the artists approval (sound check is important as I want the artist to be very happy). It's frustrating enough just to get friend's to care at all about good sounding home audio, and consequently I don't really try too hard to get anybody to care. Note that recordings aren't live (unless you rent Carnegie hall to listen to your rig, it's simply not the same), and that's fine as long as said recordings sound good to YOU…I suggest to people who actually do care about home sound to simply change things until you get it to fit your tastes…works for me.

Musical is real.

Trying to record that moment and mix it and replay that through an amplified system can never be exactly the same. IE your position to the live music, backround noise, mics, recording equip, ect. I am an audio engineer and mix live music.

And don’t forget the sound of the cabling and power cords that were used. 😉