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Two Type of sound and listener preference are there more?

In our thirty years of professional audio system design and setup, we keep on running into two distinctly different types of sound and listeners.

Type One: Detail, clarity, soundstage, the high resolution/accuracy camp. People who fall into this camp are trying to reproduce the absolute sound and use live music as their guide.

Type Two: Musicality camp, who favors tone and listenability over the high resolution camp. Dynamics, spl capabilty, soundstaging are less important. The ability for a system to sound real is less important than the overall sound reproduced "sounds good."

Are there more then this as two distincly different camps?

We favor the real is good and not real is not good philosophy.

Some people who talk about Musicaility complain when a sytem sounds bright with bright music.

In our viewpoint if for example you go to a Wedding with a Live band full of brass instruments like horns, trumpts etc it hurts your ears, shouldn’t you want your system to sound like a mirror of what is really there? Isn’t the idea to bring you back to the recording itself?

Please discuss, you can cite examples of products or systems but keep to the topic of sound and nothing else.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
128x128audiotroy
ctsooner
2,480 posts
 
Micro and macro detail imperative to get the emotion of reproduced sounds.  What is musical to some, may not be musical to others.  There have been so many great posts in this thread about that already.  

A great speaker will give you all the detail that it is fed and it can still  be highly 'musical' for lack of a better term.  Why can't a speaker give you the emotions of a YoYo Ma playing Kol Nidrey while still being able to give you the bite of a horn section.  I honestly have never had 'hurt ears' from a brass section.  Honestly, live music shouldn't ever hurt your ears, unless it's over amplified rock or something like that.  

I was a drummer before the MS and my ears never hurt after any session I can remember.  Even the strike of a triangle shouldn't give anyone a headache when heard live.

Forget which poster said make a recording and play that back to see how the system sounds.  I love that.  We used to do that all the time in the studio with the Revox Reels.
seanheis1
627 posts
 
Most well designed loudspeakers strive for a relatively flat frequency response no engineer strips out "natural harmonicss," the fact that "natural harmonics would be an integral part of the signal it would be impossible to strip anything out.

In this case I was speaking of amplifiers that strip out natural harmonics with too much negative feedback. 
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Negative feedback cannot strip harmonics and this can be easily measured. If anything, negative feedback widens bandwidth and lowers distortion. Improperly used can lead to Transient Intermodulation distortions (TIM), that add brightness to the sound (higher order odd harmonics).

On the other hand more distortions without feedback can make amp sound more vivid, pretty much the same way as distorted guitar (a lot of harmonics) sounds more dynamic than clean Jazz guitar at the same loudness. Sound that is "warmer" than neutral has even harmonics added by an amp. Adding even harmonics might sound nice but reduces clarity.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,335 posts
 
Those are two common camps in terms of how audiophiles think.

I’m in the camp that says every recording sounds different and I want to be able to hear all those differences as much as possible.


Regarding the system, when noise and distortion is very low it tends to facilitate the above and I am a happy camper.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
As an old philosopher once said, what you think great sound is is only as good as the best system you ever heard. (Apologies for the two is’s in a row.) Which of course begs the question, why is it so hard to find a really good sounding system these days, one to aspire to? 
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