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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
rnabokov's avatar
rnabokov
10 posts
 
Why would I want to listen to a system live, bright or whatever, which makes me wince and my ears bleed?

All I want is, like my system, to have music which sounds alive, "present" yet with a "natural" tone as I call it. Like my TungSol 1958 5687 in my line stage: dark and juicy, unlike a 6H30P which sounds hard and bright. There's the piano, there's the drum, there's the upright bass, there's the lead singer of the Cowboy Junkies. Ahhhh. So rich and full and melodic, and I don't care that I didn't hear the guitarist pass wind.

Yes, listening to a brass band makes me wince which is why I don't listen to a lot of music with brass instruments. Equally, I don't want Joni Mitchell's voice and piano playing to sound thin and bright.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
From the technical stand point an amplifier cannot strip harmonics, unless its bandwidth is very limited. It might not add additional harmonics, that make sound warm or dynamic. Warm, cold or
 natural - there is no right or wrong either way.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
rnabokov, sure, avoid it, if the harsh metal dome tweeter makes your ears bleed, but we are not talking about overly bright sound at all.  Benchmark is not bright at all, but it will allow you to to hear in the background, instruments that were just the "sounds" before.  
jhills
616 posts
 
A bit perplexed at the OP's presumption that those who prefer a musical sounding system, don't also appreciate a large deep and accurate sound stage, dynamics and musical detail, or that their systems are, somehow, lacking those qualities. One of my favorite speakers was my Quad ESL63s. In my home, with a fairly large listening room, they just made good recordings of live acoustic music and vocals, sound more real and enjoyable than most everything else I compared them to. Regardless of how much one likes detail and dynamics, a trumpet doesn't have to blast in your ear to sound like a trumpet and a drum doesn't have to crack in your face to sound like a drum and Live Music, as I have heard and I've heard allot, sounds full, rich and harmonic, with an abundance of texture and ambiance. I don't believe I've ever heard a live acoustic performance that sounded lean or sterile. For the most, they just sounded, well - "Musical"...just sayn...Jim
danvignau's avatar
danvignau
935 posts
 
Although my preference us for pinpoint accuracy and separation of instruments in space, I have a switchable choice:  Using pairs of identical amps and preamps to drive my physically time aligned mains and subs, my double pole double throw sub switch removes the sub crossover from the circuit.  This adds rich harmonics for lousy recordings.  Most of my non-audiophile friends would never listen any other way, but great recordings deserve to be heard as the enginerrs intended.  The other benefit of my separate sub electronics is that I can add or subtract bass with absolutely no phasing issues from tone controls. LP''s benefit immensly, and for truly stale recordings, I still have my DPDT harmonics switch. The best sound for my ears is often with no electronic crossover, but cones of foam attached inside the sub grills for higher frequency removal.  These grills snap out for some recordings, but I no longer play around and change back and forth during recordings.  After all, It is about the music, not the equipment. 

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