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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
cooper52
187 posts
 
With regard to to the subject of what is "musical," let me paraphrase Sir Kenneth Clark (art historian, TV presenter, museum director, and crashing bore): I don't know what "musical" is, but I know when I'm in its presence. (He said this about Civilisation, and I'm using his own spelling of the word here).

To be clear, I fall into the audiophile camp that wants it ALL: realistic imaging, well-resolved detail, dynamics, balance, and I want it in a package that is pleasing to hear. I guess I'd have to define "musical" as just that: pleasant to listen to. Because our ears are all different and our tastes individual, trying to divide the audiophile world into two separate camps is, IMO, a fruitless exercise.
ivan_nosnibor's avatar
ivan_nosnibor
1,052 posts
 
"To be clear, I fall into the audiophile camp that wants it ALL: realistic imaging, well-resolved detail, dynamics, balance, and I want it in a package that is pleasing to hear. I guess I'd have to define "musical" as just that: pleasant to listen to. Because our ears are all different and our tastes individual, trying to divide the audiophile world into two separate camps is, IMO, a fruitless exercise."

Overall that's pretty much where I'm at (and have been for some time). AFA the OP goes, we might as well be asking to sign up for a class at our local community college called: "How To Build A Mediocre Audio System At Any Price Level". 

???

audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy OP
3,831 posts
 
Mabokov, the idea isn't to wince when playing the system, that is called tuning. However, the point I was trying to convey is that there are some people who like systems which when we talk about being musical may not mean balanced, but deliberately rolled off.

So in our minds and system tunning we are trying to capture the energy and liveness of music with realistic treble.

There are good speakers that have shelved treble response, if you remember the Spica TC 50, it was so listenable, huge soundstage great imaging.

We had a totally different response to the Quad's then JHillis, we had Quad ESL 63 US Monitors which we were using with dual Entec subs.

The Quads were very musical but never had the dynamic impact of the Wilson Watt Puppy 5 which proceeded the Quads. 

Long story short the Wilson's captured the energy and excitement of live music while the Quads just sounded "beautiful" just not realitic. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
nitrobob
260 posts
 
How many on here listen to their music in pure mode? I can’t stand that sound. I have auditioned some speakers and the pre-amps that were being used had NO tone controls.! That’s the first thing I head for, is the  thump and the sizzle. And nothing blaring in the middle. I guess that’s why I never use audyssey for music . It converts everything to flat. Flat sounds .....flat. But I bet lots of folk on here like it that way ..
david_ten
5,480 posts
 
@timlub  +1

If I listened to both of them on a system without knowing them so well, how would that translate in front of my in my system. Can you get the same emotion and feel from these 2 very different performances? To me, That explains musical.

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