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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
prof
3,471 posts
 
Roy,

I still don’t understand what *you* mean with the term “musical.” I can’t find any other content here aside from you liking certain systems.

And I have to admit I long ago grew uncomfortable with some of the elitism in high end audio where someone declares certain systems “play music” while others do not. My son listens to music on his laptop and iPhone and is enraptured. Are they not “musical” systems? Does he need to learn he is wrong, learn to be dissatisfied and disconnect from his own experience listening and adopt yours?

If instead you give more detail about what specifically you mean by “musical” - actual sonic characteristics - then who knows we may agree. But if it reduces to various forms of “does it move you” then that, as I say is subjective, differs between listeners and therefore not a useful heuristic for identifying anyone being wrong or right about the musical capabilities of a system.
seanheis1
623 posts
 
Defining musical is like defining how to dance. We know when someone can dance just like we should know when something is musical. PRaT? 
nitrobob
246 posts
 
I was thinking of you guys today. While driving down the road listening to Sirius XM. (I listen to a channel called Deep Tracks. Off the wall,lesser played, mostly older rock and roll ). Joe Walsh,of the Eagles fame, was saying that while mixing in the studio, tons of time are also spent in their cars ! Joe was saying to truly find out what the "mix" sounds like, they would always take the tracks out and play them through their car radios out in the parking lot. He said "that is truly how you need to find out how the mix is going to really sound. That’s what’s important "..
jon_5912
604 posts
 
This is illustrating why I'm in camp one.  I don't have the patience for all of the navel gazing and tail chasing that goes into trying to come up with my own personal definition of musical.  It's obviously subjective.  It's the perfect amount of HF roll-off the, perfect amount of even order harmonic distortion, the perfect frequency response that has the preferred inaccuracies.  

I have no problem with people having a preferred flavor but when they start to use their personal taste as a tool to belittle people who have different tastes they need to be called out on it.  Anybody who uses the phrase "truly musical" should be dismissed entirely. 
ctsooner
2,480 posts
 
Does the music make your toes tap?  There are different flavors in the high end.  Components certainly have a 'house sound' to them.  We all know what we like and don't like, but all too often we listen to dealers or even friends who are with us, thinking they know more and we should like what they do. 

This thread has made me wonder, what if you were to go into a rooms with different sounding systems set up and you didn't know the price, couldn't see anything.  What would you pick?  No personal contact with anyone while in teh room and not until you have chosen your system.  What would you chose?  I have often gone to dealers and asked ahead of time to have them set up their three best systems in three different rooms (if they had three) and not tell me the cost.  It's a fun test and it tells you a lot as to what made my toes tap, thats for sure.

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