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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
bigjoe's avatar
bigjoe
693 posts
 
You forgot the camp who's tailored their systems to where they only sound acceptable with very select music genres ,female vocals are a good example ,I don't belong to any camp but I do have priorities when building a system .

#1 Dynamics are the most important to me .
#2 Detail aka imaging are next .
#3 Listenabikity with all genres without listener fatigue .

#3 is most likely why I spent 15 years with an all Mcintosh system because every component is forgiving ,if I can't enjoy my systems every second I'm listening then I'm not happy ,something is off and it's usually the speaker ,for me line arrays are the only way to go .
ctsooner
2,480 posts
 
Statman makes the most sense. It’s really kind of a silly question when you read the posts and think about it. 
rwinner's avatar
rwinner
37 posts
 
The attempt to install the 'original recording' as the objective standard for judging a system is doomed to failure from the start because It begins with the false premise that there is one, unique objective sound associated with the recording - which of course is entirely dependent on who is listening to it, what equipment is being used, the room it is being listened in, etc. 

My own opinion is that of Justice Potter, who famously opined on the subject of obscenity: "I know it when I see it."  I can't define the sound of a good home stereo system but - I know it when I hear it....
wolf_garcia
6,695 posts
 
I'll revise my response…there's everybody else and me. Here's a weird thing…in the 70s I was vacationing in L.A. and got to hang out a little bit one afternoon in a studio where Glynn Johns was mixing something...I didn't stay long because the playback monitor level was so loud it was driving me nuts…I mean REALLY LOUD…and this was when I was a full time loud-ish musician and if it was loud for me, well you get it. I felt that I didn't want to seem uncool by making earplugs out of something...lame I know. A mystery to this day (Was he deaf? Insane? English?).
ctsooner
2,480 posts
 
great story Wolf.  I love that.  I have spent a lot of time in studio years ago.  I never played so loudly that it hurt our ears, lol.  I would hate to hear how the final tape sounded, lol....wow.  
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