Cerebral versus Visceral?

I recently experienced it also. After a couple of changes in my system, an amp went from being very good to exceptional, especially when judged purely from a 'visceral' point of view. 

I am still working on the right (optimal) balance between 'cerebral' and 'visceral' for my system / preferences.

I think the cerebral vs visceral/emotional listening experience/system it's an interesting question and SG is far from the first to bring it up.  It's been an audiophile chestnut to kick around as long as I've been in the hobby.

I think most of us would recognize the phenomenon in ourselves.  How many of us have found ourselves seemingly effortlessly engaged in music on our car stereo (even a not-so-great car stereo) sometimes in ways that seem to come with more difficulty from our main 2 channel systems?

That kind of thing.

The problem is, what amounts to a more "visceral/emotional" system vs cerebral tends to vary among audiophiles.   One will feel only an old school British monitor will get them into the music and make them "forget" about analysis, others will say they need much more impact and aliveness to do the same, hence horn speakers or whatever.

So in a way when someone like SG starts to discuss cerebral vs visceral, there is a tendency to at least start implying one has made some sort of objective discovery, e.g. "This system is *inherently* more emotional."
Whereas given the subjectivity in this hobby, it doesn't really pan out that way in practice.

(I certainly get conscious of the cerebral vs visceral in my own quest, and to that end I find palpability - a density and air-moving punch to the sound - to be something that engages me.  Just like Steve G I long ago abandoned my Quad ESL 63s because of it.  And yet, there are audiophiles who would never depart from their ESLs.  And so it goes...)

Gee, if only I had a system with Marantz and JBL components...
wait a minute, I do. 👍

Like SG says, it sounds right within the first 10 seconds. Almost every time. It's a system I don't have to think about unless the upgrade bug is bitting and even then, whatever I'm listening to lulls me back to the music and I just give up on the thought of that MacBook with the Holo Spring DAC and drift off.

It's music that I can feel even at moderate levels and I'm not talking about bass or SPLs.. It's everything. If your system can't elicit some kind of sensation that you can feel in your skin, your body, engaging your emotions, without turning things up to lease breaking levels, then there's something amiss with your system.

Sure, the mind is always working as audiophiles are never content but as the music plays, those thoughts should dissipate into the ether and the right system will do it. 

All the best,
Nonoise

Thank god...a new either/or to kick around. Bye bye Laurel/Yanni, hello visceral/cerebral.

I want to expand on @nonoise point.

One really interesting idea I've been thinking about for a while is where exactly in our body do we perceive music? 

The idea that the ear/brain mechanism is the only part of the equation may not be fully accurate. By this, I don't mean where do we feel emotion. I literally mean, does our skin, and the nerves in that and our viscera play a part in our perception and interpretation of music? 

Like Freud, who over emphasized the mind, and cognition, without taking into account the part our brain/skin/body played in our sense of self and well being, do we do the same with music? I think this may be among the most fascinating future topics. 

Best,

Erik