High Performance Audio - The End?

I thought this thread was about whether having a more revealing system is a bad goal. Personally I think that is the ramblings of someone desperate to sound relevant.

Take a b-grade band, genre unimportant. Playing in a great acoustic space will not make them sound worse they will sound better.

Resolution is far more likely to reveal interesting nuance. A bad system will make everything sound bad. A great system can make even some pretty awful stuff sound okay.

@dutchtreat,

"Visited a friend recently, who has a grand piano in her music room. Listened for about an hour, noticed what makes it sound real. Timbre at all frequencies, all notes. Percussiveness. Sustain, damping pedal effects, different sound played pianissimo to forte."


Time and time again piano crops up when evaluating the authenticity of any playback system, as does listening to live unamplified music.

You're fortunate in that you have access to a wide range of live sound. 


"My guitar, recorded with the same mic, sounds like my guitar, sans alteration. My wife's speaking voice, ditto."


Again, live sound. Again, great reference points. On the occasion I've heard a live sound recording played back through speakers I'm always impressed by its immediacy and dynamics. It's the kind of thing that I've rarely heard in any commercial recordings.

I'm not sure why modern loudspeakers no longer have felt surrounding the drivers the way they did with the tweeter for example on the LS3/5 for example.

It sounds like you're getting great results with well recorded music but I hope you don't mind if I ask  how your system is with some of the more standard pop /rock recordings in your collection?

Think about this...
If a playback system is low distortion, then it is high resolution.
The contrapositive statement is:
If a system is low resolution, then it is high distortion.

I regularly listen to "poorly recorded music" through a low distortion system and am amazed at how good it sounds. One of my favorites is "1967 Billboard Top Rock'n'Roll Hits." Really, I am slack jawed listening to the music. It sounds fantastic!

Note the common error of logic made with the above statement:
If a system is high resolution, then it is low distortion. This is NOT true.

This helps explain much of the seemingly contradictory statements made in this thread.

"Time and time again piano crops up when evaluating the authenticity of any playback system, as does listening to live unamplified music."

In my case yesterday, playback system helped me evaluate the piano. It reminded me that it is time to tune it.

I listened to my new record yesterday, new to me as it was made in 1950s. I compared it with piano behind me. Record won.

Thanks glupson, that is really funny!