The Absolute Sound vs Pleasing Sound

Besides, timbre and dynamic nuance is where the music is. Everything else is audiophile stuff that many confuse for components of music. Think that’s wrong? Look up any meaningful text, book, article, etc. on the subject of MUSIC and find the chapter on “sound staging”. Good luck.

Who said that? Whoever it was, remain in hiding, because it makes no sense. No one talks about "sound staging" with respect to music because with music the performers are right there. If Bruce Springsteen walks in and starts playing right there in front of you what idiot is going to exclaim, "It sounds like he's right in front of me!" 

Oh wait. I know which one. The one that thinks the absence of this in music books means audiophiles made it up.

@russ69: Great attitude! Indeed, Absolute sound is an illusion, for all recording techniques are flawed, and each technique distorts in a different way, so there cannot be an absolute when everything is relative...For me, music reproduction is all about creating a world for yourself through music. I measure systems on how effective they are in creating a universe for you. Another consideration is: what kind of universe are they portraying?
The general trend today is towards a visual cue-based portrayal, where you can "see" and "touch" the hyper-magnified and sound that has it's contrast turned up to the max so we can gleam more information, which produce heightened visual and auditory cues.... It's quite fascinating.  My favorite universe portrayal is not this hyper-magnified universe. My ultimate audio universe is all about connecting your emotions, soul, mind, will and being to the universe of sound. Substance, not the show. Depths instead of the surface. The purpose is time travel to a long gone era, healing, inspiration, living for a brief time in different worlds shown by the soundscapes...

Oh wait. I know which one. The one that thinks the absence of this in music books means audiophiles made it up.

Soundstage or imaging concepts exist for sure....They exist for me...But they were created with the progress of electronic audio and speakers design...When i listen to my system i note their existence or lack of...But the more important concept is a musical one: recreation of the timbre experience...This musical concept precede by far the many audiophiles modern concepts about sound linked to the audio market and engineering..

Nobody then can contest that the audiophile concepts exist and make sense...

The central point is if we want to judge the accuracy of our system the main central concept is the musical concept of natural playing tonal timbre....That is what i read about in the posts of frogman...

And this is my experience in my listenings experiments to embed rightfully my system... The "timbre" experience is the crux perceiving experience....

This dont negate the fact that i want good depth imaging and large soundstage at all... But creating a better timbre experience give us the rest.... Enlarging or improving imaging is good but dont give us a better natural timbre completely by itself if we dont focus our attention toward timbre... The acoustic settings conditions to give a better timbre experience will gives us all the other experience... The opposite is not always true...

The acoustical explanation for that is in the definition of timbre itself by 5 characteristics which for their existence ask for a complex acoustical balance in the room which balance will give us anyway imaging and soundstage as a secondary effect... But modifying the soundstage by itself dont give us necessarily a better timbre experience... It is for this reason that listening to timbre is fundamental to refine and fine tune our acoustical settings in the right direction....

Why don't speaker manufacturer's publish their speakers responses?!  What are they hiding?  Why can't I tune my speakers to suit my ears?  And why won't Magico return my phone calls?
oh, wait, wrong thread.  You guys are discussing the pleasures of actually listening to and enjoying music.  My mistake, I'll take my comments elsewhere.

Another element is that even those of us with really good hearing do not hear live performance exactly the same, though it should be close.
So, one will prefer these speakers and another - those. But it should not be far apart. I think, Frog prefers big electrostatic speakers and quite a number of audiophiles do. I don't. Does it mean that my hearing is worse ? Maybe, maybe not. My musician friend also prefers electrostatics, by the way. I know this - I hate horns, any horns.