Lately I feel my system is dialed in better than ever and is sounding very good on a wide variety of music. This has come at the expense of some "special effects." I put that in quotes because, as was mentioned earlier, playing with tonal response can do some sort of magical things on some recordings, creating intense vividness and a sense of presence in the room - the kind of thing that gives you goose bumps and sometimes brings tears to the eyes. It's beautiful, but it comes at it's own cost of versatility on playback. Most music wasn't recorded to be heard that way or create effects like that so some stuff ends up sounding worse, and we're tempted to say it's just a poorly mixed recording.
I was thinking about how much better I've been liking my TV lately for similar reasons - I have the color and contrast set to "calibrated,' and learned that the TV needs to be in it's native color temperature to look best - which is cooler than I thought I wanted and not what the TV defaults to. It defaults to a warmer setting that limits contrast and brightness. Letting the TV be what it naturally is due to the color temperature of it's LCD backlight has made me more satisfied. Similarly, with my speakers, I had to accept the tonality that is natural to the relatively narrow dispersion pattern of the speaker and not try to tweak it to make some things sound more dramatic or present like they might with a wider dispersion speaker. In both cases the answer was to pursue accuracy of tonal relationships - flat, extended response, and let the presentation be what it is.
The TV presents a 2D image that can convey a sense of 3D depth but there's no real 3D. With stereo hearing, I don't think that we really hear in 3D like we see with our eyes. It seems like it's really just 2D on a spherical surface surrounding our head. The "depth" perception in hearing comes from similar clues to what we'd see on a 2D spherical screen surrounding our head. We get distance cues from reverb effects in the recording and tonal changes and overall level - nothing explicitly like we do with our eyes by comparing how much we've crossed our eyes to achieve convergence and thereby determining distance.
If you had a projection TV, a trick you could do for immersion is to over project some of the image by stretching it's edges on to the floors, ceiling, and sidewalls. That way you would see the image on screen but still detect light and motion changing in sync all around you, giving a sense of immersion by filling your peripheral vision. That's a trick that might be fun and enjoyable at times, but not part of the original artistic intent. At this point in my life I'd rather not be immersed so much in my home environment, but rather have the work presented to me in a clear and accurate manner within the limits of the format, framed and contained in a neat package. 2 channel audio is just 2 channels. It sounds great just like a flat 2D TV that's properly calibrated and has good color depth, contrast, and resolution looks great. You can detect all kinds of information about the original event and be pulled into the music and mood of the occasion thoroughly without a convincing virtual reality effect - as amazing and impressive as that can be at times.
That's just my preference, not a statement of absolute truth. I may change my mind at some point.
