Fidelity vs. Musicality...........Is there a tug of War?

@mijostyn:

"The best systems make everything sound better, everything. When confronted with a system capable of the absolute sound everyone will think it sounds great. Everyone knows what "right" is when they hear it."

I'm curious: what percentage of audiophiles would you suspect are able to afford one of the "best systems"? 

@noske:

"@stuartk perhaps you speak of musicianship? I'm not even sure that's a word. I am inclined to mostly agree with you"

Musicianship is mastery of expressive means. That is half the equation.  The other half is having something valuable to express. 

There exist musicians who display dazzling technique yet who's playing communicates little-- there is an emptiness at the heart of it, 

Likewise, there are musicians with limited technique who manage to convey something profound.  

Define what is "musicality" and what is "fidelity."  

Be very specific and use objective terms, not subjective terms.  

Once that is finished and resolved, then we can discuss why some equipment fails to reproduce musical performances and other equipment comes very close to "you are there" reproduction.

One can put together a system that measures really well but in the end, it’s not an oscilloscope that’s going to listen to the system-- it’s individual human beings, whose perception of sound and aesthetic preferences can vary considerably, to say the least.

Agreed

Everybody will have their own definition of what fidelity is, but to me fidelity does not equal measuring well on a scope. 2nd order harmonics is not distortion, 5th order harmonics is. 

Fidelity in audio is faithfulness to the reproduction of music, not faithfulness to reproducing a sine wave on a scope. Measurements that give the average deaf engineer wood is of no consequence to anyone with an interest in audio.

2nd order harmonics is not distortion, 5th order harmonics is.

Anything added is distortion.  Piano, for instance, has overtones stretched over harmonics.  Octave higher key is not tuned to double frequency but to overtone of the lower octave key (otherwise keys would beat).  Tuning person is winding strings up until beat stops.  Because of that piano has accumulated error of about 30 cents at both ends of the keyboard.  Playing piano thru amplifier that adds second harmonic, is creating beats - exactly against tuning to avoid it .  With overly warm gear piano can sound even like out of tune.