How do you know when a stereo sounds good?

This is one of my most important realization....

But it is interesting NOW to listen even bad recording because so bad they are they acoustically reveal some information and anyway they sound better in my audio controlled system...

And like you i am too much immersed in music now to bothered for costly improvement...

We know when our system is good when we make it happened by EXPERIMENTS not only by upgrading or buying gear....

It’s at the point now where I’m far more disappointed with quality of individual recordings than with any "fault" I find in my system performance.

For many years I have attended and listened to all sorts of events where live music has played. I regularly listened and danced to live Latin music.

Last night I attended a live un-miked event with live orchestra and voice. My wife asked me why they didn't use a microphones and I explained that there is nothing as authentic, natural and organic as directly from the source of the instruments, including the voice.

Recently having placed quadratic diffusers in my listening room, it sounded considerably better than before, last night however showed me more improvement is required to get closer to the truth.

I think for me, knowing when a stereo system is on point is largely based upon the closeness to the sense that there are real instruments, real singers presented in front of you.

I have the correct volume room for my speakers, getting the room to reveal what the speakers can faithfully produce, seems to be my next challenge.

Outside of measurements... it's all in your head.

Why people want to reduce everything to a binary distinction?

measurements are tools and necessary even for experiments...

But in audio our sujective experience is also primary...

The truth is simple: nothing is simplistic... especially in physical acoustic and in psycho acoustic and  in engineering...

subjectivist or objectivist are two blind road...

Children wars...

The measurements do not define your ideal, or preference, for what "good" or "enjoyable" are, they are an objective means to adjust to get that sound, and to get it reliably. Phrased the other way I think it says it somewhat backwards, and is interpreted by "pure subjectivists" as *only the measurements matter*. See it all the time. When in fact the opposite is true.

and

measurements can control, they can distinguish, they can provide for reproduciblity and repeatablity

@khughes The twisting of words by folk who eschew measurements sometimes makes my head hurt.

The narrative being presented as facts is upside down and inside out, much as we may observe in some news reports originating in certain countries - selective facts are provided but presented in such a manner as to persuade the reader that something else is actually the situation.

I have addressed (perhaps poorly) this fairly transparent non sequitur pattern of reasoning in one or two previous posts here.

The second quote is of course so perfectly succinct that any elaboration may only spoil it.