Should We Prioritize Detail In Our Assessment Of Audio Quality?

The problem with emphasizing detail, no one agrees on what it means. Far as I can tell a lot confuse detail with presence, HF extension, air, etc. Detail is detail, the finest most subtle distinctions of sound. Nothing about detail has to mean high frequency or anything like that. 

If you are going to focus on anything, imaging is much better. In order to image well everything has to be just right. There must be a wealth of extremely fine detail. If timing is off, there goes the image. If frequency response, timbre or presence are off the sound source loses lifelike character and there goes the image. Anything at all coming from the speaker and this will be heard as a source, the speaker no longer disappears, and there goes the imaging. I could go on and on.

One of the easiest ways to differentiate between components is the challenging aspect of imaging in creating a sound field layered, deep and wide. Why? Because this requires a tremendous amount of detail. Right smack in the middle, if that is rock solid and palpably present you can be sure you're getting a ton of detail.

Sad to say, lots of audiophiles think of imaging as some kind of parlor trick, or irrelevant. Mark my words, someone will say it doesn't mater because you only hear it in the sweet spot. Well, so what? You can't hear detail from behind a speaker or in the next room either. Nutty objection.

Maybe one problem with this is so many have been conned into thinking like the violinist that digital has more detail. Wrong. Digital has more edge. Grain. As if the most detailed photograph is the one you can see each pixel. Play any record. You will see. As Michael Fremer famously said, "There's more there there."

Visit the sound board?   Take up residence.

I hear detail just fine behind my ESL dipoles.

Another lame argument...

I was telling someone recently about being loaned a pushpull 45 amp a few years ago. A pretty great sounding amp but with my speakers at the time the level of detail was annoying. So yes detail is important but too much of any one spectrum of sound is a bad thing.

millercarbon, I agree with your assessment that imaging is a prioritizing factor. I disagree however with the your comment stating that digital sources don't in general have more detail. Personally, I have heard digitally remastered recordings where noises, coughs , etc.. are heard from the gallery. Those coughs are not noticeable within the original analogue sources. This doesn't make detail bad, mind you, because there are other aspects to the nature of digital versus analogue that in most circumstances makes digital preferable. I'd venture to say that very few analogue rereleases are free from digital remastering and details within those recordings are considerable versus there analogue originals. 

I'm listening through Quad ESL's and they can be a little forward and revealing. Hearing detail isn't an objection of mine, otherwise I wouldn't own Quads. But I generally think about revealing details as being extraneous. Imaging however is central to lifelike sound, IMO.

In the glory days of LP we used to speak well of those components that provided low level information. That was the air, the imaging, the detail. For classical music especially I want the detail for the music can be especially complicated. An orchestra of 100; a chorus of 100. I’ve been listening recently to the new Pappano Aida. Yes in a concert hall you will hear more detail in row C than in row P.

But it was Harry Pearson who suggested that detail on a record is more important on records than in person for with the record you have no visual clues.

Today you can find it all: detail, imaging, soundstage, fulness and body in the sound. And you can find it at a reasonable price. Which is to say that detail does not have to come at the price of giving up other desirable qualities.