Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC

@melm 

True, I could substitute the word natural. But literally all words have corresponding synonyms. Hugh -large. tiny-minuscule, wealthy-rich and so on. 
Charles

With posters or reviewers I'm familiar with I generally understand the meaning of words used in describing sound qualities. I generally find organic and natural to be interchangeable, however, I do have issue with organic in that it can only be rightly applied to the human voice, otherwise humans are playing instruments that aren't organic.

Natural has it's own issues in what is natural supposed to  sound like with amplified instruments and vocals. Recording, sound reinforcement equipment has inherent sound qualities, add our likely totally unique set of audio equipment and natural has virtually no means to test it's validity. Natural timbre, which I use quite often, has same issue.

I sort of like the term analog like, but that presumes others hear or have heard analog audio reproduction. Also, quality of the analog one has heard may greatly color their perceptions, if one had only heard lower level analog, may perceive it as a negative.

My favorite and most usual term is 'performers in room', for me this takes many individual terms/words into account, a system that reproduces the sense of artists/performers in room is highest goal of audio reproduction, IMO.

@sns 

You illustrate my earlier point in that it is predominately a semantics issue. There is not to my knowledge a precise and strict vocabulary in High End audio. So this leads to a communications problem when attempting to express oneself with written words (Particularly in back and forth forum discussions).

Sure, I could have typed natural rather than organic. Even then someone will take issue and say, "what do you mean by natural?"  Given the desire to describe our listening experiences which are emotion based, we all search for words and terms to convey what we mean. Another example is the popular term "neutral" . Okay neutral relative to what reference or standard? 

All we can do is to try our best to communicate as best we are able to via written text. Describing what one hears listening to audio components reproduce music is not particularly easy to do. We all try our best.

Charles

@sns

I have owned my Coincident Statement Line stage (CSLS) for 13 wonderful years. I’ve been asked on numerous occasions to describe its essential sonic character. The terms I employ over and over again are pure, resolved, open, transparent, dynamic and organic/natural. As a fellow CSLS owner would you change any of these?

Charles

Charles, I agree the exact words don't matter much, after this much time in audio, vast majority know what is meant.

As for CSLS, I wouldn't change a thing. My question is do these terms convey a color? Likely I see more requests for something called warmth when asking about component sound, makes me think many systems are colored, always trying to play one color against another. CSLS, and 005 for that matter don't play the color game, I've often stated 005 as sounding neutral, CSLS fits the bill as well. Neutral, organic, natural, they all convey a component not playing color game. Assemble a system from components with these properties, along with highly resolving, transparent, dynamic, and you'll hear live performers in room, illusion of real live flesh and blood in room. Ha, just occurred to me, I'm describing an ORGANIC presentation, perhaps using that word not so wrongheaded!

I'll also add, while these words are indeed semantics for a general audiophile audience, the more I examine the exact words in depth, and how they relate to how I hear sound, they can and do have different meanings. It can be really difficult to get across to others the exact experience of sound one feels when listening to their system, words can be so imprecise, and we can't always know other's interpretations of these words.