Great post...
We are not afar from one another... I regret my first "rude" post toward you...
By the way , what you called very wisely "ambiance" in acoustic is called ASW/LV ratio: it is Immersiveness the way the listener feel included in the sonic event...
It takes me one year non stop experiments in my room to create this... As you wisely said , it is not soundstaging...I like the "ambiance" word...It include immersiveness with something more... I discovered that acoustic device are not all Helmholtz resonators or diffusive and absorbing or reflective materials ... But also secondary artefact that ADD to the "ambiance...
I used to believe a lot of things that I now accept are not true. I used to think I knew a lot of things that I really did not, especially how we hear. That was an eye opener, and helped a lot with my first problem. The final piece in the puzzle was much harder to put in place because both ASR and the people that use it, and sites like Audiogon and the people that use it are both somewhat wrong at least in my opinion for putting that last piece of the puzzle in. Both ASR and Audiogon users think they are trying to extract every last bit of musical information they can get from a recording, and here is the important point, and nothing else. ASR users approach this very literally and analytically. Audiogon user’s think they are doing the same, but are often adding things that were not on the recording, but have convinced themselves they are getting more of the information out.
That last piece of the puzzle was accepting that enjoyable sound from speakers is not just about hearing what is on the recording, but using your system to create a simulation of what a live event may have sounded like. Not did sound like, but may have sounded like. Amir often says, look, these two things sound exactly the same. I accept those conclusions. Amir often says this level of distortion is unacceptable. If you are only trying to extract exactly what information is on the recording, he is correct. If you are trying to simulate a live environment which I think many audiophiles are doing without realizing it or accepting how they are doing it, then I don’t think this conclusion is correct.
