If you were serious about sound you would...

@mahgister I appreciate your point of view and I agree with all of what you said except for I feel like you have fallen into the common audiophile mindset that is simply wrong, I don't mean perspectively or subjectively wrong I mean wrong as in the difference between black and white. Many on this forum have no ability to separate the music from the sound and I should have spelled out the difference in my OP. Today live recordings of orchestras aren't recorded with 2 mics buttoned up and sent out to the masses to enjoy they have hours or days of post production, including filters, delays, reverbs, and loads of different kinds of limiters EQs and compressions. If you did get a pure recording with no post work I bet you wouldn't like the music because it's not what we expect anymore. Music today as you said is not real it is multitracked and manipulated is so many ways you would be amazed, generally it sounds much better than the original recording no doubt. The difference between the sound and the music is that the sound has nothing to do with anything in the recording or musicians the sound is simply a waveform it has nothing to do with bit rate sample rate acoustics engineers producers or microphones used in the recording the sound is what you have when the project is finished and it is the finished vision of the musicians and producers vision it can't be changed or enhanced after it is finished. Where this group goes wrong is evident in the posts even in this conversation audiophiles in general think sound engineers want detail and pureness the opposite is true most modern songs are compressed in dynamics and equalized all over, the "imaging" that is so religiously mentioned by the audio community is usually made by phasing tricks not by a producer mapping out where the musicians are playing on a virtual stage. Today because of Pro Tools and digital filters nothing is done as it was 30 years ago. The sound of the music is not real it is made up in nearly every way, the production squeezes out music like a cold line of toothpaste, the sound is unchangeable it is a baseline to be played in your listening room. By the way the models you see in magazines aren't really as beautiful as they appear Photoshop and Pro Tools do the same thing but once you have the finished product it is by definition the sound of the song. If an audiophile is not interested in accuracy of reproducing the finished product then there is no use being on a forum to learn about what other people like about a piece of audio gear or about how a sound makes them feel, it's their preference who cares.
 

Some of enjoy very old recordings that were recorded way before protools. They somehow sound real and wonderful. I'll keep my equipment.

I totally agree with your analysis i just quoted under , this is precisely why i listen music , classical and jazz mostly and world music , music coming from an era where the recording engineer was a craftmanship work...No commercial or pop or anything else...I dont like unnatural acoustic programmed effects and electronic sounds... ( i only make few exceptions for musical reason )

I dont listen to "commercial industrialized product" at all...

It is so unnatural that i put them in a trashbin so to speak...

Then i dont need to be "serious about sound" and buying the mixing engineer pieces of gear i guess to listen to such manufactured products 😁...

I use basic good gear well embedded electrically, mechanically and acoustically... I dont need any upgrade and my sound is already more than good... ( my only future upgrade will de BACCH filters)

I dont understand what you speak about by "being serious about sound " .... I am serious about music and  recorded acoustic instrument and natural human voices and chorus...

What is exactly your point ?

If your point is criticizing audiophiles for their upgraditis and lack of acoustic understanding i am ok with that...It is evident ...

Otherwise my position is clear ... Psycho-physico Acoustic define sound experience not the gear price tag and specs  which are only  tools for acoustics and for acoustic experience...

Where this group goes wrong is evident in the posts even in this conversation audiophiles in general think sound engineers want detail and pureness the opposite is true most modern songs are compressed in dynamics and equalized all over, the "imaging" that is so religiously mentioned by the audio community is usually made by phasing tricks not by a producer mapping out where the musicians are playing on a virtual stage. Today because of Pro Tools and digital filters nothing is done as it was 30 years ago. The sound of the music is not real it is made up in nearly every way, the production squeezes out music like a cold line of toothpaste, the sound is unchangeable it is a baseline to be played in your listening room.

@jtcf If you come across a post like "if you had to pick 3 songs for the rest of your life...." it seems like everyone (including me) pick songs they love that are from a younger time in their life probably at least 3 decades old. I think the reason for that is because music is emotional and even when we wear the audiophile hat it's not about sound it's about music. We may love old songs but we are fooling ourselves if we think those recordings can compare with new recordings.

So far no one has understood the difference between sound and music and the ironic nature of my post.

Some people conflate music production with music reproduction. I think that’s what is happening here. They are NOT the same thing.