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Real or Surreal. Do you throw accuracy out the window for "better" sound?

I visited a friend recently who has an estimated $150,000 system. At first listen it sounded wonderful, airy, hyper detailed, with an excellent well delineated image, an audiophile's dream. Then we put on a jazz quartet album I am extremely familiar with, an excellent recording from the analog days. There was something wrong. On closing my eyes it stood out immediately. The cymbals were way out in front of everything. The drummer would have needed at least 10 foot arms to get to them. I had him put on a female vocalist I know and sure enough there was sibilance with her voice, same with violins. These are all signs that the systems frequency response is sloped upwards as the frequency rises resulting in more air and detail.  This is a system that sounds right at low volumes except my friend listens with gusto. This is like someone who watches TV with the color controls all the way up. 

I have always tried to recreate the live performance. Admittedly, this might not result in the most attractive sound. Most systems are seriously compromised in terms of bass power and output. Maybe this is a way of compensating. 

There is no right or wrong. This is purely a matter of preference accuracy be damn.  What would you rather, real or surreal?

128x128mijostyn
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fuzztone's avatar
fuzztone
5,502 posts
 

The only thing important to me is for the music to get through.

ghdprentice
6,409 posts
 

The hyper detailed system is a common result of the pursuit. I have heard a number of systems that sound exactly like the one you describe. I think it is a fairly predictable outcome of analytical minds pursuing better and better systems. I can’t speak for others, but I definitely headed that way… not realizing that by maximizing detail and slam I was loosing the music. When working 70 hours a week and having at most 45 minutes to listen to music a day… the detail and slam was enthralling.

A number of things happened to me that got me questioning the character of the sound of my system. I had a little more time to listen… I would get bored after 45 minutes of listening. I noticed many recordings sounded bad, and I started listening to live acoustic music… on purpose. The nail in the coffin was when I bought a high end Woo 300B headphone amp for my already great headphone system. My headphones came alive with tremendous detail, but with mid-range bloom, and rhythm and pace as I had never heard before. It was an epiphany. It made my main system sound simply terrible… dry, lifeless.

Instantly all sorts of experiences with different systems across the decades came together. That began the revolution in my main system that brings me to the all tube systems I have today. Detailed, warm, and completely realistic sounding. See my virtual systems. So, for me, I had to discover the error in the direction of my system building.

 

I know of a few people that had their eye on musicality from the beginning. I know of a lot of people pursuing the highly detailed, sometimes holographic systems. I don’t know if they just haven’t had the epiphany yet, or that their systems simply tickle their fancy. I have known quite a few people that were equipment swappers… they just seem to love to swap out a top notch component every few months. I don’t get it… seems to make them happy.

 

All I know is that I am estatic that I figured this out before I retired and now can enjoy simply stunningly musical systems, that I have a hard time dragging myself away from after listening three or more hours a day.

 

hilde45's avatar
hilde45
4,813 posts
 

I’ve listened to a lot of concerts in a way where I paid audiophile-style attention. Concerts often have a lot of flaws -- imbalances, echo, etc. Live music doesn’t always set the standard. In those cases I don’t prefer "real."

Even in concerts with very good, balanced sound, they are typically not "hyperdetailed" the way some systems are. I like that.

So, to answer your question -- I prefer "good real" over "weird hyper-detailed."

I prefer "good not-real" over "bad real" and over "hyper-detailed."

In good fiction writing courses, they teach writers, "Show, don't tell."

Good systems "show" but they don't "tell."

 

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