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

Smoothness is a word that I use for systems with a very characteristic sound. One of the smoothest sounds I’ve ever heard came from an old VW van that some guy had restored and put a big sound system in. I was just walking by and he had the doors open and the music turned up. Somehow that system took the edge off everything without seeming to lose any detail. Not what I typically hear from real live acoustic instruments indoors, but very pleasant on account of sounding so, so, smooth! It may have had something to do with being outside. I’ve heard that same sweet smoothness from the US Marine band playing on the deck of the USS Nimitz with hundreds of us sailors standing around them. The trumpets were bright and clear, but there wasn’t a significant surface nearby for the sound to reflect off of, not even a reflection off the deck because our bodies were absorbing it all.

Certain music should have a bite on edges, if it is too smooth it won't sound right. The flow of any music should be coherently and continuously smooth but that's different meaning of smooth.

As for the concept of "good enough", it's an interesting one. No system is good enough for me because it is still far from real. Problem is not only the system but the recordings, most of them. So I just do one or two significant upgrades every few years and don't think much about it.

I

@rcm1203 

To the contrary, being an audiophile is an expensive curse. The love of music and audiophilia are two entirely separate issues. You do not even have to love music to be an audiophile! I know an audiophile whose collection is entirely audiophile candy stuff. The music lover side of me will listen to 78's just to hear Enrico Caruso. You have not heard Lewis Armstrong until you have heard him in his younger days. I have a picture of him and I believe the Fast Five blowing their horns into one big horn! I know many musicians who could care less about audio. 

Yes, certain music need a bite on edges, but it needs to be the right bite on the right edges.

Definitely a lot of recordings were not meant to sound real so there’s no way to get it to happen. Still, they can be quite enjoyable.

As for "good enough," I consider it good enough when the fundamental issues of the recording and playback method are the major constraint, and issues with things like max volume and frequency response are already beyond anything I want happening in a home setting. If I’m just doing 2 channel, 2 speaker stereo without some way of dealing with inter-aural crosstalk, I find that point of "good enough" happens pretty quickly. No point in trying to upgrade components when I’m just going to be heavily distracted by the crosstalk anyway. I know that not everybody is bothered by it. There are many ways for a system to sound good, and some people can filter out or psycho-acoustically hear through issues that I can’t.

I suspect that a lot of music lovers who aren’t audiophiles are exceptionally good at re-constructing what’s missing or distorted in the playback. They don’t even know they’re doing it, so they don’t get what all the audiophile fuss is about.

I can say for certain that I’m not the one you want adjusting photos or color grading video, or mixing and mastering audio for professional production work. I watch videos and read books on what’s supposed to look and sound good and what’s not, and I often can’t see or hear that anything has meaningfully improved. I usually prefer they just leave it all alone unless something is obviously off.

I do wonder about the effort put into mixing and mastering a lot of pop music. Does it really significantly increase sales?

The love of music and audiophilia are two entirely separate issues. You do not even have to love music to be an audiophile!

Sadly your claim is not even wrong! 😁

Musical learning and understanding and audiophilia done right are acoustically and psycho-acoustically RELATED... Claiming that an obsessive compulsive disorder for gear upgrade is the center of a hobby instead of acoustic and psycho-acoustics understanding and music learning and understanding is preposterous...

By the way i am a relatively informed audiophile and a music lover...

Gear obsession with no love or understanding for music nor for his acoustics and psycho-acoustic embeddings is a psychological disorder not a hobby ...

And acoustic and music experience are about optimization not about an inexistant "perfection" through gear upgrades purchase...