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

@asctim 

You hit on exactly the issues at play. First of all "feeling" is very much a part of the way a system sounds. You not only hear music, but you also feel it. Second of all is experience. You do not know what you are missing, what is possible, until you experience it. I was lucky in that I worked my way through graduate school working in the high end HiFi business. Of all the systems I have heard over the years only three could fool me into thinking a voice was in the room with me, that eyes close I could be at a live performance, three systems out of hundreds. Most people have never heard a system do this magic act. That is not to say they have never heard an impressive system, a system that impresses immediately is more likely to be hopelessly colored. 

How does having a system that performs at this level "feel"? No different. I built my first system from Dynakits when I was 13 and an evolving process has taken place since then. I did not experience reference system #1 until I was 23. I have been doing touch up for the last 20 years or so, conquering minor errors or weaknesses. I have three more changes/additions to make and I will be 99.9% at target. Anything I do after that will be frill unless there is some major new technology 

One more thing I would like to point out is Audiophiles can be hopelessly traditional.They tend to avoid new technologies that can make significant improvements in system performance like digital signal processing. Most excellent systems will never achieve greatness without it. I was at a friends house last weekend. I came with my laptop and microphone to measure his system. The character of the sound accepting the bass was excellent. The bass and imaging sucked and this was a $125,000 system. The subwoofers were not set up correctly (easy to fix), but more importantly the right speaker was down 10 dB at 300 Hz. This is due to the room not the speaker and this is what is screwing up the image. You can mess around with acoustic treatments until the cows come home and you are not going to get these speakers within 1 dB of each other without turning the room into an anechoic chamber. Digital EQ is the only way you are going to conquer this. Next time I go over I am going to bring a digital preamp to show him what happens when you make these adjustments. I find it interesting that very few "audiophiles" have ever measured their system. They want to do it by ear. Right.

No EQ can replace ears tuning+ physical acoustics... EQ is a tool not the main tool...

someone who know among others say this :

«The problem with digital room correction is that it only addresses the frequency domain. Depending on the room, it may do a rather good job.

However, if your room is causing a 30 dB cut at 100 Hz, these digital systems won’t be able to fix this. Most of them can only boost the signal by something like 6 dB, which isn’t enough to cover the 30 dB lost by your room acoustics.

As far as the time domain goes, I think it’s obvious to note that no amount of EQ will fix this problem.

I’ve used both acoustic treatment and the IK Multimedia ARC system. My findings? I heard an immediate difference as soon as I put up some acoustic foam to the left and right of my loudspeakers. The sound was instantly tighter and more defined. With ARC, there was a difference, but it wasn’t as dramatic.

The goal of this article is not to sway you from digital correction products. They can be a valuable tool in helping create an accurate mixing environment. I love the JBL LSR monitors. They sound amazing, even without any room correction.

Digital room correction, when added to acoustic treatment, can be very effective. However, nothing…I repeat nothing…can replace the need for acoustic treatment.»

https://www.prosoundweb.com/in-the-studio-acoustic-treatment-vs-digital-room-correction/

I tuned my last room a dedicated one with a distributed array of 100 Helmholtz resonators mechanically tuned... I used many other devices ... All homemade ...

I call this a mechanical equalizer because i worked with some large band frequencies not precise frequencies... I use a compensation and balance effect by the numbers of resonators, their location and distribution and tuning ...

Saying that we cannot trust our ears say a lot about the people saying it more than about acoustics ... I disagree... My room was not PERFECT, but optimal for my ears structure and filters and ASTOUNDING with immersiveness at no cost because homemade ( not esthetical for sure) 😊...

I had not the wallet for paying 100,000 bucks which is the minimal cost of a tuned acoustic room ...

Thinking that some electronic EQ will replace acoustic and psycho-acoustics knowledge is preposterous for me..

Now guess why all acousticians use their ears?

This is due to the room not the speaker and this is what is screwing up the image. You can mess around with acoustic treatments until the cows come home and you are not going to get these speakers within 1 dB of each other without turning the room into an anechoic chamber. Digital EQ is the only way you are going to conquer this. Next time I go over I am going to bring a digital preamp to show him what happens when you make these adjustments. I find it interesting that very few "audiophiles" have ever measured their system. They want to do it by ear. Right.

I don’t go to many live performances so I don’t compare, so I’m in the camp “as you like it”.  I’m fairly new to the hobby so am trying out a variety of sounds on 2 systems: a neutral linear revealing system and a flea watt system for tubes.  Carts from highly detailed to musical, and a variety of SPUs. 300b amps and my 100db speaker designer just confirmed that his speaker will run a 2w 45 tube amp (some claim this is the best sounding SET tube, plan to find out).

Wow, @mahgister who the heck said room control only addresses the frequency domain. That is BS of the highest order perpetrated by people who have no idea what they are talking about. Equalizers can only address the frequency domain. Only a digital system can affect time by delaying groups that are ahead. Phase can also be corrected. New systems with 64 bit floating point processors and systems can easily correct 30 dB, but to tell you the truth I have seen some pretty bad rooms and I have never seen one cause a 30 dB deficit and I have been measuring for quite a while. 

There is no such thing as a tuned acoustic room. The best you can do is Boston Symphony Hall and I doubt you are going to stick one of those in your house.

My brother is a MIT Ph.D. acoustician and he never uses his ears for anything!

The problem is not the ear or ears. It is the brain connected to them. 

@kennyc 

I think you need to go to some live performances. You will quickly realize that a 300B amp is not going to get you very far even with very efficient loudspeakers. I'm not tube adverse, I run 220 watt mono tubes amps. If you like the mystique of glowing 300Bs CS Port has the amp for you, the 212 PAM2 mono tube amp, on sale for one day only at $194,000 a pair. You even get 40 watts a channel, enough to drive your grandmother's table radio. 

The job of a phonograph cartridge is to translate or transduce what is on the record leaving it unscathed. It is to sound like nothing. It is to add or subtract nothing. It is not musical or detailed. It can not read you bedtime stories. It simply turns a mechanical vibration into an electrical signal. Only with loudspeakers do we settle for imperfection because there is no choice. Getting the electrical signal back into what the band sounded like during the recording process is a fool's errand. Given what some people are spending on HiFi they might as well hire a band. May I suggest Primus, I hear it is magister's favorite.

If to be an “audiophile” means that one has to completely dismiss the idea that there are aspects of the experience of listening to music (any art) that cannot be completely described via numbers/measurements (of any kind), then count me out. To believe otherwise is to miss the point of what, TO ME, being an audiophile really should be about: the quest for good sound that is in the service of the music. Not the other way around,

Music is expressed via sound. Music affects listeners in very personal ways. It is impossible to honestly discuss the sound of music in a way that is completely separated from the art. Art is a very personal experience. Our perceptions of the sound of music are always impacted, to some degree, by how the art in the sound is impacting us. It may seem like a quaint (at best) notion to some, but the science should always take a back seat to the art.

This is a long winded way of saying that I completely agree with mahgister’s basic premise that, ultimately, we have to let our ears decide.