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

Exactly....Thanks for the post and welcome here...

I am a photographer and this is the same debate that occurs in photography circles.

True photographer are painters in their own way they dont collect the photographic gear and they dont focus on the gear collection as their main activities ,they choose it and they use it, and they dont despise painters either as some "audiophiles" can live well  it seems without learning how to understand music language and genres......But it is not at all the general case at least i hope...

True audiophiles are first and last music lovers, musicians in someway even with no musical abilities as me and acoustician in the egg not gear collectors and price tag collectors ...They studied acoustics as photographers studied painting and drawings as much as colors theories and hues ....

@brev

My dad was a photographer. One year I was at the county fair looking at the photographs and saw one that looked like something my dad would do. Sure enough, it was his picture and it got some kind of award. The thing I mostly noticed was how he didn’t push any colors. He took the shot with film, but he liked more subtle films. It was a nature shot with mountains and lots of pine trees. Nothing vivid about it, but very pleasing to the eye and natural.

I argued a little with him abut this approach. I always liked his photographic look and style, but I didn’t feel that it necessarily portrayed the scene in a highly realistic way, although I wasn’t sure why. I knew he was correct about the color saturation, but the real scenes seem to have more impact. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s mostly brightness. The pictures are often viewed in-doors under relatively dim light compared to the brilliance of daylight. Also, print media does not have much dynamic range. We can correct for that somewhat mentally, but I think some amount of delicately pushing the saturation and curves can help in a way similar to a loudness curve on a stereo for low level listening.

I’ve recently updated my system to more efficient and bigger drivers, which can play a lot louder without strain because they are both more efficient and can easily handle more power. The result is that I end up turning it up more without really noticing. It doesn’t sound loud because I don’t hear the telltale signs of strain. Another thing this new setup does is use an open baffle configuration for the 200 to 2000 Hz range, which does something different to the how the room responds, so the room also seems to stay under control better. The resulting impression is a much more vivid and lifelike sound, with apparently much better dynamic punch. It sounds more lifelike and more pleasing at lifelike levels. Bass and treble comes through a lot better without having to be boosted. The clarity is amazing, but this only really reveals itself when the volume is up at a level where the old bookshelf speakers weren’t holding together too well. Those little things had some elevated treble, as some reviewers complained about, but they are also volume limited, so they work pretty well at the levels I ended up listening to them.

Back to photographs, if you haven’t tried it, it’s interesting to see your raw photos properly displayed on a newer HDR TV. I haven’t found an easy way to do it, having to import my raw photos into a film editing program where I would color grade them for 1000 nit HDR and export the resulting movie in a format my TV would properly recognize as 10 bit color encoded. It’s still not as bright and dynamic as daylight, but it really does add some impressive pop to colors just by giving them some extra dynamic range. The key is brightness, and the TV has to be able to do sustained brightness over a large area of the screen for outdoor daylight photographs, so OLED won’t cut it. If you shoot scenes that are darker with bright highlights, OLED should look amazing.

@asctim 

It is because of dipole effect. They radiate in a 3D figure 8 pattern minimizing sound to the sides, up or down. Thus, there is less room interaction. I might suggest deadening the wall directly behind the speakers. It will improve your imaging. If I read you correctly you like your system because it sounds more "real" to you and that is what it is all about.

The attraction to dipoles is very significant in residential settings dealing with smaller spaces. Once people try a dipole system (with the exception of subwoofers) they are generally loth to go back. 

@mijostyn

I think I’m becoming a believer in dipoles. My setup isn’t even close to ideal yet and it’s already making me really happy. I’ve moved the crossover all the way up to 3500 Hz and it sounds amazing even though the mid is pretty beamy up there. The effect is to move the soundstage back. It sounds very natural, smooth and atmospheric, even at low volume. I stayed up too late last night because I could turn it down low enough not to bother anyone and it was sounding so sweet.

As you suggest, I do plan on getting some absorption behind the drivers once I get the baffle standing on it’s own so I can get rid of the old TV cabinet it’s leaning on. I’ve also ordered a ceiling TV bracket so the TV won’t have to be held up. It’s generally recommended to get open baffles 3 feet away from the back wall but I don’t have the space. I’m going to be pushing up against the wall as close I can get away with while maintaining the beautiful sound, so absorption will be critical. Fortunately I work at ASC so we have all kinds of absorbers on tap. BTW, ASC got started specifically on request to build an absorber to go behind a Magnepan that had to be close to the back wall.

I had an idea to use the TV as an extension of the baffle. I might experiment with that, but I have a feeling it won’t be good to make the baffle that much bigger. I fear that will just delay the dipole side cancellation, taking the edge of the baffle too close to the ceiling so it won’t kill the ceiling bounce as effectively. I left the bottom of the baffle open too to help kill some immediate floor bounce.