Try listening to your system drunk.
Getting into the music
I’ve found, to my dismay, that it’s very difficult for me to listen to music for the music itself these days. Since I got into this audiophile game many years ago, little by little my musical appreciation has eroded to the point that I find it very hard to comprehend the music itself if it doesn’t sound good. Too often I’m listening for sonic delights rather than the message the composer is trying to convey. I find myself going from composition to composition looking for audio niceties. When something sounds good I can then begin to get into what the composer is saying.
As a former musician, this would have been unthinkable years ago. Music was everything to me.
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Like the genie in the bottle, once you acquire the skill of critical listening, it’s hard to turn it off. As ghdprentice described it, is called "technically perfect, musically dead". So how to tackle your problem of loosing the music? You have a great system but I would ditch the Benchmark DAC for sure and go NOS. IMHO, that DAC is made for mastering but not so good for listening to music. I like Golden Ear but listen to some DeVore O/96. See what you think. They emphasize colors in the music, not detail. If there are soundstaging issues, listen in mono, not stereo. This can be easily done with a "Y" connector.
Ask yourself "How many of these songs do I actually like?" Are you expecting the "sonic delights" to make you like a song that you basically do not like? Do not throw out the baby with the bath water. As you realized, there are some songs that do sound really good on a hi-end stereo. There is no shame in walking away from this hobby if it is doing more harm than good. Hope this helps. |
@OP Conversely, as a musician and recordist, I have to turn off the engineering and production side of my brain rather than the audiophile side. I find it helpful to listen to the radio on an average sounding system - with less information, it's easier to focus just on the writer/composer's intentions. |
I think we all go through what the OP described. In my case I retired 2 weeks ago and my first task was to straighten out my listening room(s), which meant organizing a lot of physical media. In the course of doing so I encounter many long unplayed recordings and I’ve been listening uncritically from an audio standpoint and having a great time. I recommend the OP go wading into his vast collection and just play whatever grabs his fancy |
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