What is meant exactly by the description 'more musical'?

Dear @atmasphere :  " But if there is something wrong (like distortion)  ".

Not necessary " wrong/ distortion " , our brain react mainly to our life experiences and our behavior to stimulus ( MUSIC reproduction ) result on several kind of those life experiences ( concious or inconcious ) emotions/memories.

All of us have different kind of overall life experiences that constitute our specific knowledge levels on specific different kind of stimulus.

Each one of us are accustom to different kind of beat in the MUSIC different COLOR this COLOR is the flavor of MUSIC we like it's each one of us TASTE.

So when during a test audio item at my place through my specific/unique test proccess the iten under test goes out of that COLOR/TASTE the first attemp of my brain is to react in negative way and then I need to follow testing for more time to look if my brain behavior could change because even that does not match with my taste this makes me to check out if I can improve " something " in my room/sistem.

I already posted in this thread that all that " picture " of phsyco-acoustics  and the like ( concious or inconcious ) it came/comes intrinsecally in our life experiences/memories. Our posts in this thread is a result to all those individual subjective experiences.

The next article is a wide explanation about and if you or any other gentleman read it you can read that the word " experiences/subjective is repeated a lot of times as the Amygdala and Cortex too. Very interesting:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8228195/#:~:text=The%20amygdala%20participates%20in%20the,of%20the%20fight%2Dor%2Dflight

Each one of us TASTE came/comes from " there " from that brain truly complex whole proccess.

R.

@rauliruegas 

Human hearing perceptual rules are the same from one person to the next regardless of taste. It is this fact that deciBels can be used to show sound pressure (since the ear hears sound on a logarithmic scale).

The Fletcher-Munson curve is another example of a human hearing perceptual rule and isn't governed by taste. The human hearing masking principle made mp3 files possible. The range of human hearing is 20Hz-20KHz and so on. These things are not governed by taste.

Its easy to conflate taste with hearing perception. They are not the same; otherwise a person could decide that don't like deciBels and could chose to hear on a linear scale.

If you look at my post about distortion and how the ear perceives it then you will see that my comment has nothing to do with taste.

@atmasphere  : All human beings bornwith similar but different organism " characteristics " that are in each one DNA and those " characteristics " include hearing perception.

Through the years human being goes changing day by day mental and physical according to what he is " exposed "/surrounded just from the begin.

All those " exposed " stimulus work in his organism as a sculptore-man that day by day is modulating all the organism in " thousands " of shapes. 

Through the years each one of us had/has a different learning paths at different levels that are critical in that whole modeling, including hearing perception characteristic and whole all organism intrisecal limitations .

During that " modeling " proccess human being does not cares about SPL or frequency range: we all learn with out taking care of ears frequency range or each one ears sensitivity.

All what we learned ( experiences, every kind/memories. ) and still learn during our life ( just from the begin ) and in the case of MUSIC reproduction are what determine what we like it the more, what we really don't like, what we like in lower way but that we like, etc, etc.

That " we like " involved all those learned experiences in those different paths we already " runned " and that's why we have not only a kind of " flavor " we like but " several " ones with different gradation and from there came each one of us TASTES that are not altered because we know the ears frequency range.

All what you know concious or inconcious/informed or uninformed help you to that " like " flavors gradation and it's that way because EVERYTHING already" lives " inside you thank's to what you " runned " in your specific life roads. Nothing it's at random and ceratinly taste neither. Our response to different stimulus has a way long " history "

R.

Nobody said that "taste", (innate individual specific ears filters for example or acquired trained perceptive biases) is not important , individual taste can and must play a role in what is perceived as "musical" but in a psycho-acoustics perspective not the main role ...Psycho-acoustics as science EXTRACT the essence of what constitute a musical timbre perception from a set of many subjects , and do not use one particular "taste" ...

For example in timbre experiments, perceptive abilities and evaluation of taste and of innate biases are made then tastes there is but psycho-acoustics is not reducible to taste and is not only about taste ...

Psycho-acoustics maps are necessary precisely because each individual hearing differ a bit from all others , each hearing individual is a specific territory, then we need an encompassing map including all of what is common to all humans hearings specificities... ( the fact that the Fourier possible set of linear maps for example are not the territory even if these maps are necessary is for another discussion 😁)

Timbre present objective acoustical characteristics ,at least 5 , with specific measurable controlable parameters; but without a set of human perceiving subjects , each one with his own trained or untrained biases , there is no experience of timbre and no precise concepts either only noise ...

Timbre exist no more without biased human ears ...But this does not means that timbre, interpreted as musical or not musical, is only defined by "tastes" , it is also defined by the set of measurables and controlled parameters which are proposed to the set of perceiving subjects in the experiments ... The acoustic map is common to all even if the hearing territory differ a bit in each case ...

Then if someone design an amplifier he can use these psycho-acoustic results in his design to make it more "musical" and not only his mere personal taste ...

Taste there is for sure, but it is not mere taste here this is all about ......😊

Musicality is an acoustic concept and experience not a mere taste ...

During that " modeling " proccess human being does not cares about SPL or frequency range: we all learn with out taking care of ears frequency range or each one ears sensitivity.

Actually, yes, every human cares about the frequency and the SPL! This is why alarms and bells are at the frequencies they are- because our hearing is more sensitive at those frequencies. Its also why musical instruments are designed the way they are and thus explains why it does not matter if its classical or gothic metal; the energy distribution across the range of hearing will be very similar.

Taste and the rules of human hearing are two different things. If we share the former its by luck but we all share the latter worldwide.