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


Once in awhile, I hear the term 'this amp is more musical' for some amps. To describe sound, I know there is 'imaging' and 'sound stage'. What exactly is meant by 'more musical' when used to describe amp?

dman777

@immatthewj What you think and the reality of metal dudes are two different things or maybe many different things. My best friend for years (Earl Root, RIP) pretty well founded the metal scene here in the Twin Cities so I’ve been to a lot of metal shows of all sorts.

An SET with high efficiency speakers would probably be quite pleasing to them if there were subs as well (most high efficiency speakers trade off efficiency for LF bandwidth unless the bass horn is very very large; most people don’t have room for that) because such can play quite loud. They aren’t interested in pissing off the neighbors because Bad Things happen; that’s different from someone being simply inconsiderate.

Earl owned our amps and preamp with Snell B loudspeakers right to his death.

Most of the people I’ve met in metal bands (a few of which I’ve opened for) were really nice. If you didn’t see their stage get up, you’d never know they played in a metal band. Earl told me that for the most part all metal is theater, so if you’re not laughing a lot and having a good time you probably don’t get it.

Earl also told me (he ran a record store; that is how I first met him) that the metal guys preferred vinyl because it could get the cymbals right. So he was careful to pick up the LP releases for his store whenever possible.

So what you’re saying doesn’t jive with how they define ’more musical’ IME...

Metal musicians in reality are not  deaf people who want to put walls down how suggested our friend here speaking about  their hungry  watts Taste  , they are often great classical musicians as the first female singer of Deathwish was, and often recorded in acoustic Hall or even church...

"musical" had a precise meaning  in acoustic ONLY ...No word replace acoustics parameters controls ..

Tastes of immatthewj or mine has nothing to do with what we must learn in acoustics to improve any system in our room ...We improve our taste in music as we improve our taste in sound by LEARNING , TRAINING, and EXPERIMENTING all our life ...

 

«Only crocodiles cannot improve their tastes»--Groucho Marx 🤓

 

"Musical" in acoustics is not defined by deaf 50 years old rockers who dream to put walls of Jericho fall down again ...And doing this will put atmasphere tube amplifiers in the trash bin and will bought 5,000 watts amplifier to do so BECAUSE THIS IS THEIR TASTE ...

I assume you are referring to me? I wish I could be fifty years old again. I am not deaf, but over the years I have suffered some hearing loss. I used to make a pretty good living working on jet engines while they were running and shooting rivets, and in retrospect, I should have worn better hearing protection. However, I can still hear when my gear is "getting ir right" or when there is a problem, or I wouldn’t go back there and listen to it for hours. Which I would be better served if I was doing now, instead of responding to mindless posts. As far as whether what the thrash-guys want to do with their systems is "more musical", you can argue whether that is musical with them--not me. I do not find that genre to meet the definition of "musical" that I am using.

By the way i never said that atmasphere amplifier are the only good design on the market... This is your usual misreading of my post...

What you said was, to paraphrase, that the definition of "more musical" was to upgrade gear or room acoustics, and if you had an Atmasphere amp, there is no need to upgrade that any further. If you want to dispute that, I can go back to that post that I am pretty sure I have in quotes (so you will be unable to delete it) and show it to you.

You get it ?

I get that until just within the last half dozen posts you could not provide any definition of "more musical" except for a bunch of mumbo-jumbo you seemed to concoct at will.

Psychoacoustics rule audio gear not the reverse...

Psychobabble rules the greater percentage of your posts.

buy a book ...

I have no need. I didn’t ask the question and I find the sound of my gear with good source material to be pleasing and harmonious.

 

immatthewj said

 "@atmasphere , so you are saying that the thrash-metal guys would dig 14 wpc of SET with some high efficiency speakers? I think you are wrong. That crowd wants to rattle windows, shake the walls and piss off the neighbors. And that is how they define "more musical""

 Oops, I think that you may be the one that's wrong! I'm sitting here listening to Sacrifice (thrash from 1987) on tubes and high efficiency speakers, lol. Sounds glorious!

I think most metal heads appreciate great sounding gear, a lot metal does have more nuances that non metal fans realize.

 Oops, I think that you may be the one that's wrong! I'm sitting here listening to Sacrifice (thrash from 1987) on tubes and high efficiency speakers, lol. Sounds glorious!

@newfzx7  , I did stipulate that this is what "I think", meaning that I could be wrong.  Are you using a SET amp and how many wpc does it put out and how loud do you do your thrash at?  The SET folks I have talked to (except for the ones with higher powered SET gear, such as the Cary 805s or 211s) tell me that they didn't go the route that they went because they wanted to reproduce loud music.