The joys of mid-fi

You bring up a good question. For me the answer lies in what kind of system have you built and are you listening to the system or the performance. For much of my history I was driven by my ability to analyze and hear more detail and nuance… in the sounds, images, soundstage, etc. The result was that it emphasized details and the venue and lost the gestalt and musicality which drew me in to the performance.

So, as I pointed out in other posts, with season ticket to the symphony for a decade I compared my system to the real thing and changed my system over time to be natural and musical. The music draws me in now instead of sticking out in my face. Different performances stand out, not by how they were recorded, but how they were performed. Much of today equipment is designed around detail and slam, making a sonic spectacular to wow the listener but failing to reproduce the musical experience.

To me a truly high end (audiophile) system reproduces the musical experience and sucks you in to the performance. It doesn’t make background instruments into solo performances and tell you all about the venue and mastering unless there was something very wrong with them. There are a number of companies working to produce equipment to do this like Sonus Faber, Conrad Johnson, Audio Research and VAC. 

Yes, @ghdprentice  , but I have a little bit of an idea of what gear your system is put together with, and I can only think that it must reproduce quite a bit of sonic detail.  How do you feel about listening to subpar source material (be it CDs or LPs) via your system?

I have 2 HT systems with midfi, and my cherished pricey 2 channel.  I always enjoy the mid Fi but really enter another zone with the higher end

currently listening to my favorite jazz on iPod Classic attached to just returned to me Onkyo ipod dock/cd receiver, and quite enjoying it...kind of opposite of your thread about poorly recorded music on good system, this is very well recorded music on extremely limited playback system...

@immatthewj

You are correct, my systems do produce great detail, however they do so proportionally. By that, I mean if you listen for them the details are there, just not in your face. In the same way that if you listen in a quiet symphony hall you can hear the echo all around from venue, but you must direct your attention to it in order to hear it. Btw, my systems are shown under my UserID in virtual systems.

So, unless a CD or LP is actively bad, my system does not draw attention to it and it sounds pretty good. Very few albums sound really bad… having said that, there are some real stinkers out there… early Yardbirds (I think) and some Russian symphony orchestra recording. I have more than once bought a great Shostakovich by the USSR Symphony Orchestra and choir with great anticipation, only to hear the most horrible tinny recording. oh well.