Why isn’t more detail always better?

Lowering the noise floor certainly increases perceptible detail.

But you can’t lower the noise floor on poorly recorded material where the noise is part of that material, and in some cases maybe it is better just to "reduce" it a hair to make that noise a bit less objectionable.

I designed my crossovers so that I can easily reduce the "noisy" portion of the band with the flip of a switch/twist of a knob. A bit of detail is lost, but the music becomes more listenable.

@larryi

"there is no difference in the musical detail presented in playback.  Can anyone point out a specific bit of information in a particular place in a recording that cannot at all be heard with one piece of gear versus another?"

Yes, I can.  The specific recording is Shostakovich Piano Concerto number 2, slow movement.  Hyperion SACD with Marc-Andre Hamelin as the soloist. This is a very quiet piece of music, apparently very simple (though I suspect this is deceptive).  On a highly resolving system, the piano notes seem to hang in the air.  (Quad electrostatic speakers, Krell class A amplification).

When I switched from a Marantz universal player to a Reavon, I immediately knew something was wrong.  The detail and the musicality just weren't there. A bit of research showed that the Reavon's Burr-Brown DACs did not support native DSD. Reavon's technical team confirmed that DSD was down-converted to CD quality both for multichannel playback, and for 2-channel playback through their more resolving 2-channel DAC.  CD quality is poorest on very quiet passages.

Switch to DSD through HDMI output into my pre-processor's AKM DACs and all the musical magic qualities reappeared.  There are 8 DACs each supporting 2-channel DSD natively.

So here is an example where the identical equipment (in fact the same pieces of gear) sounded very obviously different with exactly the same DSD source.

As a side note, this performance has just been released on vinyl and I look forward to comparing it to SACD. On Presto Music, the SACD is no longer listed!

...paying more attention to the gear v. the music?  Does seem a distraction at the end of the day....just sayin'.... ;) *S*

In describing a new album, jazz guitarist John Abercrombie said he was “getting back to the music instead of how the music sounds.”  This distinction, like many other ideas on this post, do not necessarily reflect enlightenment (as opposed to confused thinking).