Musicality vs Transparency & Detail

I agree with Jcarr regarding studio monitors. Audio engineers, with many exceptions (I'm one), are notorious for their ingnorance of, and sometimes scorn for, audiophile products. They respect workhorses that help them get their job done in short order with a minimum of fussiness.

It's easier to excuse a lack of detail if you aren't aware that it exists in the recording. Once you know it's there, it becomes much harder for your brain to continually "fill-in" the missing detail.

Some music loses its appeal without those low level details or transients.

I am quite fond of both tubes and transistors, but I certainly prefer certain music through SS and other music through valves.

Dear Montepilot: +++++ " I wonder if the goal of extreme detail retrieval will sacrifice musicality. How have you been able to achieve excellent detail retrieval without getting an etched fatigue inducing sound.... " +++++

IMHO, I think that the whole " thing " is a lot more complex that "" extreme detail retriaeval vs musicality "".

Both subjects can live together no question about, all depend of audio items design and synergy between those audio items in an audio system.

We can't do nothing about the recording process: distortions/noises/inaccuracies already generated at the recording process: we are hope ( doing the best: perfect ) to mantain in that way but because there is nothing perfect what we really have is that through an audio system we increase those distortions/noises/inaccuracies.
What can we do?, well to look for audio items that are well designed and that have the lower distortions/noises/inaccuracies: truer to the recording!!!!

But all these is more easy to say it that to do it because we need the know-how about in different areas: what to look about distortion, noise or accuracy? where to look about? how to be sure about? how much experience we have with live music? how good is our music ( ears ) perception? which are our music reproduction priorities? how good our audio system achieve those music reproduction priorities?, which is our audio system develop budget? how much time we have for the research about? where to buy those audio items? in whom we can trust about? etc, etc, etc

Very complex and a very hard life time work!!!!

We could have almost all if we have almost all know-how about.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

As I work to develop my audio system I wonder if the goal of extreme detail retrieval will sacrifice musicality.

IMO this is the wrong way to pursue satisfactory reproduction of music.

You must start by focusing on what you believe YOUR sonic ideal would be. One way of doing this is through emotional involvement -- take note of those rare occasions when the SOUND of a system moves you, not the music (music can move you regardless of where it's played). Take note of the characteristics of that sound.

Generally, there are two broad channels of pursuit in audio: 1) true to the original, the latter being the medium.
2) Tailor the sound to one's preferences.

If personal advice is seeked, I would say that musical coherency (i.e. the sound makes musical sense) -- which is my goal, is difficult to achieve by pursuing ultimate "transparency" alone. This is because what is called "low level detail" should be exactly that: low-level, i.e. there but often hardly perceptible.

Your ultimate goal could be, to have the kind of reproduction where you no longer think of, or seek, any more "detail". There are many reasons for this, mostly mechanic rather than broad... but one common misconception is to equate detail with "sound for oscilloscopes" i.e. pronounced upper mids and mids with a super tweet thrown in to soften the presentation.

Finally, as Raul notes above, you cannot go beyond the original -- i.e. how much detail is in the original anyway. But the sound can still have emotive qualities with most media.

Regarding speakers that are developed for monitoring purposes, I agree that there are some that are quite good, but then there are also clunkers like the Yamaha NS-10m.

Jcarr,

Absolutely agree a real clunker.

The purpose and popularity of the cheap Yamaha NS-10 in studios was to see how the mix or master would sound on a typical consumer system - how well the mix translated from high quality studio gear to what ordinary folk could afford. I'd forgotten that studios sometimes intentionaly try to replicate the sound of home audio. Good point.