Musicality vs Transparency & Detail

Thank you, Ralph!

Jmaldonado said: "In my view, there's no such thing as "extreme detail retrieval". There is just the detail that every recording contains, and from that point you can only go down. The idea probably comes from the particular habit of some components to slightly emphasize the higher frequencies, as an attempt to make the transient sounds stand out over other sounds."

Atmasphere said: " The way you get 'detail retrieval' is to not create distortion. Distortion obscures detail. The way you keep it musical is by not adding subtle distortions that are sensed by the human ear as loudness cues (odd harmonics). Feedback as a source of such harmonic content; often designers will use feedback to get rid of distortion, but the price is a clinical or harsh sounding unit.

The other way things are kept musical is by not altering the tonal balance. To do that usually requires wide bandwidth. "

I could not have said better than above two explanations. It comes down to less than optimum component design and or lack of clean power source.

Excessive distorted high freq coupled with background noise/hash mostly is the culprit skewing the tonal balance producing highly fatiguing overtly detailed thin sound.

It IS possible to have detailed and yet transparent muscial sound.

I agree with mail187445, Shindo gear gives the best of both worlds, very detailed resolution, but yet very musical at the same time.

For me, the thing that makes music emotionally satisyfing is reproduction of Timbre. Whether or not your system gives you tons of detail and resolution, or a warm "musical" sound is not the final arbiter-for ME. A speaker that can present extreme detail may or may not get the timbre right. What is important (again-to me) is does an acoustic bass sounds like one does when you are in its presence as it is being played, does a clarinet sound like a clarinet or an oboe? Does that cello sound like a cello or are you in a quandary as to whether or not its a bass as its being bowed? For electric instruments some may say "Well, fine, but what is the true timbre of a Fender Stratocaster played through a Marshall stack?" That is a more difficult question, but again, if youve been around electric intruments played live, you hear a difference and know if the reproduction has that "right" sound. What I am constantly amazed at is this: the variables introduced by all our hearing abilities being so different due to physiology or age or environment makes one wonder at how there can be any standard to compare components against! How can Listener A say Speaker X presents detail in "extremely fine resolution", when Listener B may have hearing that is even more acute , and Listener C may have hearing that is incapable of perceiving that fine a level of detail? Food for thought.--Mrmitch

Mrmitch...that's why going to live music concerts is important. If one does, he/she will know what live music sounds like and is likely to replicate that in the home. All is lost if one's perception of music is from car radios, tv, etc. since there is not base for evaluation.