I was happily surprised to wake up this morning to read all of the responses to the question that I posed to everyone yesterday. My question was leading in the direction of the importance of the inner person -- whose inner ear is undeniably "influenced" by the quality of the sound that his system is producing. Ultimately, where is the music located that we are appreciating? Is it coming from the system and the speakers? Is it in the air between the speaker and our ears? Or is it in our ears and our brains that receive the sounds? Or is it in all of these locations? My question was leading in the direction of the importance of the listener and how each of us hears what our systems produce. Ultimately, the music is inside each of us. Our ability to appreciate our music is a function of how musical WE are as well as the quality of our systems. I have a very old friend, Alex, who is now 85 years old. He was a jazz pianist and drummer and either knew or saw most of the greats of yesteryear. He saw Art Tatum in a small basement club in New York City. He introduced Stan Kenton on stage. Stan's kids used to play with his own kids. Alex's hearing is now quite impaired. He said to me recently that it would be a waste of money for him to upgrade his vintage Marantz/JBL system because he just can't hear the high frequencies anymore. But Alex and I spend afternoons listening to the old standards and watching the videos of the greats of years gone by and Alex still appreciates music as much as just about anyone I know, including my audiophile friends with modern systems. Musicality resides with the listener. The equipment resides on the shelf. We are all striving to create the best system we can. I certainly am with equipment from EMM and Marantz and Merlin Music and Audio Magic and Oyaide. But my own sense of musicality -- how I hear what my equipment produces and how much I appreciate what I hear -- is the ultimate determinant of how much I am able to appreciate what my equipment produces. We all like to A/B and do the best we can to upgrade and tweak our systems. But in the end we have to just lay back and enjoy the best sound that we are able to afford. We may not be able to afford the "perfect" system but we can enjoy what we have with a sense of musicality that is actually the most important component in our system. Are you "missing" something in your system? Most of us are "missing" something but if we have a strong sense of musicality then we are not "missing" anything at all because the music resides within our hearts.
Sabai
