Disturbing "Sonic Trend" showing up on SOTA audio

The purpose of your playback equipment is to accurately convey what the recording engineer hears from his studio monitors. Modern equipment is far superior in this regard. The distortions of old equipment lend live classical recordings an added sense of ambiance, which is why some listeners prefer the older equipment.

Having just got rid of one such DAC, the PS Audio Directstream, I now have a lot of contempt for snake oil, I mean boutique audio shops.

Mass market audio/pro audio are far more natural sounding than Sterophile magazine recommendations. I now suspect the magazine to be a collection of paid reviews.

I think both schools of sound are represented. Some state of the art is still lush and convincing sounding, such as my Tannoy's with set amplification. But I guess I agree most mainstream is as you described. Someone above had a good comment that gave me a chuckle and although I find it has a lot of truth. Something about you needing to stop listening to solid-state.

Hi Learsfool, sorry for the confusion. Ear bleeding can be the result of a ruptured eardrum which can be caused by sound, albeit nothing you are ever likely to hear in a symphony hall. Other hearing problems can be caused by heights such as the changing of the air pressure on the eardrum that you experience when flying. Your ear pops as the pressure in your inner ear equalizes with the exterior air pressure. I may be the only person who uses this term, and inappropriately so perhaps. I most often I use it to describe the uppermost seating in large stadiums at sporting events where you may almost have to use binoculars to see the game. So yes, I was referring to the most remote/highest seats in a hall. A location that maximizes the affect of reflected sound, and can unduly emphasize/minimize parts of the frequency response, unfavorably.

When in my post I referred to 'imaging' for audiophiles, I was only trying to find a seat location where hall sounds had the least influence and direct sounds had the most and might create an affect that audiophiles might consider great imaging, i.e. location/specificity of instruments. Balance, not so much perhaps.

Thanks for the clarification, Newbee. As I said in my previous post, in a concert hall, you should be able to close your eyes and still listen and be able to tell where different instruments are located on the stage. It may be slightly easier to do this in some places in the hall than others, but honestly I have never thought about this- one should be able to tell that regardless of where one sits in the hall. An inability to do this would say much more about one's ears than the design of the hall, reflections, etc.