I've read both new reviews and after having been able to listen to a QOL for a few hours, I don't agree.
I found QOL effects seductive but not more realistic. Spatially, it does perceptually enlarge the sonic stage but more by pulling apart the center and compressing placements toward the left and right extremes than by actually enlarging it. Anything left in the center suddenly has a lot of space around it, whether that's natural or not. Front to back dimensioning is more of an actual asset but here QOL makes you a first row listener regardless of what would be natural for the performance or consistent with your habits if listening live. It also presented height dimensioning too large to be authentic in almost every case. And human voices sound like they originate from three-foot throats resonating into 16 foot chest cavities. In fact overall this was the most distracting aspect of QOL -- its in-your-face presentation even when a more distant perspective is natural or known to be in the recording itself.
Tonally, I heard QOL introducing seductive distortions to natural sound that are easily enjoyed for being ultra-vivid, but saturated of tone and texture beyond what's heard from real instruments even up close. I thought QOL sound was highly entertaining and so of course its greatest advantage was Blu-Ray cinema sound. There is some merit to the observation that phase coherence renders aural events more revealed and precise. But again it forces a guitar-is-6-inches-from-your-ear experience with string plucks and wood resonance that no one hears other than the player, and even then he or she doesn't hear THAT from a playing position.
So on balance I believe reviewers, so often unmoored from the sound of actual music played in real spaces, are seduced by the magnified and overwrought presentation rendered by QOL, rather than judging its contribution to convincing fidelity. It is a highly entertaining contribution through aberration, and I can see it making some category of modest systems more engaging through a kind of hallucinogenic euphonic bloom. No doubt fun for some. But if you already have a tonally truthful, realistically resolving system, my advice is to put $4,000 into more music or something else on the gear side that's genuinely advancing of musical truth. QOL is a funhouse mirror for your recordings. You have to seriously consider how long it is before that gets old.
Phil
