Why do audiophiles shun feedback in amplifiers?

Learsfool, "neutral", in almost all cases, is a subjective audiophile term. IMO, only people truly qualified to use this term are recording engineers who have the capability to compare their recordings with the live performance that was recorded in their studios or venue. Don't get me wrong, as I've sinned too using this term in the subjective sense for lack of a better word.

As for "midrange", this can cover 200-300 Hz to 1-3 kHz depending on the audiophile. And yes as you state, this covers most of the frequency range of most instruments. That's why most audiophiles often proclaim the midrange is the most important because most of the music occurs in this range. Broad yes, but sometimes useful.

Learsfool, when you are not talking about orchestra musicians, the idea of long scale and short scale basses is well-known. A short-scale bass (electric, BTW) will have a neck about the same length as a guitar. A long-scale bass will have a longer neck, so the translation between the scale for a string bass player to a long-scale bass is about the same.

Long scale and short scale concepts are not used with classical instruments. But there *are* different sizes, at least with basses; I played a half-sized bass in jr. high, but my personal bass was a 3/4 size. As I understand it, full-size basses are rather rare- I don't think I have ever seen one. Most of the basses you see in orchestras are 3/4 size.

Hi Atmasphere - yes, I am of course familiar with 3/4 and 1/2 size instruments in the string world, I had just never heard the term "scale" applied to them, being purely a classical orchestral horn player. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you again for all your highly informative posts I have read on this board over the last several years. You have a way of putting very technical subjects into layman's terms that is unequaled in my experience.

****But we audiophiles (and closet musician on the side such as myself)
have our own set of terminology that will befuddle most musicians. We use
many different terms to describe the similar, if not the same, thing (eg,
instrument tone, tonality, timbre, overtones, harmonics). ****- Dracule1

Yes, and that is a very real problem. It does befuddle that there should be
so little effort to understand and describe music in the same way (at least
as far as terminology, if not depth) that musicians do. At the end of the
day, this is one of the reasons that the sound of so many audio systems
bears little resemblance to the sound of live music.

Are you suggesting that there is a correlation between the descriptive definitions of musicians and various gear designers and consequently their result? Or just the systems that musicians put together vs. the rest of us?