Musical?

'musical' components are generally ones that make the listener forget all the other adjectives. the ones that remind people why they liked this hobby in the first place. the first time i ever heard the term 'musical to describe equipment was a salesperson describing the sound of acoustic research speakers in the early seventies.

Musical means it sounds really, really good but it could be inaccurate and not quite right as far as audiophiles are concerned. Don't let them spoil your fun - Enjoy!

Musical means it sounds really good and you're really happy with the sound your system is reproducing. If you're an audiophile, that means it's not quite right and you're not listening quite close enough, your're not thinkng or feeling properly or you're just confused. If you feel too satisfied you're not doing it right. Try listening very discernably and you'll find a reason to be unhappy - then you'll know you're an audiophile. I think you can do this since many of us have and it's really quite easy. Hope this helps and happy second quessing.

"Musical" means "Hey, I like this one so much, I can't be bothered with trying to explain why." It's a pretty recent descriptor of choice, along the lines of "sounds more like music, less like hifi." Whatever. By itself, it doesn't convey any more information than making contented grunting noises does. To be more charitable, it conveys the sense of "getting it right," even though the piece might not be the ultimate in one or more specific audiophile qualities. The problem is, "getting it right" totally depends on your personal preferences. It's often hard enough to interpret people's usage of terms like "forward," "warm," "compressed"... The word "musical" is pretty much off the charts in terms of subjectivity.

That said, I liked Noble's answer, too.

It's definitely a non-audiophile way of thinking. If a component is "musical" you can listen to and feel the emotion of the music without thinking about the system your hearing it on. I sometimes get this feeling in my 96 Jetta but rarely when planted squarely in the sweetspot of my listening room.