wht is the difference between good and bad sound ?

Mrs Tennis,

The simple answer is an emphatic YES. Good sound is in the eye, or in this case the ear, of the beholder. In the High End world this becomes increasingly convoluted. It is a matter of taste. Alas, we reach an epiphany. We begin to realize there is no such thing as the "BEST COMPONENT." It comes down to enjoyment and how best to maximize YOUR system and taylor it to your tastes. Which strengths do you value and which are you willing to sacrafice. Lightning fast transients, Transparency, musicality, Soundstaging, Nonfatigueing, Accurate bass, Tight bass, extended bass, etc... These are a few adjetives used to describe top notch "Audiophile systems." The problem is how many of us listen to Audiophile recordings exclusively. Ideally, you would like a system that is nuetral and passes only the signal that is sent to it. Once you have heard a system that does that, sometimes you spend more time listening to the recording or the shortcomings of the recording than actually listening to music. Here is the Paradox of the High End world. How do you make a piece of Gear Accurate, but also able to sound good with the variety of genres of music as well as the wide array of recordings in the marketplace. Some of these recordings are very good and some are downright horrendous. That is why we get back to the original discussion.

Audio is arguably the most subjective hobby out there!!

Mrtennis, if you play a poor recording on an excellent system and it sounds bad, what does that mean? If you are unfamiliar with the recording would you just assume that the excellent system is "bad sounding"?

Then if you played a really great recording on a poor system and it sounded "good," would that make the poor system a "good" system?

What about if you heard a great system in a room that had poor acoustics? Would it still be "good"?

Why don't you do the "wife test"? Play your system at a moderate listening level when your wife is in an adjacent room. If your wife asks you to please turn it down, it's a bad system. If she comes into the room and listens with you, it's a very good system. And if she starts asking for requests, while sitting next to you in the sweet spot, it's an excellent system! If you're not married, perhaps you could substitute your sister, mom, or a friend's wife...? If any of them tell you that the highs "hurt their ears," that's the kiss of death, and you can assume the system is "bad."

gentlemen:

lets use logic. if i play a good recording and a bad recording on a stereo system and don't like the sound in either case it is a bad stereo system.

a stereo system is only as strong as its weakest link. if a stereo system sounds bad with a bad recording it is a bad stereo system. if it sounds good with a bad recording it is a good stereo system. the issue is what does the stereo system sound like with a recording. it's still subjective.

we can agree to disagree, but until absolute standards are established.

a system can sound bad with a bad recording or a good recording. it is irrelevant with the recording sounds like. one can not know what a recording sounds like anyway, just as one cannot not know the sound of an individual component.

knowledge cannot come from experience. only opinion comers from experience.

it's all just opinion.

plato, i missed the obvious flaw in your first sentence.

you posit the existence of a bad recording and that of an excellent stereo system.

you can't make that ssumption because the term excellent and bad is the result of experience, not knowledge. you are assuming the existence of an excellent stereo system, but that determination would be made subjectively, after listening to many recordings--in theory both good and bad.

if the system were excellent it would not sound bad with a bad recording.

with regard to a recording on what basis is the detrmination of its sound quality. there is no way to know this.

you are caught in a logical dilemma, assuming what you are trying to prove.

if everything is a matter of opinion, the evaluation of a stereo system would be subject to disagreement. a stereo system could be judged excellent and poor by two serious listeners. thus the stereo system is neither excellent or poor, just judged to be and its inherent sonic quality would be unobtainable with objective absolute criteria. unfortunately they do not exist

Hmmmm, well, I can see that nothing gets by you, Mrtennis.