what is good sound ?

As Yogi might say, "If you like it, that's good."

whew, I ain't touching this one. Rather read Proust (in French)-it's easier..

When you have an "EarGasm" of course!

Mr. T, I think you've described two types of listening: hypercritical evaluative listening, and relaxed heart-&-soul listening.

In my opinion, we properly engage in the former to identify equipment that will allow us to later engage uninterruped in the latter (uninterrupted, that is, by illusion-destroying colorations and distortions).

I can get lost in a great song a cheap clock radio, if the message in the music strikes the right chord in me. But that's of no use in evaluating the sound quality of the clock radio.

I tend to give no credibility to a gushing review describing the emotion the reviewer heard in his favorite music over a particular piece of equipment. More likely to impress me would be the newfound emotional connection a reviewer feels in music that he normally dislikes. Still, that might well have more to do with the reviewer's mood than with the equipment.

Perhaps the ideal will be measurements that correlate very closely to our perceptions. That would at least be objective - free from prejudice, mood, music content, alchohol content, peer pressure, whatever. At this time I don't know of any reviewer who presents a suite of measurements that give enough information to consistently predict whether speaker A will sound better than speaker B.

In my opinion the goal of "good sound" is to recreate the same perception that the listener would have experienced at a live performance of that music. Yes emotion is a core part of what we experience at a live performance (I still smile when I think of the sheer joy of the last Rush concert I went to), but I suggest not reviewing based on emotion as that's too subjective and variable (my most trustworthy-eared audiophile friend hates Rush).