Does good technology guarantees musicality?


Nowadays many audiophiles think that if you DIY a state-of-the-art DAC with the implementation of the right technology and with the use of the best parts money can buy, then you will automatically get a good (and musical) sounding DAC. I personally think that this way you can get a (technically) good sounding DAC, but it is still questionable if it would sound musical too. I mean technically perfect is not synonimous with musicality. Many people are able to build a technically flawless DAC, but only a few are able to build a musical sounding DAC. Do you agree with this?

Chris
dazzdax

Showing 3 responses by mrtennis

consider the word "musical". it refers to the attributes of music, namely, pitch, timbre and harmonics.

a recording does accurately represent the timbre and harmonics of instruments., just as any reproduction is not a on-to-one representation of that which is being reproduced.

given an imperfect recording and components which are themselves imperfect, what can one expect ?

the answer is obviously imperfection . some forms of imperfection are acceptable to some people, while other versions of imperfection are acceptable to other people.

thus, the best one can attain is an imperfect representation of music which is acceptable and pleasing to a listener.

perhaps, one could ask another question:

"does good technology guarantee satisfaction with the sound produced by that technology ?"

there is no definitive answer to this question. it is unique to each owner of a stereo system.

accept the premise that whatever one owns will be inaccurate and strive to configure a stereo system that enables one to enjoy the music. the listening is more important than the technology.

in my own case i establish subjective criteria, independent of technology.
i made an error in my previous post, which may not have been corrected.

i meant to say: "a recording does not accurately represent the timbre of instruments......"

sorry for the error, if it wasn't corrected.
i have a dac designed by john tucker of exemplar audio. there are no op amps, it uses two e180cc tubes. i have also tried 12at7 and 12au7, with mixed results. it uses a 16-bit phillips chip. i have replaced several pairs of caps and am reasonably satisfied with its performance.

i think taste or preference, trumps technology. some of my favorite components were in production in the 80's and 70's.