How Revealing Should a System Be?


I've heard tales of audiophiles reach a point of dimininshing returns as they upgrade their systems. Meaning, the more revealing the system gets, the more discriminating their system will be of the recordings that are played back on it. Some of you have said that recordings that you once really liked were now unlistenable because your system revealed all of the flaws in the recording. Doesn't that limit some audiophiles to what recordings they can actually listen to? If so, we have gotten away from the thing that brought us to this hobby in the first place.........THE MUSIC! It seems the equipment should never be more important than the music.
128x128mitch4t

Showing 1 response by audioengr

Different audiophiles have had different experiences with discrimination/detail rendering. I believe most go through a phase where they have achieved lots of detail by changing, cables, sources etc.. only to have it sound clinical or harsh, but all the details are there. This leads many audiophiles to believe that its not such a good thing to reveal all of the details, when in fact, it is. As a result, many of them buy DAC's or tubed equipment that tends to roll-off or compress the high-frequencies in order to eliminate this harshness that they believe comes with the detail.

The real solution is to eliminate the harshness from their front-ends without sacrificing the detail, dynamics or extension. There are two ways to do this: 1) buy EMM or other very expensive gear 2) mod your gear