Orpheus10, you clearly do. And so does everybody else. Your ears don't lie. The goal is reality. If you're hearing more resolution, you're hearing less distortion. It's really that simple. Adding "flavor" is simply adding distortion. Having your cake and eat it too means resolution that mimics reality. You can't have one without the other. The absolute standard is fooling your ears. IMO
Is Upgrading Degrading?
Is the search for the "perfect system" a kind of vulgarity?
We don't tend to say "I' had an old Bach recording, but I've upgraded to Schoenberg!" We appreciate the wildly diverse character of these two geniuses on their own terms.
ok--it may make sense to say "I've upgraded from the Spice Girls to Bartok" but once music reaches a certain level of seriousness, it seems to me the correct approach is to bask in the aesthetic differences and perhaps the same is true of music systems.
Are we really getting "better sound" along an imagined continuum that runs from ghastly cacophony to some auditory Valhalla or are we just experiencing different wonderful systems with personalities as varied and unique as human beings are?
We don't tend to say "I' had an old Bach recording, but I've upgraded to Schoenberg!" We appreciate the wildly diverse character of these two geniuses on their own terms.
ok--it may make sense to say "I've upgraded from the Spice Girls to Bartok" but once music reaches a certain level of seriousness, it seems to me the correct approach is to bask in the aesthetic differences and perhaps the same is true of music systems.
Are we really getting "better sound" along an imagined continuum that runs from ghastly cacophony to some auditory Valhalla or are we just experiencing different wonderful systems with personalities as varied and unique as human beings are?