Top two most important sound qualities

@skchun 

Me too.

For me instrumental tone/ timbre/ textures is both 1 and 2.

Everything else ie dynamic range, transient speed, lack of sibilance, lack of overhang, full range bandwidth, image depth are all of far lesser importance.

That's why I can sometimes prefer a $40 portable speaker which has a vivid tonal palette to a $4000+ Hi-Fi that doesn't.

Seriously, it's inexplicable to me just how so many of these so called 'High End' systems fail miserably in this regard.

Getting the most accurate instrumental tone would always be my first priority as a manufacturer.

This is a good question and one of crucial importance in determining the relevance of the various responses we often read here.

I tend to skip any published review that does not offer a few words about tone. Strange as it seems, it would appear that, for far too many people, precise instrumental tonality seems to have little or no relevance, whilst to a few others it's almost everything.

@bdp24 

Most loudspeakers sound comically "small" to me, the image of a grand piano, for example, being reduced to a miniature of it’s actual size.

Good point. I guess we don't expect lifesize image from HiFi because 99% of the systems we have ever heard don't have it. 

I graduated from bookshelf speakers to floorstanders and then 15  inch dual concentrics and whilst each one got better in this regard none of them have life sized imagery.

@panzrwagn 

Effortlessness - that sense of ease that allows you to forget about the hardware and just hear the music.

That's another easy one to forget.

Real music doesn't sound forced or strained but many systems do.

You probably need the right combination of loudspeaker and amplifier to get that sense of ease.

Usually that means bigger and more powerful.

It is good to see you back Mahgister!

I hope you've been keeping well.