Unfortunately mahlman that is usually exactly what you get, what someone thinks you should be listening too. Mostly because they think it is what you will buy, a dynamically compressed in your face version meant to be listened to in your car or on a portable player. Very few modern recordings of popular music or jazz break away from this modus.
Waiting for Columbus by Little Feat is a good example of one that does and it is very hard to find an audiophile that doesn't like that recording.
This is the reason we love the old recordings they were more about being there than being hit over the head.
Most mastering engineers use their monitors near field almost like headphones. They adjust the location and volume of the individual tracks so everything you hear is based on their interpretation of what the band should sound like and they use up to 32 tracks maybe even more now.
The old recordings were made with much fewer tracks and fewer microphones giving the mastering engineer less control over the final project and more consistently natural sound like the old RCA classical recordings. Back then it was the recording engineer that had more control over the final product. In this regard Ghasley is correct except that studio recordings are deconstructed to begin with. Artists recording in various booths at different times then reconstructed by the mastering engineer.
I think many of us gravitate to live recordings for this reason. I certainly do. Even if you do not care for classical music you should listen to some once in a while. I think it gives you a better idea what a system is capable of. Acoustic Jazz recordings also usually give a more natural presentation. Having said all that there is art is sculpting the sound to make a statement other than what you would hear under natural circumstance like The Wall by Pink Floyd a veritable studio masterpiece. Amused to Death is another example of studio wizardry.
The main reason Pros spend less than we do is because they have an entirely separate industry which prices their equipment far more reasonably. Look at the price of Benchmark gear. There is no Boulder in the Pro Sound industry. Nobody would buy it. On the other hand there are some great values in the pro market that can be used in our systems. I use commercial amplifiers on my subwoofers to great effect and substantial savings. I just had to pull the fans out:)
Forgetting about all the studio stuff, some hi fi systems are capable of a more natural presentation of the music than others. There are two basic formats based on the type of speaker, point source and line source. Point source projects a smaller, tighter image which can be very intriguing. Line source speaker project a larger more powerful image which some think is overwhelming. In order to project a proper image both types have to be bilaterally symmetrical. Their frequency response and phase characteristics have to be identical accounting for room acoustics which is what make this so difficult. Few of us have a perfectly symmetrical room. Those that do are extremely lucky. Just one window on one side and not the other is enough to screw things up. Even if you are lucky and have a symmetrical room there will always be some variability between identical speakers. There are various methods of dealing with this depending on the situation and system capability. Somebody with a tough but large room many choose to keep the speakers as far from a wall as possible and sit closer to the speakers minimizing room acoustics. Some of us will manage the acoustics with physical treatments of one sort or another. Some of us can now use digital speaker management to achieve the most accurate results. I prefer to improve the room as much as is reasonably possible then finish up with digital speaker management which others call room control. It is actually system control the room being part of the system. This is not just for subwoofers. The idea is to make the phase and frequency response of both channels identical. This results in the best possible image from either type of loudspeaker.
Some people carry this principle to extreme by making all of their pairs of cables exactly the same length. I have to admit that I do that even though I think it is sort of silly.
I like Kosst_amojan's description as being "mesmerized" by the sound. It is when you get those chills that go up your spine, mesmerized, that you know you are listening to a great performance-recording-system. If that is happening to you just occasionally when you listen to your system you are in a great place.
mahlman, I do not think it is fair to say that only the pro's are a result driven group. Audiophiles are also result driven. The problem is that we all have a different result in mind and that result is difficult to define. It is the old "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" thing.
I was just recalling the first time I got those shivers up my spine. I was sitting cross legged on the concrete floor of the Boston Tea Party. It was 1970 and I was 16 years old that night when the Allman Brothers broke into Don't Keep Me Wondering. It was the first Rock and Roll concert of my life and blown away is an understatement.
