Detailed sound? Real?


I have read about many audiophiles wanting more detail and air around the instruments to improve realism. usually, when i hear a system with these qualities, the sound is almost always thin and fatiguing. When I hear live music, it never sounds like air around the instruments and detailed. Most detailed systems sound way too detailed. When i hear live music, there is a sense of air, but not around the instruments. Actually, many times it sounds natural and mono. It seems to me that detailed systems are probably the most unrealistic in audio. Yesterday I heard a live performance of a piano and sax. The piano was so muffled sounding, much more so than on any system I have recently heard. The sax sounded more detailed, but still not like the stereos portray it. I think the secret to listening is to find something that sounds good and that you can listen to without fatigue. Natural Timbre, color and good bass, not overblown but good, gets you closer to the real thing IMHO
tzh21y
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T Bone, I like the chairs, Dcstep - the piano lid was closed. Do we hear in stereo or Mono? Many live concerts sound like mono, not stereo other than the violins on the left and cellos and basses on the right. I have heard some systems that sound like stereo when played in mono. It really is quite amazing. The violins are really tough to get right to my ears at least. They never sound layered to me ever, although I am not a musician and I sit in the 9th row from the pit. One thing that I have never heard a system replicate is the dynamics of an orchestra. When I hear a musician play the Tympani for example, sometimes it sounds like it just pops right out of the orchestra, bass drum too. They do not sound overblown, but wow do they grab your attention. No system can do this like the real thing regardless of cost or whatever.
reality and reproduction are two different phenomenona.

i suspect that what is really important is whether an owner likes the sound of his/her stereo system, rather than what it actually sounds like in a descriptive sense.

what difference does it make, except in a philosophical sense that a stereo system sounds dynamic, dull, bright, forward , etc., so long as a listener likes the sound ?
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Tvad, I don't think there is "absolute" in audio reproduction. A piano sounds very different in different halls and studios. Unless we have the exact same piano in our listening room, how do we know what it should sound like? Also, what are we trying to reproduce? The piano sounded like what it should in the recording studio or what it should sound like in the listening room? What is the reference of absolute?