Bad news for audiophiles?

There are so many facets of live music which must be rendered as close to ideally as possible in order to [even remotely] fool the listener into believing the replication via components indeed shares enough [of theses] traits to border on reality... It is mind boggling and essentially impossible. That said however, the more of these "Lifelike nuances" captured and transferred through the system, obviously the less work your brain must do to fool oneself. Trouble is it is not just the obvious tasks that make up the most influential "Believability factors", but the far more difficult subtleties the are key. Gross emphasis or lack of inclusion such as TOO or NOT ENOUGH : Bass, top end extensipn, brightness, dullness, 3d effect, soundstage width, depth, etc... All must be properly present and much can be handled with moderately priced components... But it often tales the pricier products to add the less tangibles...

Typo: last sentence should read "It often taKes..."

so the point is to drink while listening to audio?

Actually, if you choose right, the lesser wine can taste better than the high priced juice.

Orpheus, your analogy is (wine) spot on. :-)

Stringreen, yes, a lessor wine can taste better than a higher priced one. Case in point, at the last tasting I went to, the presenter who imports the wine is a Frenchman who's steeped in wine from an early age. His whole life is devoted to it. He now lives stateside and had some wonderful wines he personally selected and none of them were over $50/ bottle. 7 were under $20/bottle (-15% off for the tasting) and all were simply great.

He showed a map of France and all of the regions selected were off the radar, so to speak. None were famous or highly regarded: what he termed "off the beaten path". If not told I would have guessed 4-5 times the price. Easily. He explained that there are many like them out there that never make it stateside, let alone a lot of parts of Europe.

The sad part is, some of these small producers are disappearing in a way you wouldn't guess. Two of them that had been along for a long time and consistently put out fantastic wine were bought wholesale from someone in China and all of the wine now goes there (probably obscenely marked up). He just smiled a little forlornly and said it's all about supply and demand.

All the best,
Nonoise