rixthetrick, of course it refers to how it’s portrayed in playback systems. Style of music is not the issue; nor is dancing, although I suspect that a good dancer reacts to what I refer to.
Some pieces of gear simply do a much better job of portraying rhythm than others do, and they do this in different ways. I will leave the possible technical reasons to others, but some gear sounds much more rhythmically alive while, at the other extreme, some sounds practically rhythmically dead by comparison. Some do well at higher volume settings, but not so well at low volume settings. There is gear with every level of competence in between in this aspect of music. This is all a generalization.
I’ve experienced gear that sounds very alive through the midrange, but is sluggish in the bass range; even when the bass reproduction is pretty good tonally (not overblown). I’ve also experienced gear/systems that portray, for instance, the crescendo that a well recorded orchestral string section makes in a segmented (for lack of a better word) way as opposed to a seamless and gradual incremental crescendo from very soft to very loud. Lesser gear might get the low volume content and the high volume peaks just fine, but not what happens in between. In a Jazz quintet, for instance, there might be a beautiful interplay between the piano players left hand and the bass player that while heard volume wise does not give the listener the sense that the piano player and bass player are “locked in” and listening very intently to each other while the saxophone solos. Some gear does let you hear this and some doesn’t do it as well. IMO, this can all be attributed to how well gear portrays micro-dynamics in music.
Hope this clarifies.
Some pieces of gear simply do a much better job of portraying rhythm than others do, and they do this in different ways. I will leave the possible technical reasons to others, but some gear sounds much more rhythmically alive while, at the other extreme, some sounds practically rhythmically dead by comparison. Some do well at higher volume settings, but not so well at low volume settings. There is gear with every level of competence in between in this aspect of music. This is all a generalization.
I’ve experienced gear that sounds very alive through the midrange, but is sluggish in the bass range; even when the bass reproduction is pretty good tonally (not overblown). I’ve also experienced gear/systems that portray, for instance, the crescendo that a well recorded orchestral string section makes in a segmented (for lack of a better word) way as opposed to a seamless and gradual incremental crescendo from very soft to very loud. Lesser gear might get the low volume content and the high volume peaks just fine, but not what happens in between. In a Jazz quintet, for instance, there might be a beautiful interplay between the piano players left hand and the bass player that while heard volume wise does not give the listener the sense that the piano player and bass player are “locked in” and listening very intently to each other while the saxophone solos. Some gear does let you hear this and some doesn’t do it as well. IMO, this can all be attributed to how well gear portrays micro-dynamics in music.
Hope this clarifies.