Real or Surreal. Do you throw accuracy out the window for "better" sound?

@mijostyn 

 

What I really want is a certain sound and image quality. 

Just for philosophical fun I'm going to challenge that statement. Is that what you really want, or is it how you expect that certain sound and image quality will make you feel? What if you could get that feeling without actually achieving that certain sound and image quality.

My own answer to that question is that it's the feeling I'm after, but there's also a feeling I get from pursuing it. There may be other things to pursue and achieve that would give me equally good feelings but I only have one lifespan to work with and I can't get to all of the good stuff, so this is a path I've gone down.

I'm impressed that you know what you are after. I generally know some of the things I'm after in terms of sound and image quality, but sometimes I discover things that I wasn't aware I wanted until I experienced them. And some things don't do for me what I expected when they are achieved. So for me, this hobby is still in an exploratory phase. 

The feeling with a piece of music is here in me positive, negative, indifferent , and all in between WITH any sound system even very mediocre one...

I was in audio hobby to discover way to improve ANY sound system beginning with the low cost one i owned...

Sound CANNOT change the felt musical impact, only convey it in a more impactful way but cannot change it...You dont like a piece of music you always hate because you listen to it in the best possible system...

Music is not sound... But through good sound and in spite of bad sound ... music is supra sensible meanings coupled to sensible information ...Sound is a physical medium...If you tap a fruit with your finger through sound vibrating modes you perceive a suprasensible meaning through a sensible vibration interpreted qualitatively by your ears/body : the fruit is ripe or not...

I figure it out only after reading you a second time...😊

My english mastery is shitty and i am familiar only with technical abstract vocabulary with no dialogue  with no  humor or subtleties or slang ...

But there is plenty of people who despise so much audiophiles as "tin foil hat" or people who listen to the sound not to music, i reacted to give an opposite view... I consider myself a satisfied audiophile who listen all type of classical music in jazz, european classical, or Indian and Persian and near east classical or fado and some other traditionals... ...

if i read your posts you are one too...

@mahgister

That was me with the tongue in cheek comment.

Did you consider that maybe your friend can't hear higher frequencies as well as you do and over-compensating because of it.

@asctim 

You hit on exactly the issues at play. First of all "feeling" is very much a part of the way a system sounds. You not only hear music, but you also feel it. Second of all is experience. You do not know what you are missing, what is possible, until you experience it. I was lucky in that I worked my way through graduate school working in the high end HiFi business. Of all the systems I have heard over the years only three could fool me into thinking a voice was in the room with me, that eyes close I could be at a live performance, three systems out of hundreds. Most people have never heard a system do this magic act. That is not to say they have never heard an impressive system, a system that impresses immediately is more likely to be hopelessly colored. 

How does having a system that performs at this level "feel"? No different. I built my first system from Dynakits when I was 13 and an evolving process has taken place since then. I did not experience reference system #1 until I was 23. I have been doing touch up for the last 20 years or so, conquering minor errors or weaknesses. I have three more changes/additions to make and I will be 99.9% at target. Anything I do after that will be frill unless there is some major new technology 

One more thing I would like to point out is Audiophiles can be hopelessly traditional.They tend to avoid new technologies that can make significant improvements in system performance like digital signal processing. Most excellent systems will never achieve greatness without it. I was at a friends house last weekend. I came with my laptop and microphone to measure his system. The character of the sound accepting the bass was excellent. The bass and imaging sucked and this was a $125,000 system. The subwoofers were not set up correctly (easy to fix), but more importantly the right speaker was down 10 dB at 300 Hz. This is due to the room not the speaker and this is what is screwing up the image. You can mess around with acoustic treatments until the cows come home and you are not going to get these speakers within 1 dB of each other without turning the room into an anechoic chamber. Digital EQ is the only way you are going to conquer this. Next time I go over I am going to bring a digital preamp to show him what happens when you make these adjustments. I find it interesting that very few "audiophiles" have ever measured their system. They want to do it by ear. Right.