Striking a balance between musicality and resolution

Pat highlights the importance of coherence to musicality and how one can sacrifice and live without stellar resolution to achieve higher musicality.

@carlos269 In his first post he seems to not be saying that at all. I agree with most of what he said there.

@antigrunge2 has it right. 

How do you gauge and measure sound reproduction systems’ truthfulness to the source? What is the standard for analyzing, assessing, and scoring the fidelity to the source of home audio systems?

The best way is to make a recording yourself. That way you know how its supposed to sound. Its not as hard as you might think; to have a good recording system you can take into the field isn't expensive compared to what home high end audio systems cost these days. The main expense is the microphones. 

BTW I don't take YT videos seriously. There are too many unknowns (the microphones, what sort of recorder use and the compression algorithms of the site itself). Many people simply use iPhones or the like, which have built in compression and limiting, and really don't sound right. I've used mine to record my band many times so we can woodshed material, but those recordings don't sound at all like the actual band. 

Live MUSIC listen at near field position normally is not " relaxed " and and sometimes could be brigthness and even harshness, example:listening a horn/trumpet or sax alto .

@rauliruegas Certainly! We're on the same page. I'm just pointing out that a good system doesn't sound bright and harsh all the time to also be detailed. It is simply what the music is. So if the music demands brashness, its right there and if the music is relaxed the system is too. 

@atmasphere It is obvious that you are not an engineer. No engineer with any competence would validate accuracy with something  as fleeting as aural memory. The correct way to do it is to monitor the output signals of the source with the probes on an oscilloscope and compare those signals to the signals on a second oscilloscope probe connected at the output terminals of the amplifier. At this stage in an ideal outcome the only difference in the signals on the oscilloscope screen should be scales. Beyond the amplifier the speaker serves as an electrical to acoustical transducer and the output of the speakers can be monitored as well with a calibrated microphone to put that signal on the same screen as the other two traces for comparison. That is how accuracy is analyzed, assessed and measured.

It is interesting how some folks try and understand and appreciate the ideas that members presents and find the value in them and add or respective fully present their take on the subject. Then some folks like to work hard not to understand and pick them apart and just disagree. It’s like some folks are in health care and some in the military. Seems kind of like society as a whole. Huge organizations try and save life and huge organizations to extinguish it. 

@ghdprentice Another way to look at it is, there are pretenders and then there are people with diplomas.

@atmasphere  I try not to engage in the logical fallacy of appeals to authority, but if I decided to appeal to an authority, @atmasphere  would certainly be close to the top of the list. 
 

there is a lot of naval gazing in this hobby, I’m no less guilty of that than anyone else, but sometimes we make things too complex. What it gets down to is whether the recordings and equipment you have in the room where you play them produces something that brings you joy. If it does, you win. at that point, you don’t really have to worry about inner detail, soundstage, acoustic theory, and all the other audiophile words. At that point, you could just sit down and enjoy the music. A lesson I need to learn myself