Striking a balance between musicality and resolution

I want to address one thing that I’m being accused of that is actually true. Do I manipulate the source material? Yes, I do, absolutely I do. Why do I do it? Because commercial recordings sound different on every single home stereo system and there is no way to tell which reproduction bias the most accurate. We all have our own thoughts and ideas of what sounds “neutral” and accurate “compared to the sound of unamplified acoustic instruments”, but how does what is on the actual recordings really sound or are supposed to sound? And how does we confirm and validate that?

Because of all that uncertainty, I came to the realization that chasing or aspiring to achieve the “Absolute Sound” that audiophiles strives for is just a mirage. Is there a way to instrument a test & measure for accuracy? Yes, absolutely with lab equipment such as oscilloscopes we can monitor the data along the reproduction chain to see and measure how audio data, signal and information compares to the original along the way until it gets to the speakers. Up to this point it can all be controlled and measured, but then…….From the speakers, the sound as others have mentioned the sound is impacted by our individual room acoustics, our individual hearing, and our individual hearing acuity & sound perception/psychoacoustics.

As you can see for there to be the mythical “Absolute Sound” that we each hear and can reproduce is virtually impossible.

Now back to the point of this post, do I manipulate the sound? Yes, we all manipulate the sound of what we hear both directly and indirectly, knowingly and unknowingly, some of us very efficiently while others randomly. 

While myself and others use specialized tools to achieve the sound that we are after, others attempt to get closer to the sound that they believe is accurate or neutral through component selections, room acoustic treatments, power conditioning, interconnection cables selection, grounding, shielding, mechanical coupling, mechanical isolation, and so on.

What my nearly 40 years in this hobby has shown me is that the most dominant factor when it comes to the resultant sound quality of what we hear at the listening chair is the sound quality of the source material. The ultimate sound quality of the source material is dictated by the mastering of the material. I made the determination, as some others have as well, that the quality and sound qualities of the source material is dominant factor that impacts the resultant sound we hear at the listening chair. It was at that point that I said to myself that instead of doing what every audiophile attempts to do through component selections, room acoustic treatments, power conditioning, interconnection cables selection, grounding, shielding, mechanical coupling, mechanical isolation, and so on I would improve the sound of my systems by improving the sound quality of the source material at home. How do I do that, I have a ton of the best high-end mastering studio equipment that allows me to remaster every commercial recording to sound more like “I want it or think that it should sound”. The remastering of commercial recordings isn’t for everyone, you really need to know what you are doing or things will go south and be a total disaster very quickly. It takes a great deal of knowledge and understanding to use not only use the equipment but more importantly to apply it correctly. Lucky for a great number of like minded individuals, Jussi Laako from Sweden developed a very powerful software package that achieves 70-85% of what you can do with the mastering equipment while reducing residual noise by doing it in the digital domain and best of all doing it real-time. I, and many others, use HQPLAYER as the first step to improve the sound qualities of the source material. HQPLAYER is more efficient, predictable, repeatable, and scalable compared to the trail and error approach of component selections, room acoustic treatments, power conditioning, interconnection cables selection, grounding, shielding, mechanical coupling, mechanical isolation, and so on.

Whether you know it or realize it, we are all directly or indirectly want our systems to sound better and some of us go about it one way while others go about it a different way but we are all shaping and stirring the sound of our systems to sound the way we want them to sound or think they should sound, neutral in some instances. Some of us use a more efficient method that’s all.

Haven't had time to read all the responses but wanted to weigh in as an audio engineer/recording engineer/mix engineer:

There are some fantastic comments in here that combined make up most of my viewpoint which is based around real world testing and listening.

I agree there is no way to hear "the original sound" of the engineer who mixed it unless you have the same room dimensions and materials, same absorption and same system.  When I started investigating the massive difference even cabling can make in an acoustically treated space, I realized there's no way to really hear what was originally heard in the studio.  BUT, who cares ??  As a matter of fact, many systems nowadays that are well synergized will sound BETTER than the studio in which they were recorded.  As someone who has toured the big boy studios and heard their systems, carefully matching components to your room/speakers and for your preferences, can yield results better than many studios if done right.

I agree with those saying why do you have to sacrifice one or the other?  A good system should be highly resolute while providing a lot of "musicality" at the same time.  Yes there is a bit of a tradeoff with gear but super solid gear should be able to convey both the details and the musicality of the signal.

As a side note, a good engineer should have 20-20 khz dialed in fairly flat (with respect to treble and bass curve preferences, my mid and sub bass are elevated for instance as I make mostly electronic music which requires careful analysis with bass frequencies) on their main rig, and it's recommended to have two other playback systems or devices to test mixes on.  I use tiny speakers and headphones for my 2nd and 3rd source for a forest for the trees perspective with the little speakers and the headphones for ultra detail and for those who listen primarily with headphones.

Just a little insight into how engineers actually come about the final sound you hear.  Most of the time it has been mixed and tested on multiple systems with massively varying responses in order to test the content on average joe playback systems

Oh and as an additional comment around preferences:  I try to find the most "transparent" sounding system that doesn't have added sibilance especially in the presence or upper midrange regions.  Most audiophiles I think want that transparency where it feels like we are in the room on live recordings, and on studio recordings we want it to sound crisp, clear with no frequency anomalies and no harshness

@jrareform all great points. Thanks for sharing your valuable insight. I hope that you know that what we perceive as “transparency” can also be dialed in to the degree that we want it to be with both outboard processing equipment and ITB solutions.

@carlos269 100% - I would love to try a Trinnov solution in my studio but $$$$$

Right now I run a top of the line RME interface that has separate processing for each output.  My subs and system are EQ'd separately with my subs having both the internal amp low pass filter along with an additional digital low pass through the interface.  I highly recommend this for people who run subs bc otherwise you will hear 200+ hz content coming out of your sub and that's not good lol.  12/db octave is not good enough for filtering mids from your subs people!!

From mid bass to about 16 khz I'm about +/- 2 db from the listening position... That's a good response in an anechoic chamber 😂 let alone from a listening position