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Accuracy vs. Enjoyment

Would you rather have a system that accurately portrays the grooves (or pits) in the record or CD,
or one which sounds good on the majority of discs?
Acknowledging that not all media are created equal, the best system will sound best on the best, most accurate discs.  But what if the great majority of average sounding discs don’t measure up, and indeed are annoying compared to the best?
What then?

rvpiano
mahler123
3,998 posts
 

That’s an old conundrum.  Can a revealing system display to many warts that were previously out of ear-sight?  I remember having a girlfriend in college who during our one and only episode of true intimacy told me that she had previously thought I was quite handsome, but up real close she was turned off by seeing the pores of my skin.

  I once had a Mytek DAC that was so revealing I felt as though it was an XRay machine, or perhaps an MRI.  It did make a few CDs sound hard to take.  I tried playing with the filter options but none really tamed it.  I think people who listen with Pro Equipment tend to have similar issues 

rvpiano's avatar
rvpiano OP
2,974 posts
 

I don’t think that’s accuracy.  
I think that’s just a boosted high end.

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
15,048 posts
 

We can reduce musical experiences to engineering (without any acoustics and psycho-acoustics knowledge or parameters)  or we can ask engineering to aim at musical experience using acoustics and psycho-acoustics.....

Any dac review  speaking mainly about more details is a clue about a potential failed product or a meaningless upgrade for me & my needs.

Also the dac  must serve my budget system : be it 1,000 or 100,000 bucks, not the reverse : no one will buy a 500,000 dollars dac for a 100,000 bucks system...

Better to have a 500,000 bucks acoustics dedicated room with a 10,000 bucks dac...

Acoustics + psycho-acoustics  rules audio engineering not the reverse ..

 

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