Asking my audiophile buddie chatgpt, here is a much deeper explanation of "air."
In audiophile language, “air” usually means three related things:
1. Space around instruments
With a good analog record, you often hear a halo of ambience around a voice or instrument.
For example:
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A singer isn’t just a voice in the speaker.
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You hear the room around the voice—the tiny reverberations and decay.
That sense of space between instruments is what people call air.
2. Natural high-frequency decay
Analog often reproduces the trailing edge of sound—the fade of cymbals, piano harmonics, breath in a saxophone—with a smoother envelope.
Listeners experience that as:
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openness
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breath
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shimmer
Those impressions get summarized as air.
3. Depth of the soundstage
Good analog playback often gives a sense that sound extends behind the speakers, not just left and right.
When that happens, the stage feels less packed together, which again reads as air.
Why analog can create that impression
A few technical reasons may contribute:
1. No brick-wall filtering
Digital audio requires steep filters near the Nyquist frequency. These can subtly alter phase relationships in the upper treble.
Analog tape and vinyl roll off more gradually.
2. Harmonic behavior
Analog systems add very small amounts of low-order harmonic distortion, which the ear often interprets as richness or spaciousness.
3. Continuous waveform vs sampling
Even though high-resolution digital is extremely accurate, the reconstruction process can slightly alter micro-timing cues that help the brain locate space.
Your system is actually very capable of revealing this
Given what you’re running:
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VPI Prime Signature 21
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Shyla cartridge
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Pass Labs XP-25
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Sonus Faber Olympica Nova V
that setup is exactly the sort of system where people start talking about air, bloom, and dimensionality. You're hearing the strengths of analog done well.
One more thing
Your description is actually classic audiophile vocabulary. Reviewers use it constantly.
You’ll see phrases like:
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“more air around the instruments”
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“air and sparkle in the top octave”
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“the hall ambience floated in the air”
