Musicality vs Transparency & Detail

In my view, there's no such thing as "extreme detail retrieval". There is just the detail that every recording contains, and from that point you can only go down. The idea probably comes from the particular habit of some components to slightly emphasize the higher frequencies, as an attempt to make the transient sounds stand out over other sounds.

A good audio component or system, should be able to extract all the recording's detail without sounding etched, harsh, bright, metallic, fatiguing, etc. There are NO EXCUSES for this characteristic, it's a flaw. On the same way, many mid-fi products sound harsh, etched, bright, etc. and yet they present considerable detail loss.

Either way, the word "detail" is much more universal than just the higher frequencies or fast musical transients. Yes it can manifest in a cymbal's texture, but also in the organic feel of a leather bass drum. You can find it the breathy quality of a female voice, in a distant voice in an opera stage, in the 3D layering of a chorus. The interesting thing about a good system capable of retrieving all the detail, is that it increases your spectrum of enjoyment. Recordings that you couldn't bear to listen to formerly, now become far more enjoyable, even with their ever-present flaws! DVD movies, even your cable box, can be surprisingly enjoyable. Not to mention your high-performance audiophile sources (CD, DVD-A, LP). These should be absolute heaven to your ears.

If a component is really transparent, it should be musically satisfying in the long term. In fact, I Think that's the mark of true transparency. Unfortunately, many components that are labeled as "musical" are not transparent, showing a fat, dark, colored sound that will become tiresome sooner or later. The choice is yours.

Regards,

The way you get 'detail retrieval' is to not create distortion. Distortion obscures detail. The way you keep it musical is by not adding subtle distortions that are sensed by the human ear as loudness cues (odd harmonics). Feedback as a source of such harmonic content; often designers will use feedback to get rid of distortion, but the price is a clinical or harsh sounding unit.

The other way things are kept musical is by not altering the tonal balance. To do that usually requires wide bandwidth.

So it is possible to have ultimate detail retrieval with a musical presentation. One merely needs to pay attention to the design details that are important to the human ear.

Thank you, Ralph!

Jmaldonado said: "In my view, there's no such thing as "extreme detail retrieval". There is just the detail that every recording contains, and from that point you can only go down. The idea probably comes from the particular habit of some components to slightly emphasize the higher frequencies, as an attempt to make the transient sounds stand out over other sounds."

Atmasphere said: " The way you get 'detail retrieval' is to not create distortion. Distortion obscures detail. The way you keep it musical is by not adding subtle distortions that are sensed by the human ear as loudness cues (odd harmonics). Feedback as a source of such harmonic content; often designers will use feedback to get rid of distortion, but the price is a clinical or harsh sounding unit.

The other way things are kept musical is by not altering the tonal balance. To do that usually requires wide bandwidth. "

I could not have said better than above two explanations. It comes down to less than optimum component design and or lack of clean power source.

Excessive distorted high freq coupled with background noise/hash mostly is the culprit skewing the tonal balance producing highly fatiguing overtly detailed thin sound.

It IS possible to have detailed and yet transparent muscial sound.

I agree with mail187445, Shindo gear gives the best of both worlds, very detailed resolution, but yet very musical at the same time.