"Trickle up" theory

To a large extent it's all a matter of design trade-offs and personal preferences. Few if any individual audio products or systems truly excel at all areas of audio reproduction and we as listeners are attracted to those products that match our personal tastes. Some value coherence, others harmonic integrity or PRaT, dynamic capabilities, etc. I don't know of any system of thought that places any of these factors as primary to another. It all comes down to personal preferences.

As an example, in many ways the Quad 63/988 is a "perfect" speaker, yet it's not the universal choice of audiophiles. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to desire greater dynamic capabilities or deeper bass from their systems.

Can simple designs outperform relatively complex designs. Of course! But at the same time there are numerous complex designs that can outperform their relatively simple design counterparts. Somewhat surprisingly many of the simplest designs (i.e., Audio Note or Lamm) are quite expensive products. High performance, simple designs seem to require very high quality, high cost parts. Forgive me for not even knowing whom I'm misquoting, but things should be kept as simple as possible, but not simpler than necessary.

No offense taken Twl. I am a great admirer of you and your system. Simple is often good; complex can also be good if done right. I was simply taking up the banner for two things: 1) It is the music that counts (that's the whole gist of this thread and I was simply adding my voice) and 2) Many approaches can work if executed correctly.

Please accept my apologies if it appeared I took umbrage. My comments were aimed to correct a general school of thought (i.e., large power supplies are not good) and were certainly not meant to cause you regret or concern. On with the music, however one enjoys it! ;-)

Unsound, I don't think the timing thing is about speed, or at least not speed alone. It is about correctness of timing, or its coherence, or something else,though I'm not sure I know what it means. You know it when you hear it, I suppose. Johnnantais, how would define it?

Continuing with Nrenter's explanation, many systems we hear are either in showrooms or set up in the home as though they were showrooms. To my ears, this often provides a more sterile, less intimate sound as the rooms have an unnatural feel, damped and empty. It provides a good environment to listen to the detail generated by the equipment but not necessarily to connect with the music.
The type of music also determines our need for detail in the presentation. When I listen to rock I want to literally feel the music and whether I hear every note by every instrument is inconsequential. When I listen to classical, I need the details, the air, but not the bang.
Our expectations are always at play when we listen to music. In the car or a friend's basement we are not concerned with the presentation, just the music. When we see and hear a high end system we expect to see and hear a high end system. Sometimes that gets in the way of hearing the music.

Unsound and Drubin, actually Drubin first, I think you're on the right track: speed and timing are two different things. For instance, I hear more correct timing - to my subjective ears, but other around me have noticed it - from tube amps, which generally sound "slower" than solid state amps. Emphasis on leading edge dynamics is not the spaces between the notes, or the lingerings or contrasting stacatto of certain notes or phrases. Rhythm is a primitive things which many solid state amps get right, the basic bass line timing: what I'm talking about in timing is a more subtle thing, difficult to describe, which actually came up in a discussion of the Shure V15 cartridge. If you permit me, I'll quote from this, as it took some time to put my finger on it: "We tend to think only in terms of detail, and though the Shure is respectable here, many beat it. But the rhythmic interactions between the different components of a piece of music - right down to the timing of the rising intensities or softenings of a singer in counterpoint to other instruments - is simply more clearly discernible especially on a Shure, and on MMs in general." Now let's lay aside the whole MMs vs MCs thing. Still hard to get a bead on what I'm talking about. Part of my point is that the language the audio press uses becomes our reference point, and we end up unable to hear anything else, because we do not have a name for it. It's like learning to hear imaging, which we don't hear until someone points it out and uses te word "imaging." This is a subtle form of mind control which "trains" us to go for predictable and easily identifiable things like detail and dynamics, thus allowing (some) high-end manufacturers to start designing something marketable. Pieces that emphasize leading edge information counterfeit true timing, which can be better heard through some slower-spunding components. We recognize this quality, I think, when we say some component "just sounds right." If we had the right language (a change, or a shift in emphasis in point of view), then this quality would be recognized as fundamental to the music: we can live without soundstaging, or without bass, or without tremendous amounts of detail, but if we don't have this subtle timing thing I'm trying to describe, then we aren't really happy with our systems. It's this subtle interaction between instruments with respect to lags and starts which enthralls us: the rest just impresses us. This is beginning to sound like a Socratic Dialogue!

In the context of this thread, I have to describe an experience I just had at a high-end shop I just came from. I've already said that the experience of walking into such a shop and being drawn in by the music is extremely rare, and I just had such an experience. A pair of top-of-the-line Tetra speakers were playing at the back of this store, and the music emanating from them was wonderful and I was drawn like a bee to honey. Now on the racks behind the speakers was lots of impressive equipment - Copland amps, YBA and so on - and I asked the proprietor what was playing. And he pointed to...a Rotel integrated RA-02 and matching CD player! I was sorely tempted to just buy them and simply bow out of the game altogether...I still am, hmmmm...just couldn't get over it. Amusing anyway, as I fell for the old "it sounds good it must be something expensive" thing myself. Hoist by my own petard!