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3D lifelike sound and impeccable measurements - mutually exclusive???

The more I investigate gear the more it seems that it’s easy to get organic involving sound with flesh and body and a 3D immersive soundstage with the right matching of components but it also seems like it necessitates choosing some components that don’t measure well/add colorations/even order harmonics etc My question is are there components (specifically amps/preamps and integrateds) are out there that combine great measurements and in your mind also have that organic immersive sound that really helps many of us get more emotionally involved in the music or are these qualities mutually exclusive? 
clarinetmonster2

Showing 2 responses by boxer12

boxer12
8,656 posts
 
"Measurements all aim at laboratory standards, royally ignoring the requirements of psychoacoustics. That is, we do not measure sound quality as perceived by the human brain."

Well stated realworldaudio!
boxer12
8,656 posts
 
I have not found measurements useful in regard to how well a piece of equipment will reproduce music in my system. What I mean by that is it will not tell me how wide or deep the soundstage will be, how much definition I’ll get with individual instruments within that soundstage or even how realistic human voices & instruments will be reproduced. That stated, they are not absolutely useless. Some measurements can give me an idea of what equipment should mate up well. Examples of that are; phono preamp gain to find a phono preamp that mates up well with low output MC’s / Speaker sensitivity & ohm rating to help determine what amp(s) are required to power them well.

All the best
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