Accurate vs Musical

How about the many parameters of accuracy? Tonal accuracy is different from accuracy with transients and decay. Electrostats do a great job with leading edges, while they fail to properly flesh out the "meat" of the instrument.

Phase problems can arise from crossover dissection. Once acclimated to wide-range drivers, XO'd speakers sound wrong even if they are fast and evenhanded with tone.

How about frequency coherency? The multitude of varying drivers found on multi-way speakers each have their own voice and dispersion patterns. A good designer can minimize these inconsistencies, but they remain. As a Zu owner, these problems are intolerable to me in the long term.

Some speakers like to play loud and their owners tell guests "THESE BABIES REALLY OPEN UP WHEN YOU PUT THE GAS IN 'EM". Other speakers simply will not play loudly without significant and horrible distortions. Frequency balance almost always changes significantly with volume.

How about speaker loading? One reason many people do not like Thiel speakers probably relates to the amplification used in auditioning, possibly which doesn't cater to Thiel's notorious load problems. Thus, the amplifier must be chosen to "hide" their brutally low-impedance loads in the bass frequencies. Properly matched, these speakers are ideal for some listeners.

Characteristics, above, always cater to some volume and music tastes better than others. There is no speaker which is unlimited by any of the factors, above, or others not mentioned here.

"Musical", to me, says "This component sounds very nice, and its errors are ones of omission. It does not try to extract the rats squeeking on Track 4 of AudioNervosa's 'Breakdown' record, but that's OK because it (they) sounded very nice and could be listened to for hours on end".

We audiophiles often scoff at such components, casting them aside as inferior. However, this might be just the ticket for the music lover who doesn't see equipment buying as a lifelong obsession. Is that listener more or less happy as they listen to their records? They listen and love, while we listen and obsess. Hmmm. . .

I agree with Baroque in principle, though I would not describe the experience as "perfect".

I have heard some professional monitor speakers that were tonally accurate and would seem to be very good for mastering recordings, as the speakers were very balanced.

However, they were boring dynamically. They were speakers that I could respect but never love. In fact, my Gallo Ref. 3's were that way.

ALL stereo systems introduce colorations. The snobbish sounding "accurate" detail-monsters may excel at retrieval of minutae, while being inaccurate in other parameters.

Too many audioheads confuse detail with musicality, feeling that anything left out is experience missed. True excellence comes from balance, i.e. not leaving anything crucial to the message out while still retaining coherence, tonal saturation, and emotional communication.

Detail is not music. Detail is solely an objective checkmark on the mental checklist. It is not the same as semiconscious immersion and the wash of sonic waves that can disable analytical thought.

Listeners that cannot differentiate between these elements have not found "it".

Now, it could be argued that my thoughts are not centrally related to the question of the thread, but I think these elements lie at the center of this old question of audiophilia.