coloured !!
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If everything sounds clear and is in the right proportions, but is not convincing enough to provide your brain with an emotional experience, the system is likely analytical sounding. If the system consistently transports you into the performance so that you can forget about how the system sounds, odds are good its a musical sounding system. I personally think transparency, resolution, and micro dynamics are more critical than perfect tonal balance, because that’s what reveals the space where the performance takes place....either your brain buys it, or it doesn’t, but it’s also heavily dependent on the recording at hand. |
I think that is a really important question. I think it is easy to follow the easy to discern sound characteristics like detail, slam, imaging, and in some sense transparency and head off and create a system that is not musical. It is really easy to do. It is not that you do not want that, but you want really good rhythm and pace and a fully fleshed out midrange and bass… particularly rhythm and pace. It took me decades to put my finger on it. If the midrange and bass are not fully fleshed out you get more slam and it highlights the treble… hence sounding more detailed. So, the details of the sounds, venue, and mastering techniques are highlighted… out of proportion. I and others have mentioned, when I go to a symphony performance or acoustic jazz performance you don’t go: “Holy cow, listen to that detail!I can hear the oboist foot move”. The details are there but you have to listen for them. I think back over the last fifty years and a number of times I was emotionally effected by a system… the emotional connection was incredible. But each of these systems were not on my current system path. Each and every one of these systems were all tube systems. Like Cary, VAC, Audio Research. Over the decades one by one each of my components ended up being tube. I imagine you could put together a non - tube really musical system. But honestly I have heard dozens and dozens of spectacular systems… I have owned a lot of fantastic component. Great systems… that I loved for their natural sound, imaging , and amazing rendering. But true emotional connection… has only come to me with tubes. Now I am sure it can be done. But it is hard enough to put together a great system, why make it harder? That’s me. So, how do you find it. Listen to systems. Sit down, close your eyes, and try not to concentrate on the slam, the details… how does the music make you feel? I remember I was auditioning components and tears came to my eyes I was simply overwhelmed emotionally by the music… buy that. |
@ghdprentice Over the decades one by one each of my components ended up being tube. I imagine you could put together a non - tube really musical system. But honestly I have heard dozens and dozens of spectacular systems… I have owned a lot of fantastic component. Great systems… that I loved for their natural sound, imaging , and amazing rendering. But true emotional connection… has only come to me with tubes. Same....sounds like something I would have written! |
@jon_5912 It means it possesses your preferred inaccuracies. I have no problem with people preferring whatever but calling that preference "musical" is kind of silly. It elevates a personal preference to a level it doesn’t belong at. Sorry....but I have to respectfully disagree. If my sonic preferences for my sound system resemble what I hear when I listen to real music, it seems extremely logical to deem those traits as "musical". |
@knotscott. +1 I have season tickets to the Oregon symphony (astonishing good orchestra and venue), 7th row center for the last ten years. It was listening in this verse that I subconsciously changed the trajectory of my system investments away from artificial highlighted characteristics and towards the musical tube systems I have now. |
If everything sounds clear and is in the right proportions, but is not convincing enough to provide your brain with an emotional experience, the system is likely analytical sounding. If the system consistently transports you into the performance so that you can forget about how the system sounds, odds are good it's a musical sounding system. This. Study this. Print it, cut it out, tape it to your monitor. Read until memorized. If your goal is an audio system for enjoying listening to music then you will want a musical system. If your goal is to have charts and graphs and jargon to talk tech then you want analytical. Thus the First Commandment of Audiophile: Know Thyself. |
Great post thanks...If everything sounds clear and is in the right proportions, but is not convincing enough to provide your brain with an emotional experience, the system is likely analytical sounding. If the system consistently transports you into the performance so that you can forget about how the system sounds, odds are good it’s a musical sounding system. I will just add that the way i took to reach this level with the gear i own was near impossible by the power of the gear itself alone... And my gear choice is very good...( but less good than yours for sure but not too much afar ) 😁😊 I was in the obligation to reach this level to treat mechanically my gear against vibrations and i was in the obligation to decrease the noise floor level of the house and system... And it was not enough at all... i was in the obligation to specifically synchronize my passive acoustic treatment and active mechanical acoustic controls of the room to the speakers specificities... And doing this ask for me to listen to the Speakers/room interaction for more than a year daily with small modifications one after the other....I even create a thread about my crazy journey... To fine tune the speakers /room acoustic relation i used mainly natural timbre of voices and piano and some others instruments i know very well... It was a success... Like you just say: " If the system consistently transports you into the performance so that you can forget about how the system sounds, odds are good it’s a musical sounding system." I dont claim nor pretend that my system is better than anyone else at all... On the contray looking at the virtual audio system here i can say more than half people at least own better component than mine... No discussion about that here... But when we have the minimum S.Q. to recreate what you just described we forgot the sound and we listen music... It is my case and my dream comes true... My only claim with an under 500 bucks system and almost no cost for my controls device homemade is my ratio S.Q./ price is really over the roof.... |
Another example like the piano store... I walk down the street and my neighbor's kid practices his trumpet in his house. I hear him struggle through scales and a classical piece I can't even identify. He skills are those of a beginner. But I immediately know it's live music being played, even outside the house. The excellent descriptions above about transparency, resolution, and micro dynamics get to the heart of reproducing that connectivity in your musical system. Cheers, Spencer |
I think i'm beginning to understand. Years ago i had a pair of those huge Polk SDA SRS 1.2tl speakers. I do remember listening to live concerts and being so absorbed by the music that nothing else was happening around me. As i attempted to improve speakers, amps, etc... i never achieved that sense of wonder. I'm at the point that i get aggrevated when i listen to my system |
I think a lot of audiophiles reach this point in their journey, at which point some of them bail, some make a major course direction, some scrap everything and start over, and some continue listening because current audiophile orthodoxy tells them that what they're hearing is what they ought to like (or be pursuing). It's all in component selection and component synergy. Perhaps a start might be made by replacing some part of your system with something different that is widely described as "forgiving" (or musical, or very natural) and see if it begins to lead you in the right direction. |
I agree with Jim204. Musical is code for colored around here. Not a bad thing if done tastefully. Sonus Faber and McIntosh are good examples of a tasteful coloration to my ear where Magico and Solution are more of a just the facts kind of sound. Some other brands that are popular on here are straight up colored IMO in the highs, mids, or bass. Nothing wrong with that as the recording is not real anyway but that is for a different discussion. For me I think some of these highend amps /preamps that reach for the last bit of detail and neutrality can get a bit of upper frequency glare when driven hard that detracts from the music. Where a lesser detailed amp above 5khz (high powered McIntosh) will let you play stupid loud and not get the glare. That has been my experience anyway. Lately I have been sticking to neutral speakers with softer sounding electronics. Don’t over look room treatments before chasing gear either. Bad slap eco or strong bass nodes can really screw things up fast. Always good to start with room measurements. Measurements will speed up audio nirvana and save a lot of guess work. |
I have heard so many ear bleeding systems, frequently centered around Magico (not a criticism of Magico, but the electronics driving them… and I guess the sensitivity of Magico) with so much detail, high frequency hash, and noise floor it has made me wonder if half the folk interested in high end audio had lost there hearing. |
"...musical..." I've previously thought that was in regards to the selection played, vs. the components. Those existed to reproduce that selection in the best manner possible within the space played. *sigh* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXAU4MmMIMo 'Scuse me while I go eat worms... |
In a demo, play well-recorded music that you love and know well, especially songs that'd get you dancing and your head nodding. If you can hear well into the track and you respond to the sound, then it's a winner. Conversely, certain speakers give a clean, undistorted sound yet be uninvolving and boring in comparison. |
Are you able to hear and listen to the 3-d micro- dynamic envelope of each piano note like if each note was a real 3-d object living in space in the middle of your room with his own color and physionomy? are you able to "see" this note? If yes, your audio system/room is acoustically musical... If not, sorry for you .... Musical for a musician and for an acoustician is a quality related to the non amplified natural "timbre" experience of a piano a guitar or a voice etc... Non amplified, because the electronic background noise of the electronical gear process must not hide or veil the musical instrument own resonant body subtle information .... The micro dynamical subtle cues of the natural musical instrument are also the micro dynamical cues you wanted to keep emerging from your room ...These same well known "cues" about human voice or piano, their presence or their absence, will guide you through the fine tuning process of your room acoustic treatment and control... And you need a room acoustically controlled to reach for each "bunch of frequencies and harmonics" , and which will create for them , a space where 3-d perception of sound volume impression is possible.... Accuracy of gear engineering is not enough for that... Acoustic science do the end job.... The timbre particular resonance of an object inform us about the specific quality of this object....Read this 2 times.... 😁 And ponder on it .... We cannot reduce "timbre" to frequency accuracy.... Timbre is a "lived" perceptive experience in some environment like your room, not only an equation... Mathematical accuracy of tone is not enough to describe musical experience....The specific resonant body information of a specific musical instrument and human body must be conveyed by the speakers through a room which is controlled and modified to accomodate them SPECIFICALLY and make this possible... . «A system is musical if you see music with your ears and if you listen with your eyes»-Anonymus Acoustician Wait a minute! are you saying that a deaf person can see music through his body ?- Groucho Marx 🤓 Ask Beethoven or Helen Keller....- Harpo Marx |
I haven’t read through all the posts but from my experience . . . Musical systems are experienced through the heart where there’s some emotional connection and truth evident from all recordings. You know it’s working when the clock goes out the window. Typically, guilt is present when even trying to describe the system’s performance. Analytical systems on the other hand are all about the gear and the Demo. Purely experienced as a head trip (and/or horror film for emotion). It’s typically all about the genius who built the monster where only certain selections of music demoed at specific levels correlate into a tune. Not all recordings can be played on these systems and typically only “Audiophile” recordings which have their interpretations baked in will make sense. While some systems are built as an analytical tool for evaluating, most consumers opt for musical enjoyment. |
In order to have a musical stereo system, focus on these three criteria: Effortless dynamics. Presence. Timbral purity. I learned this from Jim Smith a long time ago. https://www.getbettersound.com/ |