If you were serious about sound you would...

Silly premise, since the needs of producers in studios and home listeners are quite different, but if that’s what you believe, go ahead and buy it! By the way, you forgot to mention cables.

Is it INVOLVING? Yes, done! No, think long and hard before running around trying tweaks.

Speaker output, frequency balance, top to bottom and L to R in your specific space is key,

then go listen, try hard to ascertain any difference of sound/involvement between tubes and SS BEFORE you make changes.

Option to return costly items.

“How is it possible to get better sound than the best recording studio gear? ”

For starters, buy a better preamp and amp and not settle with mid-fi gear like PS Audio. And better is subjective, we all have a different perception of what is better. Maybe go to trade show, join an audio club, invite friends over to learn and share what’s the next step for you.

Personally, those speakers are overpriced, and UGLY, I would never waant them in any space, no matter how good they sound.

You can get great sounding speakers for far less $, selecting by cost is ..........

By acoustic and psycho-acoustic definition, we cannot compared home listening conditions with studio conditions or great concert Hall conditions...😊

It is like saying that a vehicle potential destination reach and speed and confort disposition make a Saturn Rocket better than a Ferrari and a Concord plane better than a Ferrari too but less good than the rocket...

And the ONLY interesting factor for most of us anyway , out of acoustic knowledge and experience that matter the most is the ratio S.Q. optimal level/ lowest price ratio...

I am happy now acoustically with a ridiculously low cost system well embedded... I listen music i am not moved by the look of a system or his price tag not even by his performance passed a minimal acoustic quality threshold... I live for music not for sound, and my budget is very constrained... my hobby was acoustic for years... but now i am in music because i succeeded with a peanuts budget to go and reach this minimal acoustic threshold of satisfaction defined with each acoustic experienced factors at the right place...

Less is better...Especially if it comes from your creative work with ANY system at ANY price in their three working embeddings dimensions ... I am proud of my work not of the price tag by itself or branded name alone...

Anybody with a wallet can buy the best in the world... Making the best with the less is more interesting on all counts for me... 😊

My hobby is now music...My acoustic basic job for many years is done and learned ...

"If someone is serious about sound " he buy books about acoustics and psycho-acoustics , not plug and play costly components...

What is the use to own the components you just describe if someone dont know how to control crosstalk in his system or create the optimal conditions for experiencing the best ASW/LV ratio ?

Sorry but i think you are not serious at all about sound... 😉😁😊

In a word:

For sure no system /room can beat the recordings conditions and can replace the source, but only approximate them  this is trivial common place fact; but no recordings quality level can replace your system/room acoustic constraints, and the way to deal with this for the better is applied acoustics ... The solution is then not an upgrade buying race with no budget limit... The solution is studying and experimenting...

There are tools and they are toys. Toys are for consumers and tools are for professionals. That is the difference. Perfection in sound can be from both toys and tools.

Silly premise, since the needs of producers in studios and home listeners are quite different, but if that’s what you believe, go ahead and buy it! By the way, you forgot to mention cables.

@roxy54 ...does that say that producers and consumer ears are different or quite different?? I'm really confused to what people believe...

In the studio, they use.....wait for it.....studio monitors!

Ridiculous premise and ridiculous equipment list.

@coralkong , are you really sure? studios use standing speakers far more often than your stereotypical assumptions. 

There is no "perfection" in sound... There is optimums levels for some specific acoustic factors in some specific physical and neurological conditions .... "Perfection of sound is a marketing myth sales pitch AT THE END ... Because each brain/ears is a specific "imperfect" toys/tools at the same time , the only one toy/tool we had and acoustics/psycho-acoustics do not distinguish between toys or tools...

Acoustic law apply for a toy room and for tool room the same with sometimes better result in the toy room than in some tool room or the reverse...

There are tools and they are toys. Toys are for consumers and tools are for professionals. That is the difference. Perfection in sound can be from both toys and tools.

@czarivey , yep. Pretty sure.

In another life, I did some recording work in a couple of different studios with a couple of different bands I was in.

While not on the level as say...Abbey Road Studios (which last I heard used stacks and stacks of Classe equipment), every single mix was done on studio monitors (a couple of different brands and types, actually). These were performed by paid engineers.

So yeah....pretty sure.

@donavabdear based upon your equipment choices I don't think you have a solid understanding of the recording process.  The key to great sounding recordings are the microphones and the talent of the engineers.  You can make great recordings without state of the art electronics, rooms and monitors.  They can all be compensated for by the engineer.

You can make great recordings without state of the art electronics, rooms and monitors.  They can all be compensated for by the engineer.

@onhwy61 Or, indeed (works a lot better) by quality of musician. A good musician will start and finish a track without an interruption. Some studios have backing silled musicians that can outdo any celebrity you can think of and correct if those mishap on flight.

@donavabdear, mi compadre. I’ve set aside more precious hours during evenings these past couple of month’s fine tuning & dialing in thee JL Audio CR-1 and thought I’d provide / share my squeaky clean listening update … I’m lovin’ It!

Spending $170k on equipment is not worth it, if the listening room is not treated also.

My quest is to enjoy music 

I do.

@dabel So good to hear the CR-1 is very unique, I'm not sure even with digital switching and processing you can get the same outcome. Thanks for mentioning.

@onhwy61 SSL is used in top studios, Pro Tools MTRX is standard, the Meyer Bullhorns are just making there way in now but they are way ahead of everyone else. The point is this small list is what many top recording studios use and everyone knows you can't make the recording any better than the original (until AI becomes common in a few years). Playback quality has nothing to do with microphones, the signal is going to be what it is microphone placement is done before the recording so changing microphones has nothing to do with playback sorry but you are confused even as you are impugning my 40 years of experience in studios, production sound, Emmys, Oscars, Golden Reels, and millions of dollars of recording equipment purchases. 

@mahgister Perfection in sound has nothing to do with this, I'm saying that the signal can't be better (more accurate) than the original. There is a limit to the accuracy of the playback the limit is the quality of the equipment doing the original recording and mix. Audiophiles often spend several hundred thousand easily on equipment but if you look at it in terms of using top recording studio equipment anything above a few hundred K is wast. I'm not talking about looks or room acoustics of course that has nothing to do with playback I'm talking about 170K$ audiophile preamps that are probably much better than any preamp that was used in the recording originally therefore wasted money. Hope that makes sense. 

@coralkong I'd like to ask you which of items on my equipment list are ridiculous. I assume you don't think the playback signal can be made better after it's been recorded so the limit on playback quality is the original equipment used. I'd like to know why you don't think the recording studio equipment isn't quality limiting? If I'm understanding your post correctly?

@lalitk I don't understand this

//“How is it possible to get better sound than the best recording studio gear? ”

For starters, buy a better preamp and amp and not settle with mid-fi gear like PS Audio. //

Can you explain to me how you can record something with a poor sounding preamp then use a higher quality preamp and make it better? This is why I've spent millions on my recording equipment over the years because it had to be the best, if a piece of equipment down the line could make the recording better I couldn't have charged so much for my recording equipment originally. 

I apologize because i misinterpreted your intention...

We think the same it seems...

@mahgister Perfection in sound has nothing to do with this, I’m saying that the signal can’t be better (more accurate) than the original. There is a limit to the accuracy of the playback the limit is the quality of the equipment doing the original recording and mix. Audiophiles often spend several hundred thousand easily on equipment but if you look at it in terms of using top recording studio equipment anything above a few hundred K is wast. I’m not talking about looks or room acoustics of course that has nothing to do with playback I’m talking about 170K$ audiophile preamps that are probably much better than any preamp that was used in the recording originally therefore wasted money. Hope that makes sense.

Many newer smart tvs apply very sophisticated digital image processing  in order to get the most out of their devices and in a/b comparison I have observed the results can be more eye catching than the real thing.  
 

Apply some effective digital image processing and most any picture can be made to do certain things better than real life.  
 

Same true with modern digital audio.  Anything is possible.   Merely reproducing the source accurately leaves a lot of possibilities on the table.  

@donavabdear , I don’t think you understood my post correctly.

Perhaps my fault.

Look, the premise of a $5k preamp with $100k speakers (add whatever multiplier here you’d like) is ridiculous.

My experiences in a recording studio were many, many moons ago. Think early ’90’s. I’m sure things have changed, but the premise stands.

I looked up Flood Studios and they’re using Focal Studio Monitors w/ Be tweeters for mixing tracks. Not cheap, sure, but surely nothing like what you have listed.

It seems Abbey Roads now uses Bryston as well as some older Classe amps. They do seem to have a lot of B&W home speakers in some of the rooms, but they’re also using studio monitors in the booths as well. Certainly nothing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, though.

I dunno, not a recording studio engineer.

I DO know that the recording/mixing is done on monitors because they are analytical and unforgiving. They’re not designed to sound pleasing, they’re designed to be accurate.

I do think there’s an art in there somewhere. Something professional engineers know and can do, that makes the sound on the a$$ end of the recording sound excellent. It doesn’t sound that way in the studio, though, or when you’re mixing it down. That’s why they get the big bucks.

I would argue that the end result most certainly CAN be better than the original equipment it was recorded on.

It’s why some people prefer tube pre’s, amps, and warm speakers in their house.

Depeche Mode sounds great on a tube setup. One of my favorites.

Also why upscaling, digital filtering, etc...on many modern players is so desirable on older copies of recordings.

DSOTM sounds excellent on SACD.

JM2CW. You do you, man. Enjoy the journey! Happy Listening.

Lalitk- you don’t know what you are talking about. I would take ps audio equipment over most of what you own.

If you want the true sound, get it at the source, before the recording. The amps that rock/blues/jazz groups use for example are fairly cheap, like the Fender tube amps or Marshall amps.

If you ever wish to recreate the sound of a rock/blies/jazz concert, it would cost much to get the exact amps and speakers that the band uses. 

@coralkong The producers job in the recording studio is to help the musician get the most out of his own talent, the engineer puts the technology together to facilitate that vision. Often the producer doesn't want some instruments to sound their best as far as what the instrument maker wanted when he made the instrument, distortion, overdriving, tape saturation all kinds of "mistakes" that were used to create art. I'm not talking about that I'm talking about what should be the the heart of any good playback system. For me I have some tube amps a tube preamp and I love the way they sound but they are not accurate because I have a mixing studio in the same room as my audiophile system. If you love the music then you sorta are committed to the way the musician and producer wanted the recording to sound the day they mixed and mastered the song. Accuracy not your preference is what I mean.

So If you take 2 channels of high end studio preamps SSL, and run it through studio standard processing Avid Pro Tools, then play them back on a speaker system at least as revealing as the studio monitors (that is easy for good audiophile speakers in general) you have a limit of quality. When we buy every expensive audiophile equipment to playback these songs we are not revealing what the musicians and producers envisioned to the point that our equipment is better than the studios we are in no-mans-land because the engineer and the producer haven't heard the things in the original recording that we have and that is also inaccurate.

Also Abby Road Studios uses lots of audiophile equipment because they make a lot of money from it, product placement is the name for it in the industry. Speakers are the things that can be the most problematic I only mentioned the Bluehorn speakers because they use newest tech. 

If you were serious about sound you would build a dedicated audio room as a starting point.

@donavabdear 

Since you obviously believe that you know all that there is to know on this subject, why did you even start this thread? I suppose it was to brag about all the money that you've spent and the awards that you've won. Very impressive...

@donavabdear , I'm not sure what your point is.

Have a great night.

Gee, I thought studios used JBL 4310s as monitors. 😊

 So I guess that would mean that no one on  these boards is serious about sound ? Ok ! Time to shut er down people thats a wrap!

That list that you mentioned is not high on in any category ,andi have owned a audio store went to many audio shows  and built many audio systems. System 

synergies by far the best important , and many pieces of equipment I have seen in mastering studios is just not that good , for example many use Mugabi Audiocables 

or others it’s not that musical. Now Bricasti is a solidAudio brand that started in mastering studios and is well respected . There are many Loudspeakers -Audiophile that use better quality  Loudspeakers for much less monies. 
Musicality is what counts most ,,the mastering is sometimes. The biggest limitation 

who mixes the recordings . Vacuum tube has always given the most natural

presentation, playing guitar pretty much the vast majority of amplifiers are Vacuum tube , even Vacuum tube mikes Many use .  That’s why many older recordings sounded more natural , the majority of Beatles ,masterpiece Pink Floyd Dark side of the moon , solid state can be verygood , look at Manley again Vacuum tube mixing boards,

@roxy54 Not bragging at all nor did I say I knew everything about sound. I'm just saying something that is practically never discussed here and that is the fact that you can't make the signal better (more accurate) than the original so why not use the equipment it was recorded on, in most cases that equipment is not as expensive as hi end audiophile equipment. 

@audioman58 Sorry I'm not getting my point across to you at all. I'm saying that since audio accuracy can't be more accurate than the original recording by definition, even if the recording is done on sub standard studio equipment it is what the musician and producers and mastering studio OKed. So why is it that professional gear is so rarely used in audiophile systems. Simply get the equipment from a top 10 studio in the world (maybe not Abby Road because of all the product placement) but then you have a very solid playback system. Room acoustics, looks and such are not part of the playback system. Why is it never considered? I'm not talking about the most accurate audiophile equipment or a debate between tubes and transistors, tubes are used in microphones in great studios but that is about all. Of course there are exceptions to every idea but hopefully this group is smart enough to understand that the exception is not the rule. 

@bikeboy52 Yes you nailed it I don't think the vast majority is serious about sound they are serious about feeling good about music and enjoying it satisfying their own preferences. You seem very confident in your assertion tell me why I'm wrong. Don't forget I'm talking about having the most accurate playback system.

@p05129 Just go to TAS and see what amps the editor uses in his reference system BHK 600, he could use and have used practically every amp there is but he chose that one, they don't suck. I do have to say the BHK Preamp is noisy I've had 3 of them and I can't get rid of it because it sounds nice (not accurate) but nice and it has 5 XLR input channels. The new DAC is a work in progress but has potential to fight way above its price, the SACD Transport is great. PS Audio is interesting because they are right on the edge of being great with most everything they make.
Thanks

@donavabdear 

To answer your question: The reasons why we don't use the same equipment are many, including size, cost and esthetic considerations, but more importantly, what the studio and producer consider perfect is often at odds with the hearing preferences of the end user who may choose to tailor the sound with digital frequency adjustments or simple tone controls as well as their choice of either solid state, vacuum tube or class D amplification.

Humans have very specific tastes in everything, so it's hard for me to believe that this wouldn't have occurred to you.

I don’t believe in the deification of studio engineers, producers, or mastering technicians. Many are very good but plenty of recordings for whatever reason aren’t. Also, often live music is mixed badly so there’s that issue for your reference needs (sat through a disturbingly bad sounding otherwise major players jazz show a couple of years ago, and thought..."Did the live sound tech pass out?"). I recently bought a Schiit Loki Max for this exact reason (recordings of course, although years as a pro live sound mixer has been a guilty pleasure), and although it’s usually out of the mix, I can put the Max in the mix if I think I need to. Also, most here likely don’t have any pro studio mixing or live mixing experience, and to say you need to listen to playback on what the studio used is silly...you going to buy a huge mixing board and hook it up to dozens of effects boxes and run it through a shipping container for reverb with Pro Tools on board and then send the mix to a mastering lab? Nope, you’re not gonna do any of that. I just read the previous post so consider this one el redundo...maybe roxy54 and I are the same person...

@roxy54 The reason to use studio equipment is because it produces the original recording and you can't do better than that. The name of this discussion is "If you were serious about sound you would.." Because of that I don't care about hearing preferences of the end user the preferences of the producer musician and engineer are the important thing, tone controls no, a person who cares about sound puts money into the room not tone controls, vacuum tube or class D have nothing to do with this discussion. 

What you have to justify as an audiophile is on one hand you do know how you can get the most accurate sound and on the other hand is your ego, esthetic, look at my system factor, what else can it be. if you don't care about getting the most accurate sound then you are suiting your personal preferences, you don't care about the sound but you care about your preferences, the differences is very important, seeking accuracy in the sound is at least true and honoring to the work that the recording process and years of practice from the musician the personal preference branch is ego or something like that. Thanks for your response

@wolf_garcia I agree with you about live sound I’ve done it for many decades and it ruined live concerts mostly I only go to one place to listen to music, the Smith center in Las Vegas it sounds great and I only go when big jazz acts are there they can afford to hire great mixers. Of course you wouldn’t buy 100s of SSL preamps or a full board they sell 2 channel rack mount channels you don’t even need Pro Tools I only add Pro Tools because most every studio uses it to record. It surprisingly doesn’t take much to copy a top studio when you are only using stereo. The money is spent at the studio buying microphones, mixers and they spend a lot of money on the listening room, the speakers are usually not as expensive as good audiophile speakers but that isn’t the important thing.

If you looked through your favorite albums and looked at the most common studio they were recorded at, probably Capitol Records wouldn’t it would be smart to copy their playback equipment (they use Neve not SSL by the way) they mix analog and then record to Pro Tools at 192k. They have spent the money so you don’t have to. just copy the very good preamps top studios use and listen on top studio standard speakers someone mentioned JBLs, ya great this will get you accurate sound. If you want amazing wow sound put in 4 subs like I have and listen to the exhibition of sound but don’t say it’s audiophile or accurate. Hope that’s clear, I’m really sorry I haven’t been able to make my point very well, or this group is unwilling to accept it’s simplicity, I’m not sure.

...thought I’d provide / share my squeaky clean listening update … I’m lovin’ It!

( "....It had gone too far when the McD Synthdrome had spread to the audiodefiled immunity...Nothing could be done to curtail the use of ultrasonic record cleaning fluids as a ’chaser’ for hallucinogens mixed into ’adult beverages’ in the paltry few ’b&m, pro-sound dealers’....

All one had to do to find this illicit activity was to follow to the source the unrestrained ’giggling’ into the back area of said store.

The sight of a ’defiled ProAudChaserChooser’ using the fluids in a bidet wash unit to ’anoint their vinyls’ was Not a sight to be put into the gay discplays in a storefront window...." *

* - Excerpt from the "Now We Are InSync’ed" Manifesto, marked up with pink "Barbaberbe’ highlighters and held up with pinheads."

I really don't care about reproducing the exact sound of the recording equipment since 80% of my 2k+ collection of older vinyl is far from sounding perfect to my ears. In fact about 50% sounds mediocre to poor. Hence I have both a Loki Max and a Puffin in my system. Puffin for secondary TT, Max for everything digital. Primary TT is only pure unaltered sound source on which I only play the 20% of my vinyl that meets my ears criteria as is. Recording quality is a crapshoot. Not so much poor equipment, but poor engineering and mastering. Why not tweaking their deficiencies.  

And of course, perfect audio equipment, studio or home kind, will never sound to their full potential unless installed in a properly built and setup listening room. 

"If you were serious about sound you would..."

...post over 20000 times in a hifi forum.  Thank you!

@mapman Great answer, but do you care about the most accurate sound or do you care about your enjoyment of music accurate sound be damned? Obviously you have given your expertise to the audiophile world which all around here appreciate. One of those branches is objective the other is subjective, your objective experience and commitment to audio is valuable but to me your subjective commitment to audio is only valuable is your ideas line up to my subjective ideas promoting confirmation bias something only the marketing department of audio manufactures need. I would really like your answer I don't think there is a right or wrong answer. 

I know very little about how a recording engineer captures and mixes an artist, and I know absolutely nothing about the Pro Audio choices recording engineers make to practice their craft. Since this is a forum, and everyone has an opinion, here are my two cents.

My guess is that a recording engineer wants to hear everything with the greatest detail possible when recording an artist. The engineer then takes those tracks and modifies them if working in the digital domain, according to the engineer's and artists' tastes. And now, above all, the engineer wants to hear in great detail what effects the the digital processing have produced. Then, there is the whole process of volume control for the individual tracks. This is done for analog recording also, or adjusting where artists stand or microphone position if recording a "live" performance. I see this akin to a cook deciding on more or less salt. The engineer is messing with how much each track proportionally contributes to the final mix. Yet again, the engineer wants to hear exactly what these modifications have done to the mix. So I am naively assuming that the engineer wants a playback chain that is extremely fast and highly detailed. Whether the playback system "sounds good" is of secondary importance. I do not think that equipment used in a recording studio is even designed to appeal to the tastes of the majority of home users.

And finally, it is we, the consumers, who purchase the final mix and play it at home. And, no surprise, we all like flavors, different flavors. As consumers of audio gear, I think what we do over time is refine what flavors we like, and if we are lucky, we find equipment that reproduce those flavors for us. If we are luckier still, we are able to afford the equipment that checks all those flavor boxes for us.

So to answer the question of the post, "If you were serious about sound you would..." I would continue listen to as much gear and as many home systems as I can and see if said gear and systems appeal to my flavor profile. Then figure out what gear contributes the most to my tastes, and then figure out how to recreate that sound in my home. Most of us reach a point where it is "good enough", or we run out of money. In summary, I have no interest in the Pro Audio gear choices an engineer makes (but I think the whole process is fascinating and I would love to see the process in action), and neither should you. What we care about a recording is whether it sounds good on our flavored home system, and that it has just enough salt and not too much coriander.

@donavabdear 

do you care about the most accurate sound or do you care about your enjoyment of music accurate sound be damned?

I care about enjoyment of music.   Accuracy matters and I tend to find that the two are highly correlated.

@mahgister Perfection in sound has nothing to do with this, I’m saying that the signal can’t be better (more accurate) than the original. There is a limit to the accuracy of the playback the limit is the quality of the equipment doing the original recording and mix.

The sound quality is not defined only by mixing and digital accuracy but by other acoustic factors as time and timing and different ratios of reflectivity...Then speaking as if " digital audio accuracy" was the main factors is confusing digital mixing with acoustic recording or worst subordinating recording to mixing as if the mix in itself  was the goal...And it is forgetting  that dsp mixing  are secondary compared the sound experience psycho-physical acoustic factors in the recording  concert hall and in the listening room ...

@mapman Great answer, but do you care about the most accurate sound or do you care about your enjoyment of music accurate sound be damned? Obviously you have given your expertise to the audiophile world which all around here appreciate. One of those branches is objective the other is subjective, your objective experience and commitment to audio is valuable but to me your subjective commitment to audio is only valuable is your ideas line up to my subjective ideas promoting confirmation bias something only the marketing department of audio manufactures need. I would really like your answer I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer.

My guess is that a recording engineer wants to hear everything with the greatest detail possible when recording an artist. The engineer then takes those tracks and modifies them if working in the digital domain, according to the engineer’s and artists’ tastes. And now, above all, the engineer wants to hear in great detail what effects the the digital processing have produced. Then, there is the whole process of volume control for the individual tracks. This is done for analog recording also, or adjusting where artists stand or microphone position if recording a "live" performance. I see this akin to a cook deciding on more or less salt. The engineer is messing with how much each track proportionally contributes to the final mix. Yet again, the engineer wants to hear exactly what these modifications have done to the mix. So I am naively assuming that the engineer wants a playback chain that is extremely fast and highly detailed. Whether the playback system "sounds good" is of secondary importance. I do not think that equipment used in a recording studio is even designed to appeal to the tastes of the majority of home users.

@mahgister I appreciate your point of view and I agree with all of what you said except for I feel like you have fallen into the common audiophile mindset that is simply wrong, I don't mean perspectively or subjectively wrong I mean wrong as in the difference between black and white. Many on this forum have no ability to separate the music from the sound and I should have spelled out the difference in my OP. Today live recordings of orchestras aren't recorded with 2 mics buttoned up and sent out to the masses to enjoy they have hours or days of post production, including filters, delays, reverbs, and loads of different kinds of limiters EQs and compressions. If you did get a pure recording with no post work I bet you wouldn't like the music because it's not what we expect anymore. Music today as you said is not real it is multitracked and manipulated is so many ways you would be amazed, generally it sounds much better than the original recording no doubt. The difference between the sound and the music is that the sound has nothing to do with anything in the recording or musicians the sound is simply a waveform it has nothing to do with bit rate sample rate acoustics engineers producers or microphones used in the recording the sound is what you have when the project is finished and it is the finished vision of the musicians and producers vision it can't be changed or enhanced after it is finished. Where this group goes wrong is evident in the posts even in this conversation audiophiles in general think sound engineers want detail and pureness the opposite is true most modern songs are compressed in dynamics and equalized all over, the "imaging" that is so religiously mentioned by the audio community is usually made by phasing tricks not by a producer mapping out where the musicians are playing on a virtual stage. Today because of Pro Tools and digital filters nothing is done as it was 30 years ago. The sound of the music is not real it is made up in nearly every way, the production squeezes out music like a cold line of toothpaste, the sound is unchangeable it is a baseline to be played in your listening room. By the way the models you see in magazines aren't really as beautiful as they appear Photoshop and Pro Tools do the same thing but once you have the finished product it is by definition the sound of the song. If an audiophile is not interested in accuracy of reproducing the finished product then there is no use being on a forum to learn about what other people like about a piece of audio gear or about how a sound makes them feel, it's their preference who cares.