Is a highly discerning system enjoyable?

What does this mean?

Not sure where the disconnect is, @cdc 

The producer was famous for saying his target listener used a stereo cassette player (i.e. boom box) as his reference.

My personal preference is realism, natural tone, presence and for the system to be able to convey emotion to the listener. I’m also trying to strike a good balance between being able to enjoy music and get the most out of a recording without overstepping the boundaries and crossing into a discerning or analytical. It’s tough to do and you end up walking on the edge where a smallest possible change like vibration control pucks, etc. can tip the scale.

But…I don’t want to be sitting there listening to a system that is a lab instrument, subjected to an aural microscope type presentation. 
So I guess a high resolution revealing (transparent to change) system rather than discerning (picky eater from a recording quality standpoint) is my preference. I’m close to the goal with my current set up but as we all know, never done. 

Question isn't one of bad recordings for me, bad recordings have always provided poor sound in every system I've built. Even the most romantic system I had in early 2000's couldn't make a silk purse out of a turd. Its the mediocre recordings I'm mostly concerned with, and these only seem to get better as my system has progressed.

To my mind an accurate system is one that provides most natural timbre, tonally balanced, great micro and macro dynamics, and yes, highest resolution and transparency. Highest levels of resolution and transparency won't like less than natural timbre or tonal imbalance, sound will become fatiguing.

My system today sounds better with the mediocre recordings than ever, greater resolution, transparency allied with everything else in balance means sense of live performers in room perceived with minimal effort, total engagement comes about within minutes of listening session, no fatigue ever with listening sessions lasting four to six hours. I listen to virtually every genre of music from all eras and the only recordings that really bother me are the extremely dynamic constricted with tiny sound staging, meaning narrow and no depth. Having system with most natural timbre means timbre anomalies don't bother me nearly as much, I've had more issues with this in past with systems having less natural timbre. I'd say in average listening session I never encounter recording I simply can't bear. Now, this is in regard  to streaming, so a single song with pretty poor recording isn't going to bother as much as if I was using physical media and had to put up with entire recording.

erik_squires

Just that I've heard that expression for a long time and eventually realized I never understood what it meant. How do they go about mastering a song to sound good in the car but not on hi-fi?

I understand about compression, bumping up the bass, smiley face eq, but do not see how that would be any more pleasurable in the car than hi-fi.

Cheers

@cdc

See if you can find any articles about Steve Lillywhite and his work with U2. The simple answer is they use what we would call sub-par speakers as their reference. Then go listen to U2’s War and see if you can hear everything that’s missing.

Then read about how Pink Floyd was mixed.  That will explain the chasm between the two approaches.

The thread we’ve all been waiting for :) Kidding aside, this is a great point of discussion. I think there are two ways to answer.

1. Some (maybe most in active forums) listen to their equipment and can pursue resolving clarity at the expense of all other considerations. Their actual hobby is defined by the equipment in some way or another…sometimes to the point of being vulnerable to inaudible ultra expensive snake oil. I don’t necessarily think it’s an issue of ego gratification but there’s some part of it that can come across as prideful in discussion.

2. Others (my category) greatly enjoy this hobby, appreciate all the knowledge and technology, spend more than the average consumer, but take our joy from the musicality or have an affection for some cultural connection to a certain era of hifi or specific style of music.

People like me land in the middle. I love the era of early pro audio solid state analog power. Love the instrumentation of Muscle Shoals, Stax, Memphis and Chess Records studios. Imprinted by the sound of big hard to drive cabinets like AR3, Infinity and JBL big baffle speakers. But my lifestyle doesn’t allow for the time, expense or space needed to do justice to vinyl, which makes me a digital streamer who loves throwback analog output, LOL

i am a happy camper with something less than state of the art resolution…but my well tuned Crown high voltage SS amp, fed by an ESS Sabre DAC in a thoughtful gain stack into a pair of brilliant Wharfedale Lintons are perfect in my view.

The expertise in this forum is amazing and has really guided my projects, even if I’ve landed somewhere in “good enough musicality” category in pursuit of perfect reproduction. My stuff delivers a balanced enjoyable experience without distortion for under $2K.

"One sees what is in back of their eyes, not what is in front of their eyes". The same holds true for the ears. I would guess most often we hear want we want to hear....what we fabricate in our mind. Most people who would listen to Bose 901 speakers may have already decided how they sound before the speakers produce sound.

Slight hijack about quality of recordings. I’ve had the time and funds lately to add an ESS Sabre DAC equipped Bluetooth receiver while breaking in my Lintons. This led to extra music time than typical.

Been impressed with musicality of recent acoustic Americana recordings…the sphere around Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan is producing cuts with really good sound stages, mixing acoustic and amplified instruments and vocals that go back and forth between coming forward and blending with the ensemble.

Improving my DAC and speaker has made these artists more interesting.

Most early pop music was mixed for car or jukebox listening.  Listening to a Phil Spector production on a fancy rig never does right to me.  That’s not the fault of the system

Most "older" audiophiles have switched from SS to tubes because they simply are more "Musical".....less detail but more pure enjoyment...and isn’t that really why we’re here.......And there’s lots of high quality speakers that run on that lower tube power. If the First Watt isn’t good...who cares what the rest of the watts are doing.

It’s easy to start thinking we have audio mostly figured out simply because it’s 2023. But that’s not true. Audio gear continues to fall far behind live music in real spaces, primarily in dynamics, scale and bass.

With the exception of the lucky few with massive rooms & audio installations totaling millions of dollars, the rest of us make do with a subset of what music IRL sounds like.

My theory is that given all this, audio designers often go after "low hanging fruit,"  objectives that are at least theoretically attainable given the best test gear and well sourced components: things like lowering measurable distortions of all kinds; increasing apparent resolution (detail and treble "air" being the usual targets); and trying to address macro-dynamics to whatever degree is possible at a price-point..

Results are pretty mixed. A lot of audio gear chases sound qualities that aren't much like the real thing. Striving to hear the violinist’s smallest breath sounds or the exact type of resin and bow used are intellectually interesting, but not comparable to experiencing violin music in real spaces.

I’ve heard a lot of live music in my life (different genres). Speaking of classical, choral, and opera (which tend to be performed in spaces with above average acoustics), I can’t remember ever actually focusing on resolution, detail or "plankton" in what I’m hearing. The experience of live music is too palpable and impressive for that kind of navel-gazing, at least in my experience.

Building a good stereo system is building a nervous system that should insinuate itself into yours but not necessarily comply with yours. It’s like raising a child. There are factors impinging on it that we haven’t yet sussed out and that may never be. That’s part of the fun and mystery.

Plus, I doubt we have gone very deep yet with electrical current and what it really is.

Like asking if a high performance car is fun to drive.  If you don't like cars or driving and just see it a way to get from point A to point B, then no, it might not be.  And if one doesn't particularly like music and just sees it as something to have going on in the background then no, a good system might not seem all that nice to live with.