Musicality" in a system? What IS that ?

Put your favourite record on, if you tap yer toes and sing along, you've got it right! simple guy, simple needs

Hi Detlof, very interesting thread. As a professional musician for three decades now (started young) I naturally have an imprint of a "live feel" in my bones, and that is always my first reference. My take on "musicality" is that certain systems reproduce sound in such a way that I am emotionally touched by good music consistently. Granted, great content on the lousiest system can sometimes touch your heart and imagination, but the key word is consistently. I have heard some systems that feel so "live" that even when hearing something for the first time I can anticipate the musicians next moves as if I was playing with them. I've heard systems that let a vocalists expression come through so clearly as to bring tears to my eyes. Criteria for accurately describing musicality is difficult at best, but I have noticed that it tends to happen on systems that are not inexpensive (shall I say usually over $5000, but more like $15,000 and up?) There are also degrees of musicality, case in point: this week I tested 4 optical cables for the output of my Denon minidisc player. Since it doesn't have a coaxial out, I was trying to make the best of the format. I use it for archives, much as intended, as a replacement for cassette tapes. One of the interconnects had what I can describe as musicality. Others were more detailed, or "faster'" with a bit more perceived output (midrange emphasis?) but this one interconnect (Audio One) was balanced at all frequencies and helped to diminish the shrill aspects of the minidisc format, allowing the the soul of the music to come through, even if not as strongly as with higher resolution formats. Also, I have listened to SACD's on many occasions now, and one time my body was actually fooled into thinking that I was hearing a real performance. Now, don't get me wrong I've heard vinyl setups that overall sound better than the best SACD playback, but this was the only time I have ever truly been fooled, be it only for a few seconds. It was a rather spooky experience. I would have to own a SACD player for a while to see if it does something close to that consistently over long time periods, but talk about musicality, Whoa! We have only words to convey the feelings we experience from a "musical" reproduction, but soul, spirit and emotion,are certainly some of them.Bravo!

All the previous postings here talk about getting the spirit of the music, being emotionally connected to the performers, etc.....while I think that all this is true, it really all boils down to personal interpretation...Joe Blow A might think the system A is musical, but Joe Blow B might think that system B is musical...how does one, then, differentiate the two systems?..One listener might consider an accurate, crystal clean, ultra neutral-sounding system (ie: Krells, Thresholds to name a few)as being musical. Another listener might consider a warm, sugar-coated, slightly-colored, euphonic-sounding system as being musical (ie: Conrad Johnsons, ARC's to name a few - funny, both these are tube gear). This trully is a tough question to quantify since we're talking about the emotional experience one goes through when listening to audio playback..Having said this however, there seems to be a consensus out there on "musical-sounding" equipment: a lot of the well-designed tube gear are almost always described as "musical". It took me a long time to finally pin down what they really mean by this and having been exposed to numerous system combinations over the last 15 years, "musical" FOR ME only means one thing: EUPHONICS. And a lot of it has to do with how well a midrange is presented on the musical spectrum...considering of course, that everything on the music is well-reproduced, it is the midrange that cuts it for me...then again, I listen almost exclusively to acoustic Jazz...

Good question, Detlof, one that I've thought about repeatedly, since so many reviewers use the term. But I agree with Gemini that, if we try to get more specific than saying "musicality" relates to how well a system can reproduce sounds in an emotionally convincing way, it quickly starts to mean different things to different people.

When used by reviewers, "musicality" seems to me to be a cop-out. In fact, when I read something like "Brand B was more musical," I mentally substitute "just sounded better to me." The latter plain-English phrase conveys as much (or as little!) information and doesn't tempt me to engage in a risky mind-reading attempt to figure out specifically what the reviewer heard and liked. I certainly don't think it's easy or always desirable to reduce musical satisfaction to a bunch of discrete components of hearing. But I kind of resent writers implying that they are doing so by sneaking in the term "musical" alongside narrower and more concrete concepts like "low frequency extension" or "dynamic," or even "deep soundstage", "smooth", "transparent", "fast", "dark", "forward", etc. Notice how the hifi-speak practice of turning "musical" into the noun "musicality" further promotes the perception that we are talking about a well-defined property.

To me, "musical" is an emergent property that sums the performance of a system in the areas that are most important to a particular listener. To one listener, "musical" may be strongly related to PRAT and control of microdynamics. To another, it may be more related to a transparent mid-range and timbral fidelity to live music. I'm sure it's actually more complicated than those examples, or writers would describe more analytically what they are hearing, instead of resorting to the term "musicality" because they either don't have the ability to reduce what they're hearing to more specific terms or they don't feel anything is to be gained by doing so. It's hard to imagine, however, how the latter attitude could be constructive in the context of a review.

To have total musicality in reproduced music, I feel four elements are required:

1) Love of the music being performed
2) Quality of the performance of that music
3) Quality of the playback system in conveying the above two
4) Mood

You must like the music. If not, what is the significance of the other three? The performance is equally important to the music or at least it is to me providing I LIKE the music. The performance is what can touch our emotions and connect us to the art of the composer and interpret to us what is being said. If not connected, distraction may set in and maybe at those times we start thinking about how things sound, a bugaboo inflicted on all audiophiles and to me the major difference between us and the music lover who is less interested in 3, the quality of the playback system, which is ALSO least important to me. Detlof, in the year I have been tuning in to this site, I think this is one of the most important questions and issues pertaining to audiophiles and what we are about. It is a revealing question on our own individual values. I don’t think the above answer is right for all. Musical has become a "buzz” word that has different meaning to different folks as Jayboard says. To some it may mean the “sound” through the system regardless of the music. To me, it most profoundly means the totality of music I love being performed by musicians that communicate it well through a playback system that reveals all the nuances of the recording. Thought and analysis of the "sound" disappear and the art is the total focus. This is my ideal. So in reality, there is no one answer that absolutely defines musical, only different interpretations based on the importance of our own individual criteria. And to REALLY get there there the mood must also be in place then again the right mood can arrive once the music starts playing.