There is no ideal sound, at least for home playback. As you move along in this hobby you should obtain better and better sound, but never an ideal sound. It’s unobtainable because there is no ideal. There is no glass ceiling. There is no such thing as getting within 5% or 2% of perfection. You shouldn’t be trying to achieve what you hear at a concert, only what is recorded on the record or CD. There is no perfection because of all the things that can go wrong in the audio system, and do go wrong. As Bob Dylan says at the end of all his records, good luck to everybody.
Sound, neutrality and the pursuit of everything
The audiophile hobby is inherently a pursuit of some ideal. That ideal might differ from person to person, but what I am curious about is how each of us define that ideal.
I kinda like where my system is at. I cue a well recorded track and think: damn that sounds good. But compared to what? Do I have a point of comparison to the original performance, the day it was recorded? Usually not. To use an overused album, unless I was sitting at the Olympia concert hall in Paris when Diana Krall performed there in 2001 and have a perfect auditory memory, how do I know my system if reproducing it with “fidelity”?
If the pursuit of perfection is useless as perfection is an illusion, how do you all define your level of satisfaction or achievement in this audiophile pursuit?
I kinda like where my system is at. I cue a well recorded track and think: damn that sounds good. But compared to what? Do I have a point of comparison to the original performance, the day it was recorded? Usually not. To use an overused album, unless I was sitting at the Olympia concert hall in Paris when Diana Krall performed there in 2001 and have a perfect auditory memory, how do I know my system if reproducing it with “fidelity”?
If the pursuit of perfection is useless as perfection is an illusion, how do you all define your level of satisfaction or achievement in this audiophile pursuit?