Speakers that are very accurate sounding but don't produce an emotional connection.

;-) !!!!!!

Hazyj, albeit punctuation challenged, gets 8 points for Best Post in this thread.

all this chatter. it renders emotionally involving visions of sugar plum fairy-shaped transducers floating about tethered to helium balloons and candy canes. flitting and dancing, hither and yon, sprinkling teensy gems of excitement and wonder and leaving me in rapturous splendor.

ooooooh

I think referring to the lovely audiophiles here as "simple tools" is harsh…however, placing your paw on the side of a speaker while it’s playing something is a great way to see if it’s vibrating…who knew? And it may not mean a damn thing to the overall sound. Also, since "emotional involvement" is a subjective personal response of near infinite variation, blaming any one thing such as cabinet vibration for this is silly. The range of great speaker design technology runs from open baffles to speakers mounted in cement, and based on how the designers decided to voice them is where they get their mojo…or lack of same.

Harbeth and some other well regarded UK (and elsewhere) speaker manufacturers often use "live" side panels in the speaker as a part of the overall sound. Stethoscope schmethoscope.

OK. so that does not mean that every panel of the speaker is live. the panels that are not supposed to be live should not resonant. And, apparently a simple tool can ascertain that. 

Harbeth and some other well regarded UK (and elsewhere) speaker manufacturers often use "live" side panels in the speaker as a part of the overall sound. Stethoscope schmethoscope.

Hi Roy:
J. A. at Stereophile uses a stethoscope on cabinets when he tests them.

I certainly agree that amplifiers and recordings make significant differences. To those I would add cables, followed by footers and many 'tweaks'. And synergy can often make a lovely difference.

When I have discussed this topic of musicality with other professionals, the following have always been common themes:

Above all, speakers must first be setup properly in a room possessing at least 'OK' acoustics. If someone has mentioned this above, my apologies. When a room's acoustics are 'OK' and the room is larger than a spare bedroom, I do know that, if finding the right placement for speakers and chair remains difficult (even for a reviewer), it is wise to suspect the speakers.

You might think that the 'best systems' would make less-than-perfect recordings unbearable in at least some ways. Yet I and others have heard countless 'best systems' make most every recording wonderfully musical, completely entertaining, bodily-moving, and emotionally engaging. There was no attention paid to 'harshness' or 'distortion', nor even to the details of 'soundstage', 'airiness' and the like. It was always the performance that came to life.

Now, experienced recording engineers, producers and artists always speak of the need to capture the performance when a band is on fire!, and how this outweighs any recording quality. They go on to say we thus have every reason to expect the recordings of major artists, even when made in the 1920's, to have captured the performers in full stride. And when you don't feel that, it is the fault of playback, not recording.

Returning to speaker performance, it is important to note, in no particular order, that there are many mechanical flaws in otherwise high-tech appearing woofers and tweeters that keep us from making emotional connection to the music. These are measurable.

There can be many acoustic problems from how the air is moving right near any cone or dome, both in front and behind, and by how the air is allowed to reverberate in the chamber or cabinet behind. All of these can be measured, some indirectly.

There are many reasons that the 'order' of a speaker's crossover circuit matters, along with many brands of crossover parts that rob musicality. These are all measurable, but it's usually easier to listen for them via well-conceived experiments.

And there are mechanically-unsound speaker cabinets. To determine for oneself, just buy a $40 stethoscope and have a listen to the sides, back, top... I cannot understand why no reviewer ever bothers with this.

I hope this helps sort some things out, perhaps for future discussions as separate issues, each related to the OP's original well-put question.

Best regards,
Roy Johnson
Green Mountain Audio

My personal assessment is I find if I do not connect with what I hear the culprit is usually noise and distortion.  Sometimes its effects are so subtle  you don't know its there until gone.   But the effect is the same ie no "connection" .     Minimizing noise and distortion  always helps.  Cleaner power, shielding,  isolating components from other components and any nearby computers, digital gear or power transformers are some of the things I find helps.   Newer digital gear designed for hifi music playback tend to be quieter and less problematic.  Older gear tends to be more of a problem.  It also just so happens that less noise and distortion usually means more accurate.  Go figure!

pryso-

This kind of detail is exactly what I feel this discussion needs. I've been messing around with my SPL meter lately to try and see what range it is where my Wilson Sophias do their coloring, and though I can't be exact it's clear to me that it's in the above 160 hz and below 600hz range. It's a range that presents power to the impact of percussion, key strikes, string plucks and also provides more body to vocals that have this lower range (most vocals do - even female). It's also a range that can impart a sense of space around instruments and vocals. 

But is it accurate? Well, it would be somewhat accurate if the recording space emphasized this range during the recording and then THAT was played back on a more accurate system. It makes me wonder if a large part of this discussion is about our preferences with respect to venue rather than sound reproduction. I'm not the first one here to suggest that.

Sure. If one has accurate speakers and not connecting, system is one possibility. There’s all the other usual contenders you can read about all the time on sites like this as well.

Its harder to sort through than the Republican Presidential Candidates. Much more fun though.

Mapman-

I can't speak for the OP, but since I feel I understand the gist of his post, I'll attempt it anyhow;-)

I don't think the issue is this feeling of no emotional connection with accurate presentations, but rather that some "systems" (I won't write "speakers" here) come across as so detailed with much focus on precise soundstaging that some elements can be "lesser" than with some systems that are clearly not as accurate. I take my Wilson Sophias as an example. The Sophias sound wonderful, but not accurate in the sense that they soundstage with much precision. Vocals and instruments are too forward than seems accurate to me, and depending upon the frequency range covered often too loud relative to other aspects of the recording. Not enough depth but imaging convincing enough that they get me by for now. It's not the sound I prefer since 90% of the time it's not the realistic soundstage that I need. However, and often enough, I hear something that simply sounds outstanding like a piano key strike from Lyle Lovett's "I've been to Memphis" from Joshua Judges Ruth, or the bass from Diana Kralls "My Love Is" off of the Love Scenes album. In both examples the instruments captivate me - involve me in the music more than when I've heard these played on accurate systems. Those things are louder and the strikes and plucks have more impact than I think is realistic. It's true this is only 10% of the time perhaps, but that 10% is an emotional enough encounter that it sticks and is why I haven't let the speakers go. Yet. Am still waiting for my pre-owned Raidho's to appear at the right price;-)

mapman, audiophile speakers must color signal to generate such emotional connection and so is other components. 

if they are accurate and no emotional connection the problem probably lies elsewhere.

Interesting that some of the discussion here focused on the spectrum just above 200 Hz.  To me this is lower midrange territory since over many years I've read references to the bass range being the first three octaves; thus from 20 to 160 Hz.

However, regardless of how it is labeled, here is a further thought for consideration.  Just as WAJ suggested the importance of the 200-400 Hz range, so does Jim Smith.

Many of you may know about Jim from his association years ago with Magnepan, as a dealer in Georgia, as importer for Avantgarde, and currently as an audio consultant and author of "Get Better Sound".

In that book he identifies one thing he believes one must have for musical satisfaction, "a flat to slightly elevated response curve in the critical region from approximately 192 Hz to 348 Hz."  If that leaves you curious then I suggest you read his book.

For my own experience I will only add that I've heard many expensive systems that seem to emphasize detail but they fail to convey the emotion of the performance/recording.  Then I could hear the same recording on a "lesser" system and find emotional connection.  So for me it is something more than extensive engineering and ultimate cost.

Time-coherency in a speaker is a design paradigm; it's a parameter that you trade-off in the midst of speaker design as you are thinking.

typo on my part (sorry!) - I meant to write - it's NOT a parameter that you trade-off in the midst of speaker design as you are thinking.

bombaywalla --

There are too many other factors for a phase-coherent speaker to potentially sound like the less desirable choice compared to a speaker not being phase-coherent. I’m guessing you refer to speakers being mechanically aligned to achieve named virtue, although delay via DSP is a viable solution as well - likely better than any electrical ditto. In any case, phase-coherency alone - to my ears, at least - is far from the deciding factor.

The thought experiment could be made whether a hypothetical speaker of my liking, one not being phase coherent, would gain significantly being converted into phase-coherency. For the sake of not altering the overall design of the speaker let's just say we'd modify it accordingly via a DSP solution, bearing in mind other sonic changes that could follow in the wake of this implementation. In that case, given these are speakers I'd fancy despite of phase imperfections, I gather the phase modification (into coherency) could lead to the desirable outcome. If anything, and if proved to be a big factor, the rationale could be to seek out the overall preferred speaker principle as a phase coherent design, but as such phase coherency would only be one of many factors to achieve the desired sonic goal.

phusis, i'm sorry to say but you are wrong!
you need to go back & read a couple of really great threads (if you haven't already) &/or re-read them -
* Is DEQX a game changer? 
* Sloped baffle
there is a lot of great info in these threads that will dispel a lot misconceptions you have...
A correction re. what you wrote - i'm talking about TIME-coherency (& not phase-coherency). These are 2 different things with time-coherency being the superset. A time-coherent speaker is always phase-coherent but a phase-coherent speaker is not time-coherent. 
Time-coherency in a speaker is a design paradigm; it's a parameter that you trade-off in the midst of speaker design as you are thinking. Once you make up your mind to manuf a time-coherent speaker it dictates how you build that speaker. It's a decision you make at the very start.
You are talking about "mechanical alignment" - that's but one very small aspect of time-coherency in a speaker. Merely having a sloped baffle means very little (it just means that the acoustical centers of the drivers are on a vertical plane) if the rest of the speaker design doesn't take it all the way towards making that speaker time-coherent.

o, again, it was the phase coherent car speakers…not the Beatles…I give up.

wolf_garcia, maybe you didn't fully understand what I meant to say...
for you, listening to the Beatles at that time, of course it was the Beatles & the low phase distorting dash-mounted speakers allowed you to gain max listening pleasure i.e. they affected the music signal the least.

[...] the time-coherent speaker sacrifices the least & is very close to doing it all. Every genre of music plays superbly on it & the better one’s electronics get, the better the speakers sound. Music enjoyment for the long-haul....

bombaywalla --

There are too many other factors for a phase-coherent speaker to potentially sound like the less desirable choice compared to a speaker not being phase-coherent. I’m guessing you refer to speakers being mechanically aligned to achieve named virtue, although delay via DSP is a viable solution as well - likely better than any electrical ditto. In any case, phase-coherency alone - to my ears, at least - is far from the deciding factor.

The thought experiment could be made whether a hypothetical speaker of my liking, one not being phase coherent, would gain significantly being converted into phase-coherency. For the sake of not altering the overall design of the speaker let's just say we'd modify it accordingly via a DSP solution, bearing in mind other sonic changes that could follow in the wake of this implementation. In that case, given these are speakers I'd fancy despite of phase imperfections, I gather the phase modification (into coherency) could lead to the desirable outcome. If anything, and if proved to be a big factor, the rationale could be to seek out the overall preferred speaker principle as a phase coherent design, but as such phase coherency would only be one of many factors to achieve the desired sonic goal.

So, again, it was the phase coherent car speakers…not the Beatles…I give up.

Among all the speakers I listened to, the only speakers that gave me accuracy and emotional connection are:

Harbeth
Sonus Faber (old models although the accuracy/detail was not top notch)
Verity Audio (have not heard their new models)

Also make sure you have a good amp like Pass Labs Aleph line (the best amps I have ever listened to especially the Aleph 3).

No speaker does it all. Its a matter of deciding what approach you want to pursue, and being happy with the tradeoffs.

while this might be true, psag, the time-coherent speaker sacrifices the least & is very close to doing it all. Every genre of music plays superbly on it & the better one's electronics get, the better the speakers sound. Music enjoyment for the long-haul.... 

wolf_garcia, if you are referring to my post then I'd like to say that i wasn't trying to give any musician short shrift.... ;-)

…the emotional connection of hearing early Beatles on the dash mounted speaker of a car radio in 1965? Unforgettable.

the car audio systems of yester year might not have had the audiophile attributes of our present-day systems but they were low/very low phase shift loudspeakers & probably limited audio frequency range just because of the older technology. But because of the low phase shift in those dash-mounted speakers they sounded really good for their price. Thank you for bringing this up - this is exactly what i'm talking about w.r.t time-coherent loud speakers in a home setup.   

The TAD is a very accurate speaker. It is honest. It doesn't distort the signal that it receives. For that it deserves the highest praise.

Magico was known for clinical sound. Now its becoming known for warm forgiving sound. What will the next flavor be?

No speaker does it all. Its a matter of deciding what approach you want to pursue, and being happy with the tradeoffs.

Wow…so the musicians get short shrift in this crowd…I use a tube amp and what I think is a well sorted relatively inexpensive rig and I like the way it all works, but I can listen to great musicians on almost anything functioning properly and get why they’re great …the emotional connection of hearing early Beatles on the dash mounted speaker of a car radio in 1965? Unforgettable. Also, I've owned piles instruments including  electric and acoustic guitars, basses, mandolins, ukuleles, dulcimers, etc…and the ones that work best not only have a personally appealing sound, but a tactile feel that is utterly personal and allows one to play the damn thing with some sort of emotional connection helped mightily by the instrument feeling right.

I have listened to a few speakers over the years that impressed me with their accuracy and presentation of the music, but just did not create an emotional response or connection.

Sunnyjim, I'm not sure I follow what you are saying here (maybe i do but i'm not sure that your & mine audio language is the same...) - usually the most accurate system is the most satisfying system as it portrays the program material with emotion & connects the listener to the music. But...... your statement above says just the opposite.
So, i'm pretty sure that what you think you heard as "accurate" was merely distortion masquerading as accuracy. The distortion was obviously coming from various places incl the speaker - you already know this: one can have the best low-distortion electronics & sub-standard speakers & you will get mediocre playback. The other way is also true - sub-standard electronics & the lowest distortion speakers will yield mediocre playback.

I have often wondered what that quality is in some speakers that produce an emotional connection with the listener.

Many of the readers here will not agree with what I'm going to write (one of them being melbguy1 who's had several arguments about this) but so be it. I'm not trying to convert anyone - to each his own - but I'm quite sure that this is one of the main aspects involved in preventing an emotional connection to the music. I've written this before & I'll say it again - the speaker must be a time-coherent speaker. Time-coherent speakers are the least distorting speakers & they happen to use a 1st-order x-over. Just the physics of the 1st-order x-over ensures that the phase relationship of the music between any 2 frequencies remains unchanged above, at & below the x-over point. No other order of x-over guarantees this. It is extremely important to retain the phase relationship of the music as it passes thru each stage of the music play-back chain. While electronics do distort the program material, the worst offender is the loud speaker. Like I wrote, I've been saying this for a while & atleast a couple of well-known Audiogoners have paid attention to this & they have improved their resp. systems several orders of magnitude. They claimed that their systems sounded good but after going time-coherent they are now in a totally different league. You can make your speakers time-coherent in one of 2 ways: buy a time-coherent speaker like Green Mountain Audio, Soundlab, Vandersteen, Eminent Technology, some Quad ESLs, some older Martin Logan ESLs to name a few, or, make use something like DEQX to make your existing system time-coherent. DEQX involves a lot more work as you have to do speaker measurements in free space & then apply the correction curves & there's a steep learning curve but the results are worth it, I'm told by reputable people.
Most speakers in the market are anything but time-coherent & inevitably the listener has no/little emotional connection to the music.
What i've found is that, with a time-coherent speaker, even if the electronics is mediocre the enjoyment of music is much more than if the speaker was non-time-coherent.
Time-coherent speakers have benign phase angles in the 20Hz-20KHz region compared to non-time-coherent speakers that have wild phase angles. It's these phase angles that create huge distortion onto the music signal that totally destroys listening pleasure.
See if you can find a time-coherent speaker in your vicinity - a fellow Audiogoner who would be willing to host you, a dealer, an audio show - and listen for yourself. The music rendered thru a time-coherent speaker is leagues ahead. Once you listen to a time-coherent speaker, you'll never go back again I'm pretty sure. FWIW. YMMV.  

But, my feelings might be a bit different, if it were possible to actually hear some of the speakers that have my attention, such as Harbeth or Devore 0/96.  Being that this is such an expensive hobby/passion, I ain't laying down the money to purchase, and then being 'stuck' with the item.  I have sold, and lost a bunch of money, on used speakers.  It becomes even more of a pain when no one is purchasing audio for realistic prices, or at least what I see as realistic.  

As with all audio 'chat', it may be interesting, but trying to explain your nervous system, and how it 'sums up' to your perceptions, is kind of folly.  But, in the spirit of audio chat, my recent drastic improvement in my system, to the point where I am extremely content, involved replacing the capacitors in the crossover, which were middle of the road, with Jantzen Audio Superior-Z Caps.  It cost me $500, but it was the last chink in what should be an exceptional 'Horn' system, composed of Volti Audio, McIntosh Mc-30s, McIntosh MEN-220, and MCD-500.  I absolutely love my electronics, but without the 'best' Caps prior to the drivers, there simply is not the possibility of getting 'there'.  Of course, I could spend $1500 on the Caps, and purchase the best Mundorf, but for me, I have reached my level of saturated contentment......and the rest, for me, is folly. :)

For sure more color is attention grabbing just like a speaker with boosted bass and treble can seem wonderful in a short audition and particularly with certain tracks like Daft Punk. Over the years though, an accurate response will better portray your entire collection and lead to greater enjoyment. 

Think of of it like a partner - for the long haul, do you choose the sexy crazy insane person that is exciting and full of surprises but proves totally unreliable in many situations or a balanced person who is solid and just right in all the important ways both inside and out. 

Shadorne- Assuming you refer to only excellent recordings, I agree that greater performance overall will come via accurate equipment setup correctly in an adequate room. That's been my experience anyhow, and yet I can't ignore that sometimes a louder and more forward instrument can be quite captivating and therefore more emotionally moving. 

It's possible that one can have extremely broad musical tastes, but still prefer some recordings over others not because of how faithfully they're reproduced but because they want to get that emotionally moving fix over and over again. Hey, I like me a mean sax which can be heard in countless genres of music. If I was a sax addict, I would probably be more likely to go in the direction of what pleases me most: more sax!

Thank god I don't have that problem!

For those of you replacing equipment or spending your $ chasing more "palpable" sounds of particular instruments on particular recordings - you won't ever stand a chance of achieving overall improvement on each and every recording. The only way to achieve greater performance overall  is through equipment that is as accurate and transparent as possible. Equipment that works on each and every track and presents them as faithfully as possible.

For sure a colourful speaker can make some recordings more enjoyable (to your taste) or lend themselves to a particular genre - if your tastes in music are extremely narrow then this approach may work for you.

As for what was "intended" and trying to second guess that - well this just confuses the issue of high fidelity further instead of accepting the recording is what it is (imperfect and all that)!

Sunnyjim

Considering the various aspects of achieving good and accurate sound by component synergy, is there a way to explain this so-called magical element that often eludes so many of us??

The Real World ?

http://cdn.head-fi.org/6/67/6754547a_Rodrigues-anechoicdealer.jpeg

I'll also add that "accurate" is not necessarily conveying the music as intended, but rather the RECORDING as produced.  Not always the same thing, as a number of posters have touched on.  There are a lot of old recordings (in classical, early DG and some Columbias come to mind) with great performances but questionable sonics which can sound very moving on a low-to-mid fi system but will make your ears bleed on a system with flat frequency response.

shadorne wrote:   "Very accurate" is going to convey the music as intended and deliver the full emotional impact.

Please understand your statement is an opinion. Some agree with you and others do not as is evident in this thread. Consider this if you will ....

You've heard the same excellent live recording for years on your extremely accurate system. You've listened to the same recording on other extremely accurate systems and you're moved every time by the realism and that feeling of being there during the recording. You know, with some accuracy, how it was intended to sound when recorded. Then one day you hear that same recording on another system, and on that system you're surprised at how clearly you can hear a cello. That same cello wasn't quite that "palpable" before on the other systems, and you've always relegated it somewhat into the background, but now on this system it's louder and more tonally "rich".

You know it's not accurate, but you love cellos and this one sounds wonderful now that it's front and center. 

Maybe this has never happened to you, and maybe you feel it never could happen to you. It's happened to me often enough that it's the reason I'm responding to the OP's post as well as the comments here.

Oxymoron. "Very accurate" is going to convey the music as intended and deliver the full emotional impact. Anything else is just a goofy coloured lens that makes everything sound similarly sweet or harsh or boomy or whatever colourful and eventually tiresome inaccuracies that the inadequate design brings.

Leading to the problem for many which is the constant switching of gear from one form of coloration to another - instead of remaining focussed on adding to the music library or new recordings of favourite material.

I get plenty of emotion listening to what the artist & producer intended without trying to second guess, correct or filter that. A great speaker will be like a chameleon - it will sound different according to each track played.

Coli wrote:
"it’s more about speaker/room interaction. The more accurate the speaker, the less forgiving, you need to setup the room perfectly. Hence why most audiophile speakers are notoriously inaccurate, it helps to cover up shortcomings.

(If you have a non symmetrical room, you’ll never get what you are looking for) Try take that emotional speaker outdoors, I can guarantee you that the emotions will be all gone."

I agree that speaker/room interaction is a significant factor. The most engaging and emotional experiences I've had were with my own setup and only 2-3 times within the 70 or so audio rooms visited at audio shows. There's no question listening room and setup are crucial. Regarding symmetry - I'm certain there are many of us who have set up our extremely asymmetrical rooms with positive results. Often those asymmetries result in annoying resonances,  but sometimes asymmetry is the best and simplest way to mitigate resonances as well. A couple examples are vaulted ceilings and carpeted stairwells where the extra surface area is muffled/baffled somehow.

Among those engaging and emotional experiences I've had with my own setup, twice was outdoors. A huge porch covering in one case (one example: 18' high &10' extended outward). Vandersteen Quatros placed 6 ft beyond the covering, and dialed in to compensate for unusual bass resonance from the band-shell like covering. It was "engaging" because of how close it sounded to an outdoor acoustic show with some selections. Another time was with Joseph Audio Pulsars outside radiating over a pool and partially walled on one side and behind. I can't explain how full the bass was for the Pulsars. Not deep, but I was expecting a 50% loss of bass with so few walls and no ceiling. Was it because the 6" between the water and deck acted like a waveguide? Not sure. Tonally the Pulsars were as outstandingly balanced as always. There was no less engagement going from inside to outside.

Both speakers were driven with a VAC Ren 70/70.

Good post, Hazyj.  OK if you don't make up your mind.  At this stage in my life, I guess I'm for the emotional connection over the possibly more accurate one.

What a great topic and thread - thank you sunnyjim!

don_c55 writes: How can a speaker be "accurate", but not produce an emotional connection???

And isn't this the topic itself reworded, or rather a good chunk of it? 

It's precisely the topic that is consuming me over the last 3 weeks as I decide what to do with my Wilson Sophia 1s. I was sure I didn't like them until I moved them into a large-ish carpeted room w/ vaulted ceilings up to 21' driven by a VAC Ren 70/70. Not only am I continually engaged, but for the first time I'm actually hearing a decent image. Are they accurate? I suppose it depends on how you define that term, but in my opinion no speaker that "throws" instruments and vocals at you the way Wilsons do can be considered accurate. What I hear seems to be less of an accurate portrayal of instruments and vocals from say, a live recording, and more of an "enhanced" and "larger than life" version of those things. What do I mean by "enhanced" and "larger than life"? Right. Exactly. Without measuring I can't be certain, but seems like there's more energy in the lower midrange than I would hear with other speakers. What else is enhanced? Upper bass? Yes. What else? Not sure.

Yes I hear an image, but where exactly? And does the instrument or vocal location move in or out as its tone shifts? I think so. Can't be accurate then right? Soundstage? Seems pretty good, but how good?

When I've setup Vandersteen Quatros the way I want I hear an outstanding image and an impressive soundstage. Great depth and a sound that, to my ear, much more closely resembles the live & intimately-set jazz concerts I've attended. It can be fun and precise and "realistic" to my ear, but with the Quatros I have never been as emotionally connected to instruments and vocals themselves the way I've been with the Sophias. Same thing with Maggie 1.7s. Just not enough of that something else that I now think I want. Or do I? The performance itself might get me 90% of the enjoyment I'm listening for, but now the Sophias have me wondering "do I want the spicy sauce to go with it?" 

All this has me asking myself "what am I really trying to accomplish?" Do I really want recordings to be as accurately presented to me as possible, whatever that means. Or do I enjoy it all more if there's an unrealistic accent applied to everything?

Is it ok if I never make up my mind about this?

Inna et al.... its not the tools, but the talent.   I just saw Rachel Barton Pine play various levels of instrument....Strads, Guanari's , no names...and wonderful music came from them all.

I'm coming to think that if I listen to a stereo rig and think "great performance" rather than "great gear," that a good indicator of "emotional connection."  :-)

How can a speaker be "accurate", but "not" produce an emotional connection???

Seems like a contradiction IMO!

Truth be told my most memorable experiances are with cheap mobile components and headphones. Don't underestimate environmental factors. Keeping warm under a blanket, candle flickering, stars visable because the whole town is blacked out...

There was also this one time I was falling asleep in my chair and the album playing had sampling of a wolf howling. It sounded like it was in the room, I bolted upright and made for the lights. Fear is an emotion too.

I would wager much of it is purely how you were feeling in the moment. Psychological shifts can have as much to do with perception as can electronics. Also it is subjective. I could find 4 agoners and get 4 diferent reactions if the test was conducted using suggestions and weed. Not to take away anything others have said. as an example do you remember the first time you heard an even marginally good stereo when you were young and it was playing a song you loved? you were moved a lot by that...

Jim-

which speakers are you considering for purchase?
Keep me posted & Happy Listening!

Thank you for the reply. You make many good points.  The quality of the source material is key to good sound.  Derek and the Dominoes, classic . Layla, is maybe the best produced rock album of the 70's, or maybe of all time. However, It is often marred by average sound. and  a few spots of bad tape splicing. It was remastered.as a Mobile Fidelity gold plated  "Master Recording"  produced by Tom Dowd.   This CD sounded somewhat better, with less noise and bit more clarity than the original LP, but not that much better, than either the RED book CD, and the MFSL version  

2015 was a year for major audio system upgrades for me, initiated by my search for a new pair of loudspeakers.

In my search, at one of the audio salons I visited, the salesman asked me if I prefer "analytic" or "musical" speakers.  I'd never heard the choices expressed that way, thought about it for a bit, "musical" was my choice.

In the process I auditioned some of the finest names in loudspeakers, but those which were characterized as "analytic" just didn't seem to float my boat.  I found that most of them cause listener fatigue to set in quite quickly (even when driven by smooth sounding tube equipment).

As a result, I ended up with a new pair of Focal's that offered me exceptional detail, dynamics and sound stage, but didn't tire me out.

"The recordings are the weakest link in the chain" 

Not enough emphasis is placed on this. Horever this is the bottom line.

"In my systems current evolution , the recordings are the weak link in the chain. The gear is capable of being much more accurate and musical than current recordong technology allows". emailist

Well said and the underlying truth in pursuit of audio nirvana. I learn a great deal from this forum, and yet; always remember that no matter how much I spend, equipment rolling, tweaks I make....the most critical factor is in the recording quality of the source material we use. 

When I have the time to hang back and engulf myself in audio pleasure, there are times when I think I hear aspects that move me to make changes. Invariably now I will pull up the trusted recordings that I have come to respect the most. I am reminded that the only things I hear that are lacking is the recording.

There are many wonderful speakers, amps and source gear available today. System synergy remains an important factor as does room acoustics. That said, our recording media seems to me to be what influences a non-emotional connection more than anything.

Just to add some observations.   A friend who used to own sound labs but sold them due to space issues still had his elaborate pass labs gear and elaborate crossovers and tri amp setup but was temporarily using several pairs of fairly old barely mid FI speakers. The sound was amazing and palpable and many others were shocked how good the system sounded.  

regarding TAD, I have the CR1's and have heard them with a number of amps over the years from solid state to tube to hybrid and with various sources.   Any shortcomings I felt they had were in the electronics as they now sound far better with better electronics, although I have now augmented them with a super tweeter and subs.  

I do love the Magico sound and I'm sure they have gotten even better since hearing the q1's at a dealer demo.   I was wowed by them on some unfamiliar audiophile material but after hearing some standard recordings requested and I knew well, they sounded rather flat, and the dealer took them off before the song was done .   Back at my place an hour later the same tracks I asked to hear (bill Evans, rickie lee jones ) now sounded like audiophile recordings!  And my current electronics are a far better match for them now than those years ago.  

I'm not knocking Magico by any stretch, just pointing out that Tad's set up well with the right match gets you somewhat  close to the real thing, which I hear quite often and from up close.   

In my systems current evolution , the recordings are the weak link in the chain.  The gear is capable of being much more accurate and musical than current recordong technology allows.  

In all likelihood I'm the youngest member chiming in here, and in my experience I have noticed the opposite effect. I find on equipment with a more organic or natural tone lost energy in transients and vocals which remove my connection to the artist even if in many cases the music is more listenable.

As I feel the 'nostalgia' answer is a cop-out I'll pose a question instead. Can you consider listening to an album mastered to compensate for a common voicing on components without said voicing an accurate rendition?