Tell me if i got it wrong..

Accuracy and musicality are not mutually exclusive experiences, but over-accuracy - assuming we define it as added detail to the source sound projection - can diminish "musicality".

This happens because the objective mind, the listening mind, has an evolutionary predisposition to "look" towards objects by defining them against a background (hence, our objective audio language using visual terms). You see (forgive the pun), "musicality" is not something that happens "out there" but is an event between your mind and the musical wave that carries musical information, or message (musicality describes a dynamic of listening consciousness). The deeper you go in listening, the more you transcend your predisposition to objectify the sound wave. If you are a person who is highly attached to his/her objectifying cognitive faculties, then you do not fall deeper into the music because you stay at the the more superficial levels of listening. At those levels, where you focus on the sound as an object, you then, by operation, discount those experiences of music that do not predomonantly deal with your accurate sound-object; you reduce the importance of space, which you will note is not objectifiable. It is no coincidence that those minds who favor accuracy and detail of the singer are the same minds that gravitate towards SS and decry tubes.

Why? Because SS designs relegate the importance of space in favor of greater defining detail in the sound-object. Importantly, as you seep deeper into the music, your intuitive abilties to discern spatial incongruencies increases and tubes excel at spatial rendition at deeper listening levels (also, in deepening levels, sensitivity to detail insufficiencies become less important, which is nwhy tubes guys can sit down to listen to their stereos and objectively note detail "insufficiencies relative to SS gear, but, for some reason, once they are deep into the music, it doesn't seem to matter).

I hope we eventually find mechanical, design-based explanations to definitively desribe these differences in perception as they relate to the gear, but it really doesn't matter. They -tubes and SS- are, as all technological devices, are simply different rearrangements of matter, so it is itself irrational to favor one arrangement over another in a vacuum from the results that they produce. It doesn't matter what given rearrangement produces what result if the results are different; taste is in the tasting.

Last, we will never end this argument of tube vs. SS because we have two minds that are speaking from two different levels of musical perceptibility. Knowledge of deeper levels is state-specific, meaning that its experience can not be described to those attached to shallower levels because those attached minds literally believe that their detailed level is the only one existant and they are unable to conduct the experiment in their own minds because this would mean letting go of their attachment to objectifying cognition. (Which is also why "smart" people who are real good at accumulating objects in our culture many times have musically sterile systems, predominantly SS-based).

Put that in your empiric pipe and smoke it.

Subaruguru, thank you for your response. Yes, you are wrong: my position on a cognitive attachment to accuracy did not imply, per se, or any other way, an acceptance of "overly-rolled" components. Most people who are attached to accuracy respond to a disclosure of its limitations by attacking what they perceive as its opposite argument, ie its either rolled or accurate, a limited departure for dialogue that the magazines have taught you.

On a content level, I'm confused because you attack content but offer no counter arguments. To wit: you say that my position is "patently absurd", assumably meaning that it is easily deconstructed, but you provide no contra-arguments, not even once saying why such a theory is flawed. Similarly, you histrionically say that my argument is "exagerated" and based on "shaky factiods", but you never say WHY that is the case nor cite which "factiods" you are taking about. In other words, dialogue is considered authentic when a person responds in an authentic way - with reference and argument.

Its not just about distortion - thats what accuracy attached people think and their quest for lesser distortion (read: mechanical artifacts in the sound-object) is symptomatic of that same attachment. Distortive images and non-distortive images can both attract the visualizing mind; it is the relationship between the object and space which was my argument, and which again you failed to address (other than some vague references to aesthetic theory [far beyond "colorists in art studio", whoever they are...] or supercial psych theory, which you again don't specify. What theories are you talking about and how do they elucidate your arguments - such as they are - and how do they relate to mine?

Which brings me to the words. Yea, I like "Big Cahuna", and yes, bigger words are an easy target in a venue where many people come only for entertainment, but here's my question: How can you patronize what I've said with off-handed remarks about entry-level psych, as if I should know and you do (and, therefore, you are sophisticated enough to understand them, assumably), and then complain about my use of those terms. In other words, if you are so erudite in their use and application, then why are you troubled by my use of them? Like your emotionally-pointed arguments that are not arguments, this seems disingenuous.

If you want to step up to the plate, then please, don't look to the grandstands for support while you evade an argument. Everyone wants to be a rock star...

Oh, you're no limo-waiter, Onhwy61. Thank you for you questions; they raise some very important issues. Admittedly, this is a very difficult area with a learning curve of trying to understand what each other is saying. I will try to do my best to answer your questions, in order:

1, 2 and part of 3:. The problem we first must clear up is that "musicality" is not some-thing out there. Language is prone towards abraction and sometimes we make these absractions into a thing (symptomatic of our objective cognitive faculties). For instance, I can not look out my front door and point to "democracy" because it not a thing, but a desription of an agreed upon thought between minds. Similarly, when discussing "musicality" we must be on guard to always remember that we are discribing a state of consciousness. Moreover, it describes a dynamic of movement of the mind, the listening mind, as it seeps deeper into the experience. In other words, my position is that "musicality" is characterized by such movement and that the nature of this dynamic is one that moves, upon first sitting down, from a cognitive identification to trans-cognitve receptibility; meaning that your mind's orientation to music changes as you listen from active identification using your thinking mind to a receptive space-of-mind that experiences the musical message, but which does so in a state absent cognition; when you look at Van Gogh's "Night Sky" you approach it searching with an active comparing mind - scanning brushstroke technique, composition, or perhaps, comparing to other abstract expressionist works, or other Van Gogh periods - then you slowly "take in" the work. This "taking in" is characterized by an opening which can be described by the dynamic of releasing the desire to cognicize perception. Each level, both cognitive and trans-cognitive, disclose symmetries of perception, and hence, knowledge, of the music. However, as the experience deepens, and becomes less cognitive-based in the mind, the perception of defining the experience as a thing out there decreases until the mind's propensity to objectify evaporates into an "event" of experience, ie subject/object dichotomies dissolve.

"Musical" components are ones that disclose truths of each level on the continuum moving from cognitive to trans-cognitive, and, importantly, catalyze that movement (the component does not cause the movement, but can facillitate it for the mind that can release an attachment to the power of objectified thinking). The important issue is that all levels disclose a truth indicative of their level (and, not incidentally, produce their own language terms, usually moving from analytic, object-focused visual based language, to emotive based, to, well, beyond language). In this sense, the levels are not exclusive, but inclusive (this is an integrative theory of aesthetics). What is objectified when first listening is valid, just as the experiential info disclosed at deeper levels is valid. The problem arises when those attached to cognitive processing (carrying that attachment into listening) say that theirs'is the only level, or that seeing a perception beyond their mode of perception is non-existent (and then they start with the accusations of irrationality, like scientists do when dealing with trtans-cognitive perception. See Desartes below). Components can be accurately musical ("accurate" an abstraction to describe desires towards greater detail, etc.) as the mind seeks for objective info to bound its experience, but also musical at deeper levels (and, which, we presently lack a language for because the gurus at the hi-Fi "journals" are attached to objectifying levels). People who see the mind as only having one mode of perception (active, cognitve)inherently relegate other experiences (tran-cognitive)(reason for this below).

First part of 3, 4: "Objective mind" is a simplified descriptive use for a a part of the functioning of thinking consciousness; the whole of thinking consciousness psychologists describe as "formal operational, hypo-deductive cognition" (using Piaget terms). I have not gotten into the temporal aspect because this is a big enough subject already (and, temporal comparison is also dualistically objectifying).

So, what is the objective mind, or what is the nature of its objectifying? We have evolved to see prey; look at a green tree and you can't see a green bird until it moves (it becomes an identified object as it moves in time). We look out at reality objectively based on evolutionarily-based structures in our collective minds. Our culture of predation of mind-against-mind in search of the accumulation of objects ("Capitalism", or Lockean mutually-reinforced rules of self interest)is both a symptom of this "genetic" and a reiforcement of it through the individual's minds acceptance of its assumptions that it learns from other minds. The objective mind, as we practice it, is highly reductionist and seeks to divide into either this or that, but genetics is not exclusionary of socialization, just as shallow active listening is not exclusionary of deep receptive listening.

Importantly, we possess this objective bias because we define our thinking mind as our only perception (Descartes' I think, therefore, I am). But this is false. Admittedly, it is a faculty that can bring many objects and increase your assumed viability, or allow you to objectify sound as you listen into a "statue garden" (as Valin is, symptomatically, apt to say), but it is not the only way to perceive reality. It is: I am, therefore, I think, sometimes. Think about it: when you looked at the sunset without thought, did you become non-existent? When you sank into the music and thought ceased, did you fail to exist? The silent receptive mind is the ground of cognition; it precedes it casually. The space around sound-objects is their ground of arisement; it precedes them. To deny the silent space of your mind or the space beneath sound is to deny your true deep nature, and also the deeper experience of music. Those deny deeper spaces of listening perception, or their value, deny a potential in themselves (accounting for their recoil).

Enough. Thank you for your patience.

Forget it, gentlemen, I'm out. Every so often I become overly optimistic and put my finger in the water to see if anything meaningful will come up and bite. If you want to understand what I'm saying, then order the articles I wrote for Ultimate Audio magazine under the name Mark Bucksath on Musicality. For those of you not threatened by different ways of speaking, ideas, etc, thank you. For those of you who revel in anonymity in a microcosm to vent your neurosis, congratulations, you're a dime a dozen.

Muralman, I found you!!

Really though. I just read my last post here, about a year ago now (re-read nothing before it; head hurts to much today). Admittedly, 6ch, I went off the deep end there, regardless. Hmmm. That must have been one pissy bad day. Overdue apologies. Frustrated "Me". Well, makes me feel good actually because barely recognize him, but also gives me some insight into why some of you would approach me now somewhat with headgear on. Hmmm, again. I will keep that in mind in the future and practice some delicacy (although I think you all can take it...)

Hey Muralman, you didn't find this thread looking around to see if I was a drunk did you? tisk, tisk...

Will, if you want to say something, please just say it.

What do you mean?

What in these ideas is out of date? What do you disagree with? Please be specific, make cogent replies and offer REASONS. That is what dialogue is.

It is very easy to swoop in with some conclusory statement without providing support. That is psuedo-intellectualism.

The comments I made above were nearly a year ago. Why do you feel the need to come in now - with conclusory, unsupported statements - when this has been dead since then? In that context, I don't understand your motive. There are other threads where I've talked about many of these same ideas since last year and you have chosen, assumably, to never respond to those. So why now, and why here? This seems incongruent to me.

If you are going to insinuate that someone's ideas are irrelevant and they are a posturing intellectual, then please, have the courage to make an argument, rather than jumping out of the bushes a year later.

will, if you want to post those websites you told me about here, that would be ok too.