Top two most important sound qualities

True. And not to criticize or disagree, but to me, choosing "realism" is almost like cheating lol. Isn't it almost like choosing "perfection" or "the ideal sound" as a single sound quality? Maybe not. I've always been aiming for realism for my sound because it is necessarily a composite of getting so many essential sound qualities to a very refined state.

You need only one: a sense of realism. As in 'suspension of disbelief'.

For this to happen everything else needs to fall into place. Without correct tonality no realism. No clarity, no realism. Limited dynamics, no realism. Etcetera. To get there you will need electronics that are completely neutral and speakers that are 'hand in glove' with the listening space. And of course you will also need a recording that already captured this realism at the recording event. Good luck!

Something magical happens when tonality is just right, from top to bottom. Not easily achieved. Not easy at all, especially when trying to improve on multiple other qualities at the same time.

In a related point, I got tone wrong in the first sentence of the original post, but I can’t edit it out now. It was meant lightheartedly, but it sounds whiney. Sorry about that guys. I’ll be adjusting my own tone. 🙂

Clarity

Tone

Realism and Imaging

Hahahaha 🤣 Love that cdc

1) No ouchie

2) Bring it!

1) Don't hurt my ears.

2) Fill the room with sound.

@viridian I am so sorry that I didn't meet your standards. I will try harder to please you. My next sentence will be full of substance and punctuation.

You.Need.Help

Clarity and tonality

Okay. Keyboard warrior time is over, sir

gris, you aren't invited to the geniuses only pool party either

it's so cool you know who belongs where 

You're right. Poll taking is for morons and all those people that would click on a poll should be expelled permanently.

Auto-correct changed wine to women, obviously

@gladmo don't!  :)

@grislybutter Just how I like my women

full bodied, earthy, fruity, bright, crisp sound.... I mean.... 

@ghdprentice Two selections being limited is the whole point here. 🙂I know you see that, given your whole response and the experiential learning involved. Listing a third or fourth quality without indicating priority is fine, but it's dilutive because it's that much closer to listing all the attractive qualities one can think of.

pretty much every post is a poll :)

My first draft --

Fidelity to actual timbres.

Spacial accuracy.

Unimpeded dynamics.

Rhythm & Pace, and tonal balance.

Good question… but two is pretty limited. But I understand what you are trying to get at. If you had asked me over the years starting in the 1970’s to now I think each decade would be different. Probably starting with details and slam… then my focus changed to micro details (as my equipment got better) and imaging, then, then… then… most recently midrange bloom and musicality as I was finally able to really grasp the entire range and put them all together. 
 

It would not surprise me if you couldn’t correlate the time pursuing the high end and the answer to your question. It took me decades to “get” rhythm and pace.

Clarity and dynamics.  

Part of my intent here was to see how many choose tonality over all the other options they can think of...

@gladmo I'm not a big fan of polls because I have no faith in the opinion of the majority but I was just joking.

Tonality and ability to produce individual rhythm pattern of each instrument. 

Lack of grain, tonality, soundstage depth.

I used to be big on soundstage width, pinpoint accuracy, and hard hitting bass. For some reason these have become less important over the years. Not sure why.

@carlsbad2 Wait, are you serious? Hahaha I think they would be so useful and easy. You just click a button and get views. Rapid engagement with easily delineated subject matter and instantaneous statistics. Why vote against that?

They took a poll on whether we were infavor of polls and we weren't so polls were discontinued.

Clarity is number one for me. When that is achieved, everything else falls into place providing you have number two: a somewhat full range speaker that can handily reproduce that clarity. It's real magic when it happens.

All the best,
Nonoise

Clarity and depth..