Two Type of sound and listener preference are there more?


In our thirty years of professional audio system design and setup, we keep on running into two distinctly different types of sound and listeners.

Type One: Detail, clarity, soundstage, the high resolution/accuracy camp. People who fall into this camp are trying to reproduce the absolute sound and use live music as their guide.

Type Two: Musicality camp, who favors tone and listenability over the high resolution camp. Dynamics, spl capabilty, soundstaging are less important. The ability for a system to sound real is less important than the overall sound reproduced "sounds good."

Are there more then this as two distincly different camps?

We favor the real is good and not real is not good philosophy.

Some people who talk about Musicaility complain when a sytem sounds bright with bright music.

In our viewpoint if for example you go to a Wedding with a Live band full of brass instruments like horns, trumpts etc it hurts your ears, shouldn’t you want your system to sound like a mirror of what is really there? Isn’t the idea to bring you back to the recording itself?

Please discuss, you can cite examples of products or systems but keep to the topic of sound and nothing else.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
128x128audiotroy

Showing 1 response by lwal22

I’m most definitely in the second category.  And more so with the changes I’ve made to my system. 
As a long time professional fine art photographer, I’ve often wrestled with the issue of ‘accurate reproduction’ of reality. Finally understanding that, for me, it is a photograph I’m creating, not a record of what was in front of me at the the time. but rather an expression of my perception of that reality.  And a communication of that perception. 
i find the reproduction of music very similar. In the end it is an interpretation of the performance we hear, no matter how close to parity with a live performance we come. So why not make that interpretation as satisfying as possible, by whatever means?   Maximizing the pleasure of the listening experience is subjective, by definition.  Accuracy in some objective measure is irrelevant to me.