Perhaps Peter Moncrief of IAR (Intern'l Audio Review) said it best during his reviewing a fast amp, perhaps the fastest in 1998. To paraphrase Moncrief's description of this fast amp:
"(This fast amp) effortlessly reveals layers of musical nuance, is more extended, with the rise and fall time on music's transient details such that each fast nuance is executed more individually, with better intertransient silence, yet at the same time each fast nuance sounds more delicate because it does not sluggishly linger at the peak or get clogged up there, as most amps do to varying degrees."
Mr. Moncrief goes on to say:
"Some amps try for musicality and delicacy by softening and defocusing the music, smudging and veiling everything. (This fast amp) doesn't need any such trickery as it can go for full articulation and sharp focus, yet still sound accurately musical and delicate, because it is so capably fast and transparent... and is so capable that it handles the entire spectrum, and all of music's demanding complexities, with the remarkable sense of relaxed ease that is the hallmark of a truly great audio component."
Moncrief then relates this sense of relaxed ease to Fred Astaire's dancing abilities which Fred seemed to do so effortlessly. Other dancers might come close to Fred but they sweated like pigs trying to do so. Thus the other dancer's straining and sweating were a distraction for the audience toward their performance. Where as, with Fred, the audience saw only the performance. Not the performer.
I think Michelle Kwan has much the same abilities in figure skating as Fred Astaire had with dancing.
-IMO
