What is meant exactly by the description 'more musical'?

Electrical and mechanical matching of gear need the ears (acoustics) ...

And it is less about our taste than about the parameters of our ears coupled to the parameters of the system/room ...

If i want to tune my speakers with vibrations control with a damping load which must be fine tuned under 100 gram of precision for an optimal result , be it with springs or with a sandwich of various materials we must use our ears to fine tune it ..

if we want to pick an amplifier over another amplifier  choice we must put them in a specfic room and couple them with specific speakers for our ears to judge ...Electricals specs matching are not enough and will not tell all the story to be told  ... And it is less about taste than about our ears catching in an optimal way the   acoustic factors at play with this speakers room or this other one ... Taste there is, but taste it is not ....

Taste in audio, contrary to all the marketing aiming at the consumers ignorance, is secondary ; acoustics and psycho-acoustics knowledge primary ...

All that i described is basic...I dont know way much than you for sure and perhaps less on many others aspects but at least i know that ...

First step must be electrical/mechanical matching. Acoustical matchimg is another and different issue that mainly depends ( everything the same ) of what we like it/taste..

How do you match a speakers and a desk when putting a tuned load on them for example without acoustic response by the room, you need the room response  perceived by the ears/brain which will add or substract 100 gram from the damping load to reach more "musical" timbre experience result and so  optimising  the damping tuning process  ?

How do we know that an electrical match exist as optimal at the end between two components ? if not by acoustic interpretation in some room and not in another and for some location ?

Electrical specs compatibility does not tell all the story, neither mechanical matching ... We need the three working dimensions , and the more important one is acoustics ( not mere room acoustic but also psycho-acoustics concepts)

"component matching" are always electrical,mechanical and acoustical matching ... They go together ...

Because musicality experience is not a taste after electrical specs matching, it is the convergence of three type of working dimensions controls... Acoustics being the more fundamental ...

Btw, @mulveling when I talk of " component matching " I refer to elictrical/mechanical matched.

 

R.

😊😊

you are opinionated it seems ... I am also opinionated ... 😉

By the way the fact that there is many roads to reach musical experience does not means that there is no acoustics concepts behind all these different choices nor does it means that these roads if successful will be so only because some has more "taste" than others ...

Musicality is explained as a set of psycho-acoustices necessary conditions and as a set of acoustics factors that are the same for everyone... If it was not the case , no acoustician, no musician, no maestro , no informed audiophiles, no gear designers , could be relatively in accord about "musicality" when they encounter it in gear design , in a system/ room playback experience , or in a living event acoustic rendition ...

There is more or so universal consensus about what is a good recording event , and there is rules for it as there is universal consensus among musicians about what is a good great Hall or what are the worst one where to put a playing orchestra ... Even in ancient architecture master taught how to design a theater and a church for acoustical musical experience ...

«Musicality is like wine, tasting is not understanding wineries »Anonymus drunk maestro🧐

sorry but my finger error.   @mahgister : " I dont doubt that most audiophiles plays with room acoustic in a way or in another ... I am not alone ... But there is difference of level and control between putting panels on a wall and designing and distributing resonators in a room...."   Yes there are differences as how each one of us and at what level are " there " : so what?. I’m satisfied with my room/system quality MUSIC reproduction and you are satisfied with yours as several other room/system owners Exist diffeent paths/roads to arrive Rome, that choosed " road " is each one privilege and you and any one else CAN’T questioning it as we can’t questioning what any one else " likes ". I respect you but you are not the Bible in that regards or in any other about.   " Musicality which you claimed is only a subjective arbitrary taste..." first I never mentioned " musicality " but " musical ", so please don’t put words in my mouth.   Here Cambridge Dictionary on the subject examples:   "In his view, musical talent refers to the capacity for musical performance, whereas musicality is the capacity for musical reception. "   in the other side:   " Even with a load of electronic gadgetry, you still need some musical ability to write a successful song. It’s being hyped as the musical event of the year. Some of the younger pop bands try to imitate their musical heroes from the past. The musical interludes don’t really fit in with the rest of the play   No pun intented and remember that you as all of us are only a human being with different characteristics and different knowledge and ignorance levels and as any other of us you are not the Bible in any audio subjects. R.

My only point , once is said that the common place fact which related musicality to a subjective experience for sure, my only point is that it is not just a "taste" ; my only point was that for understanding musicality we must investigate the acoustic multiple factors which are behind this way less variable and arbitrary perception than the word "taste" suggest ...

A so simple observation cannot be contradict by those who claim that musicality is at the end only a purely relative taste with no deep meaning behind ... This deep meaning and factors are in acoustics science ...No one can dismiss acoustic science for the benefit of a tautology presented as a fact ...Musicality is an acoustic phenomenon investigated by acoustics not a mere relative idyosincrasic taste ...

It is incredible that many people  are in the obligation to repeat that ...

Psycho-acoustics rule and explain  musicality experience which is more than just an individual taste ...

«Taste there is, but taste it is not »-- Groucho Marx 🤓

Maybe in the purest sense, the definition of musicality can’t be "owned" by one individual. Nevertheless, I believe that there are aspects of describing how music sounds when played back that need to be present for many people to say that the sound is musical (for them)...examples might be the tone, the dynamics, the flow, the lack of harshness...but for any individual, that combination of characteristics that makes something musical is personal (to them).

The adjective or noun musical and musicality can be a taste question...But saying this as main argument , is so trivial it is like saying nothing ...😊

Correcting me about the noun or the adjective use is pedantry which will not change your claim that musical or musicality is an attribute only subjective and purely relative ... This claim as i said above is not even wrong ...

musical or musicality for sure need a perceiving subject who , and it is my point , can be educated and trained by acoustics concepts and acoustic experiments ( not by some mere simple room acoustic ) Musicality or musical is an attribute that does not result  so much from merely upgrading  purchase but by electrical,mechanical and acoustical working dimensions controls devices and method unvaluable for any gear at any price ..

Then accusing me who contradict your claim about musical as being a mere taste , with my arguments to be a pretentious dude who think he is the Bible is simply an ad hominem argument because you had no other argument ..😁

I never attack people ... I attack argument with counter argument ... imitate me on this ...😊

When i am wrong i admit it ...

musical is not a pure taste relative attribute, save in marketing discourse ,  but an attribute audio knowledge  related to the psycho-acoustic and acoustics knowledge behind any gear design and any room design , from knowledge  more than from luck ...

Dont try to contradict this you will loose the argument ... Someone must learn when to stay silent if he had no argument ...

And i dont say this because i think i am the audio Bible as you falsely accuse me to think i am ... 😉

it is a basic audio fact ...

@mahgister : "

I dont doubt that most audiophiles plays with room acoustic in a way or in another ... I am not alone ...

But there is difference of level and control between putting panels on a wall and designing and distributing resonators in a room...."

 

Yes there are differences as how each one of us and at what level are " there " : so what?. I’m satisfied with my room/system quality MUSIC reproduction and you are satisfied with yours as several other room/system owners Exist diffeent paths/roads to arrive Rome, that choosed " road " is each one privilege and you and any one else can questioning it. I respect you but you are not the Bible in that regards or in any other about.

 

" Musicality which you claimed is only a subjective arbitrary taste..."

first I never mentioned " musicality " but " musical ", so please don’t put words in my mouth.

 

Here Cambridge Dictionary on the subject examples:

 

"In his view, musical talent refers to the capacity for musical performance, whereas musicality is the capacity for musical reception. "

 

in the other side:

 

"

• Even with a load of electronic gadgetry, you still need some musical ability to write a successful song.
• It’s being hyped as the musical event of the year.
• Some of the younger pop bands try to imitate their musical heroes from the past.
• The musical interludes don’t really fit in with the rest of the play

 

No pun intented and remember that you as all of us are only a human being with different characteristics and different knowledge and ignorance levels and as any other of us you are not the Bible in any audio subjects.

R.

A part of acoustics is about what are the factors of "musicality", then not as a mere taste without content or meaning, but as a  precise set of  controlled  factors contributing  to subjective perception experiments ... Musicality is objectively desc- ribed by acoustics and psycho-acoustics ...

Read about it ...

Kind of an overused term that doesn’t mean much IMO.

that statement seems to me as if you are the only audiophile that do that.

I dont doubt that most audiophiles plays with room acoustic in a way or in another ... I am not alone ...

But there is difference of level and control between putting panels on a wall and designing and distributing resonators in a room and all other mechanical possibilities without forgetting the electronical one as EQ and DSP as tools ......

And reading threads i know for sure that many audiophile confuse acoustics with room acoustic , and not only that but reduce room acoustic to a few panels installation ...

One thing is sure : "musicality" is determined by the relation between the system/ room way more than by a gear upgrade in most case save if a piece of gear is way worst than the other pieces ...

Musicality which you claimed is only a subjective arbitrary taste is precisely determined by the control of all acoustic factors ...Not only by the amplifier design etc ...

I deduce from my experiments and reading threads that more than half of audiophiles at least ignore the huge impact of acoustics conditions and controls over their gear fetichism ... And they call their gear fetichism their taste and they claim that it is the main source of musicality , their gear choice branded name favorite win as being the most important factor of S.Q. not acoustics ...

musicality is not only a subjective perception it is an objective set of correlated conditions and controls parameters in the system/room ...

As for acoustics basics , electrical noise floor control and mechanical vibrations controlos together are on par in importance with gear choice at any price ...I spoke about perceptual impact ...

The reason for that is simple : most people dont have the dedicated room to play and learn with and the gear user manual is simplest to peak into and understand that the very complex concepts of acoustics ... 😊

Musicality is characterized as a mere subjective taste only in this case of acoustics ignorance ...

Musicality levels are acoustical states of a system/room under controls at any price....These controls depend on parameters not on taste only and essentially ...

It takes an acoustician to observe the level of acoustic information degradation caused by crosstalk between all stereo speakers nevermind their price , gear designers when they observed it, proposed only very partial solutions ... Dr. Choueiri solved it ...

This has noting to do with taste and is at the core experience of what musicality is about : timbre experience, immersiveness and spatial dimensions of acoustic information ...Nothing here is about taste ...

Acoustics as medecine is grounded in  science but own  a heart : an artform and practice ...

Musical as in personal taste choice means nothing as a sentence ... It is a tautology ....

Then i could not even oppose to this meaningless common place..

😁

Why not investigate acoustics science about musicality perception, experience, conditions and meaning ?

If not, repeat this useless mantra : musical is personal taste ...🤣

Dont forget to add that this piece of gear , which branded name is .... is your musical taste ...

Wow! now we learn something about musicality ... We must buy the same piece of gear because it is "musical" for your meaningless taste ...

Incredible!

I prefer acoustics investigation and experiments ...

Guess why ?

Because they apply to IMPROVE any piece of gear at any price for a BETTER MUSICALITY defined here by specific conditions and controls with your own ears piloting in your own room the reverberation ratio or the absorbing /reflective ratio the level of reflection and their location , the location of the listener and the way we will use crosstalk to our advantage in a better way when we understand what it is ... etc ... ...

agree… that is why sounding musical can be simplified to a statement something like… sounds enjoyable to me…which also means it’s a personal experience.

We cannot disagree because you do not understand what i spoke about when i spoke about acoustics...

All your post is about the gear pieces measured specs and perception ...And golden ears ...

I spoke about acoustics concepts and the way to understand and control them in a room /system NEVERMIND THE GEAR CHOICES ...

Your are not even wrong ...you missed the point ...

You spoke of "golden ears"; this is an insult used in the objectivist crowd to mock the marketing consumers credulous audiophiles ... I am neither an objectivist nor a subjectivist ...Two wrong perspectives ...

I spoke about ACOUSTICS science ... trained ears in some room because they learned how to control it for a RELATIVE experience in musicality which will not be dependant on marketing conditioning "upgrades" ...

I am not a gear fetichist , even it for sure all gear are not equal... I try to do the best with the only tools we have : embeddings mechanical and electrical controls and especially acoustic science and controls ... The gear choice dont matter because it is relative to your wallet ...But acoustic dont change his laws with the price tags variation and the design qualities , nor electrical and mechanical controls change their laws with the price tag of the gear or when change their measured specs and design qualities ... Acoustics science dont change ...

Most audiophile consumers had never read an acoustic science article and think that acoustics is about panels on a wall ...😁

Dear @mahgister : I agree to disagree with you and I have to tell you that I have first hand experiences witrh the SS electronic design and when José and I was in the live design and choosing active/passive parts first step was reading the part manufacturers whole sheet and under which electrical conditions comes those part specs, second step was to make a measures by our self to mate those specs looking for " zero " tolerance/accurated ( MUSIC is accurate. ) and third step was listen it inside the board and " see " its good or bad relationship through the overall design voicing.

Other that all measurements on the audio item we made " hundreds " of voicing tests in our room/systems and in several other room/systems and the audio item was listened by many other audio/MUSIC friends.

José and I never said: " hey sounds " musical " don’t you think? " but we ask by our self first what we ( each one ) don’t like and why and after that what we like and from here think if we could find out how to improve that " don’t like ".

 

But what are behind that " voicing "? well it’s a mix of true objectivity along subjectivity where science is behind the objectivity and behind subjectivity full of first hand experiences achieved over our audio life listening to home reproduced MUSIC and live attended to listen MUSIC at near field and at normal position and even in " odd " positions.

Never our target , not even in the paper, was that our unit be " musical " but only that performed with top top quality level in any audio system and bullet proof against " deaf " gentlemans. At the end the target our target is to stay truer to the recording adding and losting almost " nothing " to the audio signal.

I think that from some years now that kind of target is the one in any audio item design and by any designer inside a market price point.

It’s not that if it’s " musical " but if it’s right. I have to say that overall my levels of tolerance at both frequency extremes is really low and no I have not golden ears and I know that as any one else I tolerate THD/IMD at higher levels that what I or we can imagine. Those 2 threads I mentioned confirm this.

Speaking of " golden ears " and several years ago Ortofon decided on porpose to tilt around + 1db-2db the high frequency, so it’s not that Ortofon can’t build a flat frequency cartridge no exist reasons to that tilt:

they made it several tests with its Golden Ear listeners panel with gentlemans that were instrument players, composers, audiophiles, MUSIC lovers, woman/man, etc. The test was to listen ( with different cartridge models ) the same cartridge model that comes with flat frequency and the same model with tilted HF and over the testing time the conclusion was that that Golden Ear ( as a fact 2 panels with different people. ) panel always prefered the cartridge with tilted HF. No one there ( Ortofon ). said nothing of more " musical " / less " musical ".

 

What you listen at your place it’s musical ? I can say no it’s not, over the years all modifications you did it in your room/system put you here because it’s what you like what it sounds right to you. In may case is exactly like that.

Can I be wrong? yes I can but this is what I learned through my audioMUSIC life.

 

R.

 

I think that we have to start " understanding " live MUSIC at near field listening and after that return home and try to " mimic " in our system what we listened then we will really know.

 

Trying to " mimic" live events will not do anything and means what ? If we try to understand the verb "mimic" in an audio context ?

It means almost nothing if we speak about a method of doing it ...

The only way to doing it , is not going to one hundred live events , so useful it can be to know how sound a piano timbre in near listening  ; it is learning to control all acoustic concepts in our room/system for doing it right  ...

Nothing else will do ...

Recognizing that a system in some room is better for reproducing a live event playback than another system in another room will not taught you how to do it ...

Learning basic acoustics concepts and experimenting will do ...Nothing else especially not upgrading the gear without knowing basic acoustics BEFORE ...

By the way basic acoustics concepts are not only about room acoustics ...

I am not sure to understand your critics...😁

First i am totally with you about this sentence and you are totally right here :

We audiophiles " invented " several words that are non adequated and were invented due to each one of us ignorance levels.

But I can understand this second sentence in only one way :

I never in my audio life or MUSIC life talk of " musical ".

Any acoustician will evaluate the acoustical working parameters of a room as worst or optimal for musicality perception ...

In the same way architect acousticians will be able to design great Hall acoustic , which is an art based on science in a way more or less musical , and any acoustician can evaluate why some great Hall seems to be better than other because of the different parameter choices and informed  trade-off choices ...

Any musician or maestro will be able to qualify "musical" or non musical any room or Hall ... It is not mainly and merely taste , no, it is way more the results of their ears training ...

Any designer who know what is doing will use objective derived psycho-acoustiocs facts about "musicality " in his own design for it to be minimally musical as atmasphere explained it ...

Musicality has a meaningfull definition ONLY in acoustics and psycho-acoustics not in audio consumers market for sure ... Save if we use scientific consumers evaluation tools but this is no more "taste" as relative then but psycho-acoustics objective desc ription of "musicality" perception statistically revealed ...

Psycho-acoustics rule the gear and the room ... It is musical or not ... My system well embedded is way nore musical now after what i did right than before what i did right out of their box ; and this will be perceived as such by anyone so huge difference it is , because of some synergy between components but mostly because of a good choices of the mechanical, electrical and acoustical working dimensions device controls i implemented ...

Then claiming that the word musical is merely subjective and only a relative question of taste is not even wrong , it is beside any definition of the musicality concept in acoustic which for sure is a complex set of factors but these parameters , as the time domain , the harmonics etc exist objectively and we can learn to control them ...

As atmasphere try with his own design , we can select some acoustic factors on which we can act in our own room and at the end calling that "musical" not by arbitrary taste but as the result of our conscious room design controls ...

it is why i side here with atmasphere because amplifier musical quality design is no more the result of randomness than my room acoustic design ...

Musicality vary, can be in a secondary way a taste question ; but it is not primarily a taste question but a knowledge acoustic question objectively testable ..

"musicality" is a term not only in the audiophile lingua...

It is a term for maestro, musician teachings and acousticians ...

It is a subjective quality which react to objective parameters change , be it the hands and fingers  of a violonist or the tuning of a Helmholtz resonators or an EQ digital or analog  or a  specific way to spoke a language ...

Then calling "musicality" an arbitrary meaningless word derived from marketing is not false but it is not true either, it is confusing the informed meaning of the words with the uninformed use ...

Your description refer to the gear consumers reviewers not to his more constrainted use in music and small room acoustics courses or in achitecture of great Hall were musicality had a different more precise meaning ......

It is not because we cannot correlate a word to his objective complex set of parameters that the word means almost nothing save an opinion ... There exist informed opinions ...

"musicality" has nothing to do with the branded names behind gear choices, here the word reflect a mere buyers opinion... Like all the cliches about tubes and S.S. or analog versus digital etc ...

"Musicality" is clearly not a technical term - how could it be? Of course that applies to a lot of audiophile jargon, to varying degrees.

Best to keep it simple. I think it usually means "I really like this", or in the context of direct comparisons, it can be applied to one component to put the other component down "softly" - rather than a flat out "I think that one sounds bad". Unfortunately most of us spend too many words skirting around what we REALLY think of something.

For those who want to dig into more details about this feed back problem which atmasphere explain just above :

Read the first 24 pages article titled

The sneaky pitfalls of feedback and feedback theory

https://www.temporalcoherence.nl/cms/en/pyra

It will give you a gist about the complexities of the problem...

I myself cannot make any wise observation about amplifier design at all ..

We are lucky to have atmasphere here regularly for answering questions ...

In a nutshell, if i read atmasphere right , psycho-acoustics rule even gear design ...

Not mere taste ....

Van Maanen himself said the same thing as atmasphere ...

https://www.temporalcoherence.nl/cms/en/

For sure different road can be chosen by each amplifier designer, but the road is chosen around the same center : human hearing characteristics ; then putting the emphasis on the way the ears/brain perceive harmonics or the way the ears/brain inhabit his own non-linear time domain; but these differences in design approach will never obey the mere taste of the designer so much as they will obey the specific psycho-acoustic facts and principles by which he will attack the designed "musicality" problem ...

No taste relativity then to begin with and at the end of the design process .., But for marketing taste is first and last , because no design is perfect, marketers will call the customers and spoke to him about his tastes for "musicality" ...But there is not so much taste in the way we evaluate "musicality" as much as different levels and different acoustic aspects of this  complex phenomena ,"musicality", where subjective evaluation is  always conditioned by objective factors ......As musicians and acousticians and trained specialist and maestros or most  designers knows already ...

Atmasphere must correct me here if i am wrong ...

Interesting debate for sure ...

In a word the fact that musical taste vary as much as the gear choices does not means that the concept of "musicality" is meaningless or purely subjective nor that the experience of "musicality" lack any objective ground ...

Most consumers are ignorant and interpret their blissful ignorance as a freedom of choice according to their fancy , but informed audiophiles, studies acoustics to know what is a "musicality" experience conditions and factors with any piece of gear and in any room at any price ... We go with our brain but also with our wallet ...

Ok i stop and apologize because my "word" is already two paragraphs ... 😁

There is no physical or psychological law which can determine the outcome, because the outcome emerges at a stage of experience where causes (physical, physiological) become reasons (logical, semantic). That is where the "spade turns" and one can dig no further.

Thanks for your kind interest toward me ...

We will go along well because i know for a fact without being a doctor that healing and preventive medecine had nothing to do with corporate medecine controlled by big pharma from the Flexner report till today ...

Because you want to heal you know that medecine cannot be reduced to chirurgy nor to artificial corporate drugs exclusively made for profit ...i think Hells Angels bikers are chorus boys compared to big corporations ...

medecine is an art as any human activities coordinating the two part of our brain and our heart together ...

I recommend to you a book because it was my job all my life with the students : man and Mammals by wolfgang schad ....if you read it you will be astonished ...You can also bought but it is costlier his mammoth 2 books :

https://www.amazon.com/Threefoldness-Humans-Mammals-Toward-Biology/dp/0932776647/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1700338051&refinements=p_27%3AWolfgang+Schad&s=books&sr=1-2

This is a transformative books ...

the art to advise and motivate students was in the way to advise to them the right book at the right time ...

here a description :

«The result of over 50 years of research, Threefoldness in Humans and Mammals is the beautiful, authorized edition of Wolfgang Schad’s life’s work. In chapter after chapter of this monumental two-volume work, Schad demonstrates in detail how the dynamic concept of the threefold organism―first described by Rudolf Steiner a century ago―sheds new light on aspects of mammals, including size, form, coloration, physiology, embryonic development, behavior, and habitat. Indeed, he shows how the threefoldness of the organism―comprised of the polarity of nerve-sense and metabolic-limb systems and the mediating circulatory-respiratory system―is a key to understanding the extraordinary diversity of our closest animal relatives.

my respectful salutations

@mahgister I find it interesting, what you have to say about medicine. Are you a doctor of some sort?

My experience is that traditional medicine here in the US has become much more about the science and almost devoid of art. I think doctors who participate in managed care have their hands tied behind their back when it comes to the art part because they’re so bound by protocols. This is what I’ve been told by other doctors who’ve sought my help along the way.

The reason I appreciate what you say about the art and science is because I practice a type of healing that I perform with my hands, which gives it a very heavy artistic component. And that’s something I love about the work I do, it’s very much a science, but imo even more of an art, which is why it’s been such a rewarding career for me personally.

The objective of the treatment is to restore as much of the normal movement of the tissues of the musculoskeletal system as possible, and the lesion that I’m treating with my hands is the restriction in the vertebral joint. As the normal movement is restored to whatever degree possible, it allows the body to do what it was intended to do in the first place, which is to heal itself.

Thanks for your interest but i posted already many post about musicality in this thread ...😁

And yes it help to be an artist ... As medecine based on science is an art , acoustics based on pure science may be also an art ...

And even listening is an art ...

Only  transhumanist could think that replacing the human part of science which is art by an artefact could dream about the replacement of all artists by machine and anyway the end of mankind for a meaningless nightmare ... but i am out of the matter as often ... I apologize ...

My best to you ...😊

@mahgister would love to hear your perspective on this.

Musicality is more related to the sound from the perspective of the gear in the mind of the average consumers ...

But in reality any gear experience evaluation AT LAST is conditioned by the relation between this gear system synergetical or not as chosen and the room acoustic ...( it is even conditioned by the mechanical embeddings working dimension ( vibrations/resonance) and also the electrical embeddings which is mostly the electrical noise floor level of the system/house) ...

Then i prefer the term immersiveness instead of musicality alone , it implicate the listener engulfed in the acoustic space of the recording himself , included in it or part of it with his own brain and room ...

But the real meaning of musicality acoustically speaking and out of any marketing vocabulary cover two aspects of sound related to two acoustics concepts , the timbre experience and the immersiveness experience which immersiveness is related to the ratio of the listener envelopment concept ( LV) in acoustic and his dual concept of the location and width of the sound source ( ASW) .

 Then musicality is an objective acoustic concept which we can control from inside the gear and from the room and from the relation between the two ...This objective concept and his related set of controls instances  can be measured in many ways and also subjectively evaluated ...

Nope ...

"musical" has a very precise meaning in acoustics controlled environment ... It is a psycho-acoustic concept neither purely subjective nor purely objective ...People read too many marketing reviews about gear piece not enough in acoustics science ...

Immersiveness and timbre experience are neither purely subjective neither purely objective experience ; they are acoustic induced state with the appropriate gear/room and appropriate conditions ...

By the way there is not only electrical gear specs measures, but also inner ear and HTRF measures and room dimension measures and time and timing measures , reverberation measures etc ...

All these measures dont explain hearing but without them their is no hearing standards ...Then no technology ...

A stradivarius sound the way it sound by a complex set of measures , a specific recipe the designer use... No violin designer has ever said that any violin sound as good as we subjectively decide going only with our taste ...

Everything in audio is neither objective nor subjective , everything go over physical "sound" not without it though toward meaning... It is called music or speech ...It exist in its own time domain, a non reversible non commutative time dimension ...

Musical is a qualitative term not a quantitative measure.

Great debate between atmasphere and hilde45...

Very interesting ...

I will add nothing just a line :

Psycho-acoustics field studies even "taste" in experiments dividing people in group according to their history, measured hearing , musical habits etc ...

In Psycho-acoustic the objective part of reality and the subjective part are summonned together in very specific conditions ...This is why a good designer as atmasphere can design his amplifiers according to psycho-acoustic observations and facts ...It is why dr. Choueiri design his filters to recreate the spatial qualities of sound ...

There is a point about hilde45 observation that is very important though , hearing theories are in competition and we dont know how our brain hearing works completely ...Even after all measures done in all related fields including neurophysiology and physical acoustics and all there is between them ...

We dont know how the brain/ears beat the Fourier limit for example working non linearly in his own time domain : «For the first time, physicists have found that humans can discriminate a sound’s frequency (related to a note’s pitch) and timing (whether a note comes before or after another note) more than 10 times better than the limit imposed by the Fourier uncertainty principle»

So good is our technology , some deep mysteries subsist about hearing and sound ...

But once this is said,  in applied day to day audio experience , "tastes" play a role mostly in marketing , the greatest role for taste is here ... Not in design nor in acoustics ..Not in the end result after creating the right balanced conditions for an audiophile perception ... everyone recognize a good sound when they encounter it ... If it was not the case , small room acoustics and great Hall acoustic architecture will not exist as acoustic knowledge among other knowledge , and these two acoustic dispositions so different they could be and they are , derived from the same laws and work the same for all brain ... There is a general acoustic consensus about it ...

I apologize because my "line" is a few paragraphs ... 😊

Meaningless post should had no place in audiophile community . These kind of post means all the same void of thinking , without doubt they had no meaning ...😁

Banning a word concept instead of refering to the specific conditions of his experience is the peak of non sense ...

This is the term that should have no place in audiophile community. It may mean too many things and so in a sense it has no meaning.

Love is when you forgot yourself for the benefit of an other ...

Musicality is when you set all right acoustically ...And "right" is defined by objective factors not only the qualitative design of each component but their synergy and not only their synergy but matter as much the way they are embedded together in a room, well or not . electrically,acoustically and mechanically ... Musicality is a result of balanced factors in these three working dimensions not a "taste" or a mere subjective inclination ...

Acoustician and musician know how to make the sound "musical" ... Some speakers and amplifier designers know too ... Taste exist for sure but is a very limited factor in the mechanical,electrical and acoustical processing of sound and in components design as in the embeddings devices design  ...

The fact that a stradivarius sound is better than a cheap violin is a matter of design kowledge about sound experience first not a matter of taste ...

A good meal in any culinary culture is also a question of "informed design " more than a question about taste ... We can appreciate one tradition better than an another, this does not mean that good cooking is a matter of taste ...

People who focus on the gear "taste" forgot that the gear work not in isolation but in an environment and are  coupled to another pieces of gear ...

I will buy if i can Atmasphere design because he based them on psycho-acoustics facts not on his mere taste ...

I can give another example which is about acoustic tuning of speakers specific damping load and vibrations coupling/decoupling controls importance over " taste" for the gear and as much important as the design quality of the speakers themselves ...

There is no comparison between the sound of a speakers well coupled to the desk/room or floor and the same when it is not well coupled /decoupled and relatively isolated ...

You cannot guess it BEFORE experimenting with the vibrations control ...

It is not taste, it is not the mere design of the speakers alone here which will give the experience of sound quality, it will be the vibrations/resonance control as much as the design of the speakers itself ...

This problem can vary with each speakers designs but is always there ...

No speakers sellers will tell you that you must invest time if not money in this absolutely necessary controls , especially if the speakers are costly ... Sorry ...

Money dont give free lunch, we must invest time to learn how to embed what we own ... The end results is an acoustic experience everybody can appreciate because it does not result from capricious changing  taste but from applied knowledge exactly as in the design of an amplifier as explained by atmasphere ...

I dont need to buy the Tannoy back to wrote a conclusion ...😉

I dont need them anyway even if they are better for sure as potential element ...

Even sold used at 2000 bucks at least they are over my wallet and they need a bigger room than the small room and desk i now use anyway ... And my actual sound is obscenely good for the price ...😊

Mechanical,electrical and acoustical control of the system/room  matter as much as the design quality of each components   and it had nothing to do with  taste  ... And good design be it for amplifier or speakers is grounded in acoustics not in taste ... And acoustics is a science not just room applied acoustic...

u should get the Tannoy back, apply learning s … then draw a conclusion ….

I will give an example now why a good sound experience has little to do with taste or money and not even with only specific better design quality of a specific component as much useful are a better design and it is ...

I was the owner of pairs of Tannoy gold dual concentric speakers for more than 40 years ...

They are clearly better in design than my actual 100 bucks small active speakers of 4 inches woofer , so good they are ...No comparison in potential good sound experience between a low cost small active speakers and the mythical way better more high end Tannoy ...

it makes no sense to even debate that ... I know it first hand ...

But there is a difference between a better speakers design as the Tannoy when it is not electrically , mechanically and acoustically well embedded because i was ignorant and a less performant speakers two notch under the quality scale, which i modified especially the porthole design , but also now well embedded in the three working dimensions because i am no more so much ignorant ...

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The best soundfield experience in my life is with these low cost speakers not with the superior Tannoy that i never listened to, unbeknownst to me , in 40 years at their top optimal level anyway because , i was knowing nothing about vibrations/resonance controls, electrical noise/signal ratio level and acoustical control of the room/speakers ...I does not know that a speaker with a porthole is an Helmholtz resonators and that the porthole design MATTER ...Acoustics is not room acoustic which is only a part of it by the way ...

If you think money alone can buy audiophile experience you had many things to learn...Sorry to give you a bad news ... 😊

Price tags and money and taste dont matter as much if they matter at all , as acoustics knowledge and i dont speak only about room acoustic here ...

Learning how to hear matter ...And you dont learn how to hear by purchasing dozen of components as much audiophiles claims here ...

Put you gear taste at rest  and read about acoustics ... It is the only thing that help me ...

Opposing musical to analytical comes from the  focus put on the gear design by audiophiles  not from acoustics in general  ...

 "Musical"  means in acoustics experience  as just said atmosphere : "accurate and engaging at the same time" ...

A system/room is musical or less musical ... If it is analytical too much it comes from a piece of gear not synergetical or badly designed , it does not come  from the system/room/ears as an experienced whole ...

"Musical" has not as much to do with taste as with acoustics concepts ( not mere room acoustic by the way but acoustics as science) ...

If we use the word in acoustics where the adjective "musical" can be studied by experiments and described in acoustic concepts : as timbre, transients, dynamic, immersiveness etc ...

It is why people prefered tube amplifiers for years over S.S. because of this objective masking of higher harmonics with tubes easier to do than with S.S. in these days  as atmasphere said ...It is an acoustics facts ... not a taste ...

But what makes a system "musical" in his experience has too much factors in it as said Mike Lavigne to be reduced to only amplification ...

Vibrations controls for example or electrical house grid control and not only room acoustic play a role ...

The spatial characteristics of the sound play a role not only the timbre experience ... Then because of the crosstalk effect on any stereo system we loose in the musical spatial characteristics of the sound for example ... Dr. Choueiri  wrote much about it ...

And even other well less known factors play a role in our experience of "musicality"  ...Including our own inner ears structure which is not a taste as an innate  way to experience the sound  which we can call our "taste"...But it is not a taste , it is more  a starting point ...

We must learn not only how to listen but we must learn how to hear  all our life ...