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

I understand what you are saying; however I personally think I might describe that as accuracy more than musical. Not to protract this any further, but I am good with Webster’s definition (paraphrasing) of musical having to do with being pleasing and harmonious, and back in the ’70s and ’80s when the live venues we were going to were mostly coliseums or amphitheaters I really don’t remember the SQ being very good at all.

@immatthewj 

It wasn't: it wasn't musical. If the presentation is accurate, it will also be musical because it reproduces the music.

I also was wondering if in your opinion there was a trade off other than LF bandwidth when using high efficiency horn speakers? (I was thinking of some of the newer Klipsch monitors that MD carries.) Would there be a reason NOT to use this speaker with a moderately powered amp? Such as a tube amp doing 50 wpc in triode mode?

My speakers are 98dB which is at the low end of 'high efficiency' and they do not lack any resolution WRT any speaker I know of. So other than size, no, there's no tradeoff, rather lower efficiency speakers are the ones with tradeoffs, since they typically have problems with thermal compression if you try to push them to higher volumes.

To answer your question on that other thread,  if you have a 4 Watt SET, your speakers should be about 105-107dB in most rooms. That will allow you to not run the amp higher than about 50% of full power and often a lot less. But a lot depends on the room- if you have a smaller room you might get by just fine with speakers that are in the mid 90s.

Anyway, you also provided a definition of "more musical" as sounding like "real music" [Quotation marks are mine]. By "real music", do you mean as it sounds in the audience of a large colliseum or at the mixing board? Or do you mean as it sounds to the audience in an unamplified venue? Or do you mean the way it sounds in the studio when it is being recorded?

'Real music' in that it sounds as real as the recording allows. So that might mean it sounds like you're in a live amphitheater or it might sound like the musicians are in your room.

What if someone’s ear does not care about the kind of distortion @atmasphere identifies with musicality?

They literally would not be from this planet! IOW there are no such people. That is because all people use the same hearing perceptual rules.

. . . and apparently by some SET standards, 14 or 15 wpc is a lot, as I keep reading about some of Dennis Had’s new stuff making less than 5 wpc? I DEFINITELY don’t think that would satisfy the average metal head.

classical is not my thing; but if it was and I wanted to hear The William Tell Overture (I hope I got that right) at what was a satisfying level, I wouldn't be looking at low powered SET stuff.  And I wouldn't be looking at the low powered SET stuff if I was into death metal either.  And most of the posts from the metal guys that do post here, seem like they are into the big SS stuff.  I am not saying that I don't think tubes can do metal, but I am saying that I don't think 15 wpc or less is going to do what the average metal guy wats it to do.

SETs are best used with high efficiency speakers- often over 100dB. A 5 Watt SET might be used with a speaker that is 103 or 105 dB. That is why a 15 Watt amp might seem like a lot. If not used with such speakers you would be correct; but such a person would likely find the amp unsatisfying with any genre because there wouldn't be enough power.

IOW you are talking about an equipment mismatch.

@immatthewj that would only be because they didn't have the right (more efficient) speakers to go with it. So that would also mean that someone into classical wouldn't be satisfied either unless they got more efficient speakers as well.

@newfzx7 +1

When Rocky Mountain AudioFest was running I was regularly visited by a group of local metal heads at that show. I would play something for them and  they usually had some LP for me to hear as well. 

There was a reviewer who was also into metal who would also play faves of his in our room. Metal heads appreciate good sound like everyone else.

@immatthewj What you think and the reality of metal dudes are two different things or maybe many different things. My best friend for years (Earl Root, RIP) pretty well founded the metal scene here in the Twin Cities so I’ve been to a lot of metal shows of all sorts.

An SET with high efficiency speakers would probably be quite pleasing to them if there were subs as well (most high efficiency speakers trade off efficiency for LF bandwidth unless the bass horn is very very large; most people don’t have room for that) because such can play quite loud. They aren’t interested in pissing off the neighbors because Bad Things happen; that’s different from someone being simply inconsiderate.

Earl owned our amps and preamp with Snell B loudspeakers right to his death.

Most of the people I’ve met in metal bands (a few of which I’ve opened for) were really nice. If you didn’t see their stage get up, you’d never know they played in a metal band. Earl told me that for the most part all metal is theater, so if you’re not laughing a lot and having a good time you probably don’t get it.

Earl also told me (he ran a record store; that is how I first met him) that the metal guys preferred vinyl because it could get the cymbals right. So he was careful to pick up the LP releases for his store whenever possible.

So what you’re saying doesn’t jive with how they define ’more musical’ IME...

However, in that case, "more musical" may differ depending upon one's musical tastes.  If one was a thrash-metal fan, one might find different equipment "more musical" than if one was a fan of chamber music.  If one was a fan of the latter, one might find a 12 wpc SET amp and some high efficiency speakers to be "more musical."  If one bought that combination to jam out on Mega Death, one would probably be disappointed.  A massive SS amp with some huge JBLs might be "more musical" in that application given your definition.

@immatthewj I see this as entirely false. The reason is that no-one has ever documented a way that electronics can favor one genre of music over another. As a result, what makes a system good at classical will also make it good at rock. As you know orchestras can play pretty loud. I play classical, gothic metal, electronia, folk music and the like all on the same systems in my house. They all do all forms equally well.

All humans share the human hearing rules. So we all very naturally concoct our musical compositions inside of those rules. So if you measure the energy spectrum of a well recorded metal band you'll find its not all that different from that of a well recorded orchestra at full tilt. I'm not saying that certain instruments are not asked to carry unusual energy for a bit; when that happens its usually not sustained unless the musician is making some sort of point. For example the piccolo in Mancini's Baby Elephant Walk.

When I encounter the myth that certain speakers or amps or combinations thereof can favor a certain kind of music, I've found that if I can dig into it, the simple reason for this is the person entertaining that myth hasn't heard everything- not every recording and not every system. The more exposure you have, the more light is cast upon this particular myth; the quicker it dissipates.

Sure,  @atmasphere  , but what is meant by "more musical"?

@immatthewj That which is better able to sound like real music.

I guess opinion and taste might enter into it?

No accounting for taste.

As far as what makes equipment sound musical, that is very predictable, For those who do not understand engineering, their opinion will matter (to them), but that won't change how equipment behaves...

Work done by Daniel J. Levitin shows, "Musical activity involves nearly every region of the brain ... and nearly every neural subsystem."

@cleeds This is correct, and even more so when you're playing an instrument as opposed to simply listening to music. However the limbic system plays a major role; I had things boiled down a bit too much...

Music is processed in the amygdala. But if the brain detects something wrong (speed, distortion, tonal balance and the like) then there is a tipping point where the processing is transferred to the cerebral cortex. At this point a lot of the emotional impact is lost.

When you are auditioning cables or comparing two audio products, the cerebral cortex is where the music is being processed.

The goal of the designer is to keep the musical processing in the limibic system (amygdala) so as to have the most impact on the listener. To do this, the equipment has to be designed to honor and obey the human hearing rules.

For example, the ear uses the higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure and also assigns tonality to all harmonics in the same way as it does for musical instruments. So if an amplifier has higher ordered content that isn't masked somehow (the signal cannot do it) then the amp will sound harsh and bright (due to the ear's assignment of the harmonics) and the processing will likely not be in the limbic system.

There are a good number of similar examples- its like negotiating a minefield for success. But if the designer understands the hearing perceptual rules then they can be applied to the design (engineering).

Engineer types explaining musicality.

@jpwarren58 Yeah, sometimes we engineering types do that.

It probably helps to correlate engineering to the rules of human hearing,  combined with actually playing real instruments. Some engineers do this and others are only by the book.

What I'm saying is that you can design for good specs or design to best honor the rules of human hearing. SET guys know what I'm talking about, although personally I think SETs fall short of the mark.

You insist on the same " technical " terms and yes volume is comething we learned and it's our taste who defines the kind of volume we like.

@rauliruegas This isn't what I was talking about nor is what I asked about. The question I asked above has a 'yes' or 'no' answer.

The ‘distortion product’ isn’t responsible for shaping or determining all of the various parameters that must be satisfied for a product to be considered musical. I don’t think that you are saying that it is, please clarify.

@rooze Actually I was saying exactly that. Distortion of any amplifier is also its sonic signature. Do you know of a musical amplifier? It has a musical distortion signature, likely with prominent 2nd and 3rd harmonics.

@rauliruegas Perhaps you could explain how deciBels, which are often called "volume units", are the result of taste rather than human hearing rules. 3dB is a doubling of power in an amplifier, but barely audible as a volume increase, are you saying that is something learned??

It’s like saying “I’m pleased with it”.

Pleased, until you find something that comes closer to the mark, for example you find out that you can have something be both smoother and more detailed instead of bright and detailed.

Tube products tend to sound smoother than solid state. This is literally what has kept tubes in business the last 60 years after being declared 'obsolete'. The economic facts here cannot be denied- this has kept tube producers like JJ in business. So that means there are enough people out there that are hearing the same things about tubes.

At that point this becomes easier, because all we have to do is sort out why tubes sound smoother than solid state. And that turns out to be the way they make distortion as opposed to how solid state makes distortion.

So we figured, if distortion is the sonic signature of any audio product, then if you built a solid state amp that had a similar distortion product to a tube amp, it should sound like a tube amp. This turned out to be true.

So there's more to this than just taste.

OK in this post Raul seems to be saying that human hearing perceptual rules are learned rather than inherited. Are there any other interpretations?

That modeling start even before we comes out to the sun ligth. SPL is something that just " happens " and that we learn rigth from the start in inconcious way and then we follow growing up and follow learning about even if no one tell us what means that SPL our ears goes the " modeling " proccess and been aware of different SPLs with out knowing this technically, same with frequency range. All those is only learning, our ears determine the different SPLs we can tolerate even with no explanation: is part of the orgabism capacities. We don't need to know about the term SPL to know which is the levels we can tolerate in different " scenarios ".

@rauliruegas If I make this out correctly, you're not saying anything different from what I was.

During that " modeling " proccess human being does not cares about SPL or frequency range: we all learn with out taking care of ears frequency range or each one ears sensitivity.

Actually, yes, every human cares about the frequency and the SPL! This is why alarms and bells are at the frequencies they are- because our hearing is more sensitive at those frequencies. Its also why musical instruments are designed the way they are and thus explains why it does not matter if its classical or gothic metal; the energy distribution across the range of hearing will be very similar.

Taste and the rules of human hearing are two different things. If we share the former its by luck but we all share the latter worldwide.

@rauliruegas 

Human hearing perceptual rules are the same from one person to the next regardless of taste. It is this fact that deciBels can be used to show sound pressure (since the ear hears sound on a logarithmic scale).

The Fletcher-Munson curve is another example of a human hearing perceptual rule and isn't governed by taste. The human hearing masking principle made mp3 files possible. The range of human hearing is 20Hz-20KHz and so on. These things are not governed by taste.

Its easy to conflate taste with hearing perception. They are not the same; otherwise a person could decide that don't like deciBels and could chose to hear on a linear scale.

If you look at my post about distortion and how the ear perceives it then you will see that my comment has nothing to do with taste.

Music is processed by the limbic system of the brain. But if there is something wrong (like distortion) the processing is unconsciously moved to the cerebral cortex. There is a tipping point for this. When this occurs the presentation loses some of its emotional impact, the toe tapping, that sort of thing. So to me, "musical" has always been about keeping that engaging quality.

@rauliruegas You left out part of my comment, which invalidates your complaint. The full text was

Live music does not sound like a recording unless its made in the same venue.

emphasis added.

It’s curios that not only in your last post but in any other you don’t reffer to LIVE MUSIC. You post about experiments/tests/audiophile adjectives and the like but not live MUSIC.

Live music does not sound like a recording unless its made in the same venue. Your listening position would have to be the same as that of the microphones if you were lucky enough to be in the same venue.

If you are looking for this sort of reference, then you are probably going to have to make a recording of your own and put on LP or digital format. Otherwise hearing live music won't tell you much about a recording or how its supposed to sound.

all those by live measurements that at the end those bullet proof measurements explanation could be useless for the listener.

🤣

Funny how we still have talk like this when the technology to show what the 'mysterious' aspect is that causes the 'magic' in our systems has been measurable since sometime in the 1980s.

Its like advocating for flat head engines as opposed to overhead cam...

Till today does not exist a precise measurements that can tell us ( bullet proof. ) why we like what we like and audio item specs alone can’t tell us if that audio item will match our taste till we tasted.

This statement was true in the 1960s and 70s. It is not true today- measurement technology, like all technologies, as advanced quite a lot since then. The understanding of what the newer measurements tell us is apparently still lacking; that ignorance causes audiophiles to act as if the above statement were still true.

but still have rising distortion vs frequency often starting around 2khz.  Is it correct to speculate that these amps, whether GanF, Hypex, purifi,  etc. would sound more musical if the distortion increase could be pushed beyond 10 khz rather than just 2khz?

@snapsc Yes.

@mglik You are right but everyone uses the same hearing perceptual rules. Its a sort of common denominator.

Over time, as a designer you gain experience knowing how the distortion profile looks as compared to how it sounds. It gets to the point that you can predict how the equipment will sound if you have enough of the relevant measurements in front of you. 

There is that old saw about trust your ears not the measurements. That was really true until sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Sometime in that period it became possible to measure the things that really tell what an amplifier (or preamp) might sound like. The knowledge that this is so is scarce, as is the understanding of the significance of some of the measurements.

At any rate, if the design issues I mentioned so far are not observed in a design, it is very likely it will not be deemed 'musical'. It might surprise you, but we've never relied on tuning any of our products by ear. We rely very heavily on measurements. Only after we get what we are looking for do we give it a listen. So far this technique has served us pretty well.

Interesting , some people can hear negative feedback = TIM and simple temporal distortion in addition to the various forms of harmonic distortion Ralph and a FEW ear/brain centric designers ( very rightly but not completely ) focus on.

@tomic601 Timing usually isn’t a problem with negative feedback. Phase shift is (and can look like a timing problem if you’re only using a ’scope to see what’s going on). TIM really isn’t a problem with feedback so much as it was a problem associated with part of the (high feedback, solid state) amplifier that was outside the feedback loop: the base of the input transistor or perhaps the entire transistor, depending on the design... which would easily distort on transients.

Norman Crowhurst pointed to the problem of a non-linear feedback point (node) in an amplifier, such as the cathode of the input tube 65 years ago. He points out that due to that non-linearity, the feedback causes a noise floor of higher ordered harmonics as well as inharmonic (intermodulation) distortions. He did not propose a fix. Later, Peter Baxandall pointed to the same problem in solid state amps and simply proposed more feedback as a fix, which does not work; any signal distorted by that non-linearity (in this case, the base of a transistor) will not somehow magically be healed by more feedback.

The solution is to mix the feedback with the incoming signal using a resistor divider network, before the signal gets to the input of the amp (the way opamps do it). In that way the feedback signal is not distorted and so can do its job more effectively. FWIW this is how we’ve applied feedback in our OTLs for the last 35 years or so.

Since most people believed Baxandall and don’t remember Crowhurst talking about the same problem 20 years earlier, we wound up with a lot of amps that were less than musical in the last 70 years. The issue of increasing distortion with frequency really didn’t show up for decades after! So now you have something to look for in the measurements that relates directly to that mysterious ’musical’ aspect some amps have and some don’t.

@wyoboy My comment

So if you want the amp to be musical, its important that the distortion vs frequency is a flat line across the audio band (or nearly so- 10KHz is probably acceptable since harmonics at 20KHz won't get a lot of attention). Tube amps with little or no feedback have no problem doing this

has the answer, if its a bit obtuse. Any amp with zero feedback will have distortion vs frequency as a flat line. So it will have a good chance at being musical whether tube or solid state. There are other factors relating to topology of course so this isn't sure fire.

@mahgister You got it.

@wyoboy 

what is your take on hybrid amps that use both tubes and ss at the output stage--do these amps suffer from the same issue as ss amps?  or are they better at dealing with the higher-order harmonics b/c of the tubes? 

Most of these designs use feedback. When you use feedback in any design, you must have enough Gain Bandwidth Product to support the loop gain (which is the gain of the amp after the feedback is added). Most amps lack the GBP to do this properly, so when they run into that limit at a certain frequency, distortion will rise on a 6dB/octave (or greater) slope. This phenomena is usually perceived as harshness and brightness. Tube amps with feedback have this problem although its not as pronounced as in solid state since tube amps tend to have better distortion characteristics (to the human ear) when running open loop.

Put more simply, hybrid amps are a partial solution. Something I've not mentioned in this thread is how the feedback is received at the input of the amplifier; in most amps that point isn't linear (typically the base of a transistor) and so the feedback signal itself is distorted. That prevents it from doing its job properly, and since this practice is widespread, has given feedback a bad rap.

Feedback isn't bad if its applied properly. In a hybrid amp, the feedback is usually applied to the cathode of an input tube which is usually a lot more linear than a transistor in a solid state amp. This does help the amp be more musical, but since the GBP is very likely lacking, does not fix the problem (you can find this out by simply measuring distortion vs frequency).

Sorry if this is a bit technical!

The reason why distortion vs frequency is so important has to do with how the ear perceives distortion. I'll give you a typical example. A common frequency where many solid state amps reach their GBP limit is only 1KHz. Imagine a signal at 1KHz; it might be low distortion, but you can have a harmonic at 7KHz that is considerably higher than that 1KHz THD figure would suggest- and the 7th harmonic is not only amusical, the ear is also keenly sensitive to it because higher orders are used by the ear to sense how loud sounds are. Sticks out like a sore thumb.

So if you want the amp to be musical, its important that the distortion vs frequency is a flat line across the audio band (or nearly so- 10KHz is probably acceptable since harmonics at 20KHz won't get a lot of attention). Tube amps with little or no feedback have no problem doing this; its part of why SETs have a foothold in modern times.

But SETs are really obsolete (IMO there is no reason for them at all); the only reason they get by is due to their distortion signature and distortion vs frequency being a flat line. You don't need the amp to be SET to do that and so there are musical amplifiers that aren't SETs (which make a lot more power and are more transparent).

But most people that are involved with SETs do not understand the facts I've laid out here. This includes a lot of SET designers. I'm sure I'll get pushback on this, but engineering is why tubes exist, why airplanes fly and why lights come on when you turn their switch on; engineering coupled with an understanding of human hearing rules is at the heart of this.

All this sounds simple yet we have many amplifier makers. I suppose most have gotten the "bad" distortion out of their designs, though.

@hilde45 If that were true there would not be a tubes vs transistors debate older than the Internet itself!

Its a bit more complex than that. Many designers don't pay much attention to how the ear/brain system works. So they often just go for the least amount of distortion: your typical solid state amp. Solid state amps have had a reputation since the 1960s of being harsh and bright compared to tubes for the simple reason that the distortion of the solid state amp has unmasked higher ordered harmonics- the source of the harshness and brightness.

Such amps do not tend to get a reputation of being musical and are part of why tubes are still around!

@hilde45 I think I can boil this down a bit. In the text below, I'm repeating myself in several different ways.

For a designer's point of view, if they understand the rules of human hearing perception, they can design (if they understand the technology well enough), an amplifier, preamp or loudspeaker that will be deemed musical by those that hear it.

This is because the rules of human hearing perception are universal.

People ascribe taste to music itself. That's different. They might also want to hear more or less bass, more or less treble. That is still in the realm of taste, providing:

The distinction I am making is that as long as tonality is not induced by distortion, in particular the higher frequencies, then the amp or whatever will be deemed musical. If tonality comes from tone controls and is not induced by distortion, that is perceived as 'taste'.

It took me a while to understand how distortion imparts tonality. I've come to the conclusion that if a designer is pragmatic about that, then that allows access to designing an amp or whatever that will be musical, having nothing to do with taste (which has everything to do with the signal you put thru that amp or whatever).

Does that make more sense to you? This really isn't about philosophy and rabbit holes. Its simply the distinction between taste and common physiology.

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 ...

Yes, like many endeavors, high end audio is driven by intention.

Perception is both a process of registration by the brain and interpretation by the mind. Kant argued that nothing is perceived "as it is in reality" because in order to make sense of reality, it must first be taken in and conditioned by our understanding. Even the measurements you’re speaking about are done with human instruments, using human metrics, with patterns which humans notice. Everything measured is also an interpretation. Even what seems solid -- invariant readings, for example -- are only invariant due to human interpretation. Change the scale of the reading, and it becomes invariant, again.

So, it’s all interpretation -- whether one talks in terms of numbers and machine readings, or in terms of more literary sounding descriptions (i.e., "taste").

@hilde45 

Trust me on this one- if you lose your keys in your house, they won’t get up and move by themselves; regardless of your perception, they will stay put until found. If philosophy were the only variable, the keys would be in your pocket when you looked for them, because you thought you put them there. But physical objects have a way of not caring about our made up stories of life.

Similarly, the measurements we make with instruments have a similar solidarity as they are not subject to the whim of our perception. Once the instrument is built, it will do things like your keys do- like stay in one place until moved. And the bits inside that make it work will do that regardless of what we think about them.

If it were as you say above, VU meters would impossible; in fact the industry of audio would be impossible if human hearing perceptual rules were not common to all people!

For example the ear detects sound pressure on a logarithmic curve. Imagine if some people used a linear curve instead.

Recordings would become impossible.

Designing an amplifier or loudspeaker that could be used by anyone would be impossible.

Music itself would be challenging at best if not also impossible, all just with that one variable. No-one would be able to agree on how loud to play.

Let’s imagine if the masking rule didn’t exist. I don’t know if I really can. It might make it impossible to communicate by speaking since quiet sounds would be heard at the same volume as louder sounds.

The simple fact is that human perceptual rules are a constant (not meaning to step on anyone’s toes but they are honed thru millions of years of our ancestor’s survival). Plain and simple; not knowing this fact one might speculate, but it would be all made-up stories; scintillating to philosophize about but in the end all just made up.

IOW its not a philosophical dilemma, unless you are willing to argue that humans might have 20 arms and 18 eyes, in either case you’d simply be wrong (no judgement).

Taste is entirely different. No accounting for it.

Some people might want to hear more treble. That’s fine- turn up the treble control. That is not the same as brightness that occurs from distortion.

That the 2nd harmonic is well-known to be musically in lockstep with the fundamental tone has been known for most of human history and can be shown mathematically. Philosophy has nothing to do with it, other than to take a contrary position simply because one can- yet I’m sure you’re likely to stop when a traffic light turns red.

Clearly, you and others have discovered there is a widespread predilection for 2nd and 3rd order harmonics, and there is a predilection for sugar, fat, and salt, too. But all of those preferences could be changed by changes in taste

@hilde45 How we see things, and how reality really is are usually two different things.

Emphasis added, to the part that is a false conclusion. The only way for it to be true would be to somehow modify how your ear/brain system detects sound, and we're not there yet- give it a hundred years and we'll see 😉

In the meantime we are stuck with human hearing perceptual rules which are surprisingly consistent from person to person unlike taste buds. That is why, for example, we can use a dB scale on VU meters. Also for example why mp3s were even possible (they rely on the masking principle of the ear). Masking, BTW, is an essential bit of what I mentioned about distortion above.

Its easy to prove with very simple test equipment that the ear uses higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure, and that they are assigned 'harsh and bright' by the ear. This isn't something for debate, its something you learn about in school.

The musical nature of the 2nd harmonic has been known longer than electronics. That higher harmonics are not acceptable in the audio presentation has also been known for a very long time: I refer you to the Radiotron Designer's Guide, 3rd edition, published in the 1930s. Human ears have seen no significant evolution since then, although taste has certainly changed. 

Getting what the difference is between hearing and taste is what this is about. Designing something to be musical is all about understanding how the ear perceives sound and not at all about the taste people express.

If you want to talk about the taste people express and relate it to audio design, you'll be participating in one of the larger myths in audio- that of a certain audio product being better at one genre of music than another (the absolute classic example of that being a JBL L-100 being better at rock than anything else, which is simply silly). In reality, there's no known way of designing any audio product to favor a certain genre. If there were, there'd be classes on that topic in colleges and universities.

I have always felt this term to be equivalent to "emotionally engaging" and standing in contrast to analytical or accurate.

@erik_squires IMO/IME equipment can be emotionally engaging and accurate at the same time. But not analytical, which IME is usually a way of describing something with low distortion but the distortion it has is higher ordered harmonics and not masked. So it sounds 'analytical' which is to say transparent, but also somewhat bright with a bit of harshness.

What if someone’s ear does not care about the kind of distortion @atmasphere identifies with musicality? Would we say their use of the term "musical" is incorrect? This would be tantamount to saying that "good food is spicy food" and then for anyone who demurs, they like "not-good" food. Would we say that some people like "not-musical" amplifiers?

@hilde45 No, what I described is based on rules of human perception, which encompasses all people. This is the same reason that deciBels are used, why humans are thought to have a range of 20Hz to 20KHz and so on.

What you are describing is 'taste'. I was not. If amps are not musical, no-one likes them. They might tolerate them; that's different. You can tolerate something but be annoyed by it at the same time.

I’m going to add to what @mapman has pointed out. Musicality has everything to do with how the amp makes distortion. The main differences we hear between amps, their ’sonic signature’ is in fact their distortion.

To be musical, that distortion has to be benign to the human ear. The only harmonics that qualify in that way are the 2nd and 3rd.

Higher ordered harmonics, the 5th and above, are sensed by the ear and interpreted typically as harshness and brightness. In musical instruments, the higher orders are sculpted by the instrument maker as the tone colors of that instrument. IOW distortion is sensed by the ear in the same way that the ear hears tonality in musical instruments.

Fortunately, if the 2nd and 3rd harmonics are high enough in amplitude compared to succeeding harmonics, the latter can be masked. The result is even though the higher orders are present, the presentation can be smooth and detailed, which is to say ’musical’. Tube amplifiers are very good at this sort of thing, which has kept them going the last 70 years. Solid state has been challenged by this issue because while they typically make less of the higher orders, their higher orders are not masked.

The ear is keenly sensitive to the higher ordered harmonics because it uses them to sense how loud sounds are. The ear has over 120dB range and frankly, a lot of solid state amp designers didn’t take that bit into account, so unmasked higher ordered harmonics will cause the amp to be harsh and bright; i.e. not so musical.

This is a bit of a nutshell description of the issue.