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

Dear @fair : " Also, preferred most often listened to music genres, and even specific artists. " as with your friend mentioned.

Perhaps in those old days (n 1997 as Plinius. ) those kind of electronics behavior could happened but today electronics/audio items normally performs almost evenly it does not matters the genre of MUSIC or artist. A good design means that: evenly quality performance levels where MUSIC genre/artist is not an issue.

" yet it’s the differences that make them unique enough for a specific buyer to choose. "

" yet is heavily influenced by specific individual hearing system peculiarities, "

Key words on those statements: UNIQUE nad SPËCIFIC INDIVIDUAL,

From those words came what each one of us ( individual and unique ) like/taste.

As you said: " there are common qualities that have to be present in all of them " but the taste is totally specific and unique/individual to each one of us.

Now the TASTE word is fully charged ( conscious or not. ) at different levels in each one of us of what almost all posted in the thread as:  @mapman ​@hilde45 ​@mulveling ​@mahgister including me.

Designers/manufacturers are there too.

There is no objectivity over subjectivity but a blended " history " and exist several limitations at both sides.

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.

Not even by psycho-acoustics because neurologists and scientifics confirm that no one no human being knows in true and with facts not even the 25% of the human being operation brain and what surrounded it.

So science shows us answers totally incomplete because can’t advance over that 25% with almost useless conclusions. There is no knowledge science after that. Maybe in the future. The MUSIC therapies is an example because it function with some people and not with other similar persons.

The fully operation of the whole human being is truly unknow, we know maybe more from the study of Universe that our organism/brain.

Yes TASTE is all what we can imagine is charged.

R.

Dear R.

Now that you have clarified a bit your posts i can concur with almost of all you just said ...

I will only add that what you call "taste" is in my understanding a set of biases mostly acquired by our own audio,acoustic,musical personal history ...But acuired by the haphazard of our own history they are not completely informed ...

These "tastes" which are uninformed biases or untrained biases mostly must be educated by acoustics and psycho-acoustic  concepts and experiments not by gear buyings upgrades collections ...That is my point ...

You are right also about this :

The fully operation of the whole human being is truly unknow, we know maybe more from the study of Universe that our organism/brain.

But this does not means that we are stuck with our innate or acquired  "taste" as they are in audio experience, because as audiophile we must train ourself replacing uninformed biases by more educated one ...

You are right about hearing science , which is technologically more and more spectacular but we dont know yet how we hear audible Qualia or sounds ... There is many hearing competing theories ... The Fourier mapping of sound so powerful it is must  not to be confused with the real territory...

Then we will end our divergence of opinion if you understand that by : "taste" i understand myself uninformed biases; then i reject them as a basis in audio design and acoustic experience ... I myself can read your defense of "taste" rights then as the defense of informed biases ... If so we could begin to understand each other ...

My deepest respect and i apologized for being opinionated .... 😊

Dear @mahgister, @rauliruegas, we agree on about 75%, yet there is still a remaining topic of the gear that musicians, recording engineers, mixing engineers, and mastering engineers use.

These music professionals pick the gear according to their own at times very peculiar preferences, and tune the stages of recording/mixing/mastering chain in very specific ways: sometimes for a whole album, sometimes for a specific song, and sometimes just for a short music phrase.

Also, their hearing systems are quite different from each other and from the listeners’, albeit accomplished professionals tend to know well how to account for and somewhat compensate those differences.

To give you a couple of simple examples of just one stage of the chain - mixing studio monitors:

Michael Cretu (Enigma) used large Quested monitors for his album Love Sensuality Devotion. These monitors were known for their high power and low harmonic distortion across the full audio spectrum, yet their woofers were massive and relatively underdamped - they started slowly and kept going for a split second after a bass tone was already over. For the kind of music that Michael Cretu created, this was beneficial. It emphasized the smooth continuous dreamy aspects of his music.

Boris Blank from Yello chose PSI Audio A21-M studio monitor for mixing his group’s album Toy. In addition to also being powerful, full range, and low-distorting, the PSIs are especially known for their precise response in time domain. Their group delay is surprisingly stable across the frequency range, and they start and stop on a dime. Fittingly, songs on this album are full of intricately interwoven sharp transients, which would be significantly more difficult to get right on less precise studio monitors.

When it gets to listening, Michael Cretu’s music would feel more natural on speakers resembling Quested - smooth, eager to fill out short pauses between notes. Boris Blank’s mixes world probably sound less exciting on such "super-smooth" speakers, yet would come to life on sharp-hitting "analytical" speakers. So here you have it - the artists preferences in sound and corresponding gear choices do matter!

Dear @mahgister, @rauliruegas, we agree on about 75%, yet there is still a remaining topic of the gear that musicians, recording engineers, mixing engineers, and mastering engineers use.

These music professionals pick the gear according to their own at times very peculiar preferences, and tune the stages of recording/mixing/mastering chain in very specific ways: sometimes for a whole album, sometimes for a specific song, and sometimes just for a short music phrase.

It seems we dont speak about the same things ... 😊

Welcome here fair by the way ...

There is music as a commercial manufactured product ...

There is music as an artistic recorded event ...

In the first case all is about mixing and the mixing is the true source ...

In the second case, the source is the recording of an organ playing in a church for example ...Here the source is the original lived event captured by the microphone and craftmanship of the recording engineer AT THE SERVICE of the event not his creator in his studio as in the case of music more as a commercial manufactured product in studio ...

The source of music is not the mixing, it is the acoustic atmosphere captured by the mics and translated in our own room system acoustics ...Mixing must be a cherry on a cake not the cake when we recorded a violin or an opera singer...

The recording of acoustics spatial information is lost in all stereo playback ... It is known by acousticians studying the effect of crosstalk on spatial duimensions sound perceptions then on timbre also ... It is the discovery of Dr. Choueiri  who was able to create filters adressing this problem ... Using these filters then any high end system with them not without them can give a quality experience rivalling any studio which did not use them in their system  ...

Heavily mixed music is not ideal by the way and my goal in audio, listening Bach for example, is not retrieving the mix formula of the studio engineer but the acoustic atmosphere specific in the recorded church /organ playing for example .. the mixing engineer here must obey the playing instrument acoustic constrainst in that space ...... I dont need the same audio materials for that as those used by the studio engineer ...Here i will need the BACCH filters with any high end system in a dedicated acoustic room for sure , not the same playback system as in the studio is necessary  ...😁

I dont mind about the mix engineer specific intention by the way , i mind about the organ recorded playing in this or in that church ...The artist here for me is the musician not the engineer ... ( even if any great sound engineer is an artist in his own way ) i listen music and a musician playing Bach not a bunch of mixed sounds ...

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.