It’s much simpler than that (for me).
Assuming no significant electrical incompatibilities that would cause us to unfairly judge its actual potential in a different application, each piece of audio gear inserted into an audio system affects the resulting sound in one of two ways- it moves the resulting sound closer to, or farther away from the sound of live music. This, no matter that piece of equipment’s pedigree. Even the very best gear has a long way to go to being truly “neutral”. We can talk about technical “accuracy”, or technical superiority all we want, but then are left with the inevitable question of whether it actually brings the sound closer to the sound of live music. THAT, as far as I’m concerned is the most important measure of a component’s superiority; and technical issues take a back seat. So, how to make that judgment?
The best we can hope for is to judge the sound relative to the sonic “generalities” that we have learned to recognize through experience and exposure to live sound. And, yes, even the sound of electronic music can be judged this way; although, the well of information available for making that judgment is far far less deep than that available from live, unprocessed acoustic music. A simple and unavoidable fact.
Oh, but then there are the cries of- “there are too many variables”, “we all hear differently”, “how do we know what it sounded like in the studio?”, etc., etc. Or, “it is superior if it sounds closest to what is on the recording”. First, how the hell does one know exactly what is on the recording unless one was at the recording session AND have an extremely good aural memory? We don’t.
So, ask yourself this question: how is it that when walking down a street and one hears the sound of a saxophone or vocalist coming out an open window a block away one can immediately tell when it is an actual live musician playing?
First, it is the complex tonal textures and, even more importantly, the dynamic immediacy and nuance that immediately tell us it is the real thing; aspects of musical sounds that suffer tremendously during the record/reproduce process. There is no electronic signature. And, importantly, we don’t have our audiophile hats on at that moment. Hats which tend to cause us to lower the bar of expectation and accept at least some degree of electronic signature as “normal”. I think that, ironically, many audiophiles have not learned to listen. We tend to go into a different mode of “listening” when dealing with and listening to “Audio”. Another example:
How is it that even over a telephone, the lowest of the low-fi pieces of equipment, we can immediately recognize, not only the voice of a loved one, but that the person has a slight cold, for instance? We can because of familiarity with that sound. There is no substitute for this.
I don’t understand the point of proclamations about component superiority based only on technical issues. As important as those are, it really comes down to what sounds best to us based on our own set of sonic priorities. However, if superiority (“best”, whatever) is to be declared, to me it has to be relative to whether the sound of that piece of gear moves the sound closer to, or farther from my sense of the sound of live; and, the emotional component that is best expressed when live. Simple as that.
