equipment sound bad?

Proposition #3-

The system was producing sonic effects,ambience and detail not related to musicality at the expense of natural proportions and accuracy in note shaping, timing and expressiveness.It played sounds better than it could communicate.It broke the music down into its component parts and reassembled them into the shape of someone's ego.What you described as "accuracy" was anything but.If your favorite music did not connect,something was very,very seriously wrong.

Best,
Ken

Accuracy is a blind alley. You wind up with an annoying 'hey listen to that!' trick pony. Go for the emotional content.

I consider myself to be an audiophile, have worked in several aspects of the audio industry including recording, and now am prisident of the local audio club. A have found most recordings to be unlistenable as there quality is so bad, when I take a good CD into a store most systems are so choked there are no dynamics and little to any detail. My reference is what a real insturment sounds like, if it is a good recording, I can tell or be very close in picking what microphone was used. I continue to seek out good recordings because when you have a system capable of reproducing tonality with speed a triangle will sound like a triangle not just a pleasent smooth sound, by the same measure a CD with digital errors written in it will sound very bad. I think this is what audio reproduction is all about.

I understand where you are coming from and I think its that high end systems bring out all the details. Whether those details are nuances of the music or inperfections in the recording. It emphasises the bad parts as much as the good parts.

The thing is though you cant build a great system that will make bad cd's sound good because then the good cd's will sound bad. How would a cd player distiguish between a detail in the music and an inperfection in the recording.

Manufacturers have to design there system around a goal. To push the limits to perfection it creates this unfortunate trade off but if you think about it there really isnt any other way.

I use to have a huge problem with bass because I was so use to the mass market speakers that add bass. You get use to that sound and miss it when it wasnt there. Then you get use to quality and cant live with either. I ended spending eight thousand dollars in subs just to get the bass that I had come to enjoy.

If your high end speakers added bass then the perfect recording would sound bloated and boomy. Although it would make the recording with inperfect bass sound better.

There are many many cd's that I use to think were recorded well and now I can bearly listen to them. Its very unfortunate. To bad there wasnt a high / low resolution switch.

Dancarne, what exactly do you mean when you say your favorite recording sounded "bad". Did the dealer's system reveal that it was a poorly engineered track? Did it reveal some previously unheard fault in the musicianship? Or did the system fail to provide the emotional impact that the music normal delivers? It's possible that your reaction could be a combination of these factors. From an audiophile perspective a lot of pop/rock music is poorly recorded. It is not engineered to be played back on full range/low distortion systems. The engineer purposely manipulates the sonic qualities of the recording to sound best on lo-fi systems. There's also the possibility that listening in a dealer's showroom is not conducive to the enjoyment of music. Your mind may have been in an analytical mode as opposed to an get down and boogie frame of mind. BTW, what was the track you played?

I agree/disagree with Sean. A good system should sound very good to the primary listener of the system, but it should also sound reasonably good to any educated listener. It's not an entirely subjective experience.