What is Musicality?

Put your favorite record on the player.

Set the volume.

Sit in your favorite chair

Close your eyes

Does it honestly sound live - that is musicality for better or worse.

Musicality is neutrality in the extreme in regard to high end audio set up to perfection, it's when that record or CD that you've heard a thousand times, sounds brand new.

Musicality is a subjective term that describes natural sounding music. You can't break it down into a technical description because the whole point is to describe the sum total of technical specs. Musicality means the system sounds right. The tone and timbre is correct. The frequency balance is not artificially augmented, but naturally flat. There are no shortcuts like huge negative feedback, yet the music is not distorted.

It is easy to measure one spec, but the brain is a much more sophisticated analyzer. We perceive everything at once, and if the music sounds like Julia Fisher is in the room playing the Bach Concerto, the system has musicality. I'll put it another way- try going back to an all-in-one-box system, and you will know what "musicality" is not!

I think musicality has to do with the ability to express heart and soul, the ability to express a certain feeling and convey it in a way that listeners feel or relate to that same feeling. Musicality is expression of what is within one's self through the medium of melody and harmony, and different musicians have different levels of accomplishment, as well as simply having different interpretations of a piece, that is all subjectively enjoyed by each audience member. No person in the audience perceives the performance the exact same way, with some preferring other artists, techniques, or styles, none of which is right nor wrong, simply preferred.

I believe that the most 'musical' system is that which does not lose any information from the media it obtained it from, since the system itself is not expressing anything in and of itself, but simply reproducing that which was provided. Still, technique to an artist is not necessarily musicality (though it does provide better ability to express it), and likewise detail, soundstaging and perfect frequency response does not guarantee a 'musical' system.

I have heard live performances that were technically flawless, but inspired no emotion from me, and have heard performances where notes were missed but I still cried. The same has happened for me with systems, some sounding great in technical regards yet I am unmoved, while others may not accomplish all the 'audiophile' requirements but still grip me. I believe that this is the conundrum we all discuss, and all try to solve in our own systems with our own list of priorities of what makes up 'musicality'. Everybody's lists are most assuredly ordered differently, judging by the systems put together here!

I think for most audio enthusiast, musicality is LOVING what you hear without getting tired or fatigued by it where it moves you with emotion. Maybe I should attach a SHIATSU massager on my audio system, I just might find MUSICALITY out of that!