Compromises (recording quality)

Albert, I could not have said it better. I only buy well performed music regardless of the sound quality. My system even makes the bad sounding ones listenable.

I have never gone for an "audiophile" sound. Take all the various terms like staging, transparency, depth, detailed, etc, etc. I have never been in a live music setting where the sound was as perfect as the systems people build. If there is something I go for that is defined in audio terms, it would be PRAT (pace, rhythm and timing); better known simply as music.

Let me play the devils advocate...

Are some actually suggesting that you dumb down a system so it can play bad recordings passably...disguise them by changing the sound through added distortion or fundamental changes in tonality or timbre?

The tail wagging the dog!

A system not based on accurate sound reproduction but one that sugar coats and candy wraps bad recordings. In essence more recordings will sound alike. Differences between recordings will all suffer from sugar coating; far less evident differences from track to track, recording to recording; blemishes smoothed away like the artist's air-brush in playboy. A dream world of syrupy pleasant sound...but totally out of touch with reality.

Surely this is mediocrity?

Sugar Coating?? Why spend megabucks on a system that clearly reproduces all the noise and distortions that are on most recordings, especially vinyl. Isn't that what you are doing by building a system to play perfect recording perfectly? No wonder I get a headache in most of the rooms at CES.

I would think to enjoy your system to the fullest you would want to accentuate the positive and diminish the bad. I'm with Albert.

Agree with Albertporter completely...particularly on the issue of distortion, and, next, on the issue of "forgiving" speakers. This is not "dumbing down" a system. In fact, it seems kind of simple (in the end, though getting there is hard work): If a system sounds too bright on most material (but seems to sound great on "audiophile" recordings), there is probably something wrong with the system (and brightness is, of course, one of the most common faults of high end gear). The "audiophile" recordings will still sound great (maybe even better) once you tame the brightness out of the system. It seems to me that, in the end, the most truly natural and neutral system will have about the right tonal balance on most recordings, sound bright on some, and sound dark on others, in roughly the same proportion...sort of an averaging out, tonal-balance-wise. Yet most systems I've heard in the hi-fi shops are too bright. The audiophile recordings can take it (sort of), but the more typical material quickly becomes intolerable to the ear. That's not "accuracy," in my view. (Though it sells, evidently.)

its become my opinion over the last three decades, that if i intended to be both a 'stereo-type' and a music collector, that the thrills each of these hobbies hold, had to be held apart for sanity's sake. Sometimes they meet, but for the most part if you love an artist or a recording that is technically average...it simply is what it is.....by the same token, the best sounding equipment current or future (on a technical level), never lives up to the one you regret getting rid of.....comes with the territory and the beat goes on