Shaking head in disbelief

Today's sound, errr..... is over clinical for my taste. While audio enthusiasts welcome the promise of new technologies as we always believe it is a betterment, we want technologies to serve the music. While most audio enthusiasts seek higher fidelity, they lose sight of musicality and how music should sound.  Woodwind with rosin flavor, brass with metallic-ness, strings with silkiness and percussion with grandeur, you get what I mean. Voices are more complicated due to complexity and diversity but we can almost identify its rightness if you are familiar with the piece. Emotional connection is hard to explain and it is very individual. For instance, I played Elvis Presley to an individual, he wasn't moved.

Let me bring down to you, transparency when it is overdone, voice becomes thin and flat. What happens is tone and texture are somewhat watered down. We are listening to soul-less hi-fi fireworks, not music. You will be hard pressed not to be amazed by the resolution on first listening, the overwhelming micro-detail, the openness, the transparency and what not that led you to think higher order of sound. This is sound, not music. Worst is tempered dynamics, music loses its electricity. The drag kills the music. Ok, recordings are to share the blame for the compression. There is no turning back once you heard real dynamisms.

Good sound is about realism and when you listen to it, it never cast any doubts that you are listening to a playback.  

Noises are, to me, a part of realism as long it is not standing waves. Far too often, people behind the recording add or remove this. However, total absence of noise is the primary desire and goal of audio enthusiast, a dire want. They damp the room in hope to listen more but the truth is they pawn away soundstage. The argument of wanting to listen to what is being recorded is a castle in the air because you don't really know what is on the it in the first place. I'm not in this school of thought, I want the pleasure listening to music but never losing sight of tone, texture and dynamics. I must make this very clear because some take this to the other extreme with sugar coated sound.

Lastly, build your system to your music library. Forget about one system fits all because it doesn't. 

My relection

Doc said "Rest, you will be out for at least three weeks." This is a blow to me, to feel helpless losing my mobility. Every stride meets with a sharp pain; I realized that my knee starts to show its age. Hence, the thought of penning.... my reflection on audio.

Audio is my passion. Looking back, my passion spans more than three decades with some intermittent breaks. But what I want to stress is that number of years has no bearing in audio capability, but the depth of trying things out. These senseless and crazy things your peers ridiculed and laugh at you. Feeling jaded now, admittedly, the day of crazy tweaking is now behind me. I have had my share of success. At the end of the day, you learn what work and what not, and thus solutions to alleviate problems in most situations. At one glance of the system, I know where to work is needed.

While audio upgrade is the quick fix, for most part, it mitigates the problems. You learn about respective house sound. Further spending leads to a vicious cycle of doubts and anxiety as it introduces a new set of problems, until the day you find your senses. Perfect sound never exists, and good sound does not cost a lot. 

Sound is like water. It is formless, it has power. Tone and dynamics are your first audio commandment, hands down. A system that doesn't do tone is a failed system nor another boom box. But no, many audiophiles have funny idea of sound derive from their creativity likewise a painter who uses colors at his will. Things get worst from there when they judge others from their narrow perspective when both could not agree to disagree. For instance, the mischievous noble sound as they coined, with unheard of silky highs with astounding clarity. Inviting as it may get, many falls for this attribute. The question I would ask if this level of silky highs real or a fabricated sound. Let's check the gain and loss, the mids and upper bass is thinned out for the sake this protrusion. While it may get away with classical and jazz music, pop music will sound ... unfulfilling and unrealistic. Lean meat without the adequate fat.

Henceforth, without steadfast clench on righteous sound, you will be a headless chicken. Soon enough, frustrated and quit. I ask of you not to take my words lightly; filter and digest them to decide their worthiness.