Accuracy vs. Enjoyment

Short answer? Two systems...

rvpiano

Actually, one can have both characteristics if desired. Careful selection of gear and system synergy will yield accuracy, enjoyment.  I will report that it is probably easier to assemble a system for musical enjoyment.
This is such a great hobby.   Happy Listening!

@rvpiano   +1 for jafant   You really can assemble a system which is accurate and musically pleasing even with imperfect media.  The very quest you ask about is what for many of its is the driving force in assembling our gear and massaging that gear with appropriate attention to footers, tubes, decoupling of speakers and subwoofers from the sound room and lest we forget proper and judicious room treatment. It takes time to get it all right but when you do, you can just sit back and let the beauty of the music wash over you.

I agree with the responses from Jafant and Hifiman5. I’ve found that improvements in accuracy, especially with respect to resolution of fine detail, can make mediocre or poor recordings sound more enjoyable. As well as improving the reproduction of great recordings, of course.

A good example of that would be an orchestral recording having overly bright string sound. I’ve found that the brightness will be less objectionable if the sound of massed strings is reproduced in an accurate and detailed manner than if it is reproduced with less resolution of detail, and consequently in a more homogenized manner.

I’ll mention also that I’ve come to believe that time coherence can be a significant contributor to achieving that. Most speakers are not time coherent, including all speakers having crossover slopes that are more than 6 db/octave, which means nearly all speakers that have crossovers and are not made by Vandersteen, Thiel, Green Mountain Audio, and perhaps one or two others. And the addition of a DEQX to my system a couple of years ago, which can bring any speaker that is not time coherent significantly closer to being so, has helped to firm up that conclusion in my mind. Another member here who is very experienced with time coherent speakers had made a similar point here in the long-running DEQX thread. Comparisons I’ve made between listening via speakers and listening via my highly detailed and time coherent Stax electrostatic headphones have also led me to that conclusion.

Best regards,
-- Al

Al,
"I've found that improvements in accuracy, especially with respect to resolution of fine detail, can make mediocre or poor recordings sound more enjoyable. As well as improving the reproduction of great recordings, of course"

I couldn't agree more. It's exactly why I go through all the trouble of it.

I also agree it is possible (and what one would want) to have a system with great detail, and accuracy, yet sounds pleasing.

+1 @jafant


Accurate speakers and an accurate Power amp and accurate source coupled with your favourite flavourful tube preamp is a way to have your cake and eat it!!!

P.S. to my previous post:  RV, I believe that your Dahlquist DQ20 speakers use first-order (6 db/octave) crossover slopes and are time coherent.  I'm not certain of that, though.

Best regards,
-- Al 

Al, your thinking on the subject is supported by my experience that a speaker having a midrange driver with as wide a bandwidth as possible, reproducing as much of the music as possible, is, all things being equal, a very good thing. In that way, it should therefore sound as close to that of the Stax ESL phones (I’m still happy with my SR Lambda Pros) as a speaker can. As Roger Modjeski has been opining here lately, the crossovers in speakers are more responsible for loudspeaker "problems" than are their drivers. I have long found planars that crossover from their midrange driver(s) to any woofer and/or tweeter at very low and high (respectively) frequencies very much to my liking. I am currently enjoying a pair of Eminent Technology LFT-8b’s, each of which has a pair of magnetic-planar drivers reproducing 180Hz to 10kHz, the filters at those frequencies being 1st order (6dB/octave). Not as transparent as my Quad 57’s, but pretty darn good. Transparent enough to reveal low-level musical detail to a satisfying degree, but not so transparent as to reveal the worst sound of really bad recordings. And they play much louder than the Quads! Good for Beethoven Symphonies and AC/DC ;-).

+1 @bdp24   @almarg  

Active speakers are the way to go. Proper size mid range driver is crucial. Phase compensated for perfect coherence between drivers. 

@shadorne, though shunned by audiophiles, active speakers are a very good idea. The amplifier(s) can be optimized for a known speaker load, not compromised to make it more universal. Roger Modjeski of Music Reference is now offering his own designed and built direct-drive ESL loudspeaker. The dedicated tube amplifier has no output transformer, the ESL no input transformer. And no speaker cables required! 

I think I’m raising this question because of my current setup on which good CDs are sounding wonderful, but others not so much.  I had to send  my  vintage CJ preamp out for repair three weeks ago and have replaced it temporarily with a solid state unit.  This problem was not really so evident when the CJ was in the system and performing optimally.  I guess I’ll have to patiently wait til I get it back to get consistency.

The more accurate my system gets, the more I enjoy it. 👍
To me, to be more accurate is to be more realistic.

All the best,
Nonoise

Yeah, this includes as little distortion as possible. It's amazing, provided you have a decent equipment, how much you can achieve with good cables.

Depends on what % of overly etched recordings are in your collection and in rotation.  If your system is ruthlessly accurate and lots of your discs sound bad, where's the enjoyment in that?

Has nobody ever thought of getting the most ruthlessly accurate system you can and tailoring the good and bad recordings by software. I happen to have a lot of money in my home built PC and it is chock full of anti jitter software and I have Sony Sound Forge and Magix Sequoia installed. When I come across a lousy CD no worries as all I do is tailor it to my system , if I want to tame the high frequencies or add bass to a dry recording then all it takes is a short time in my progams and it sounds great my ears and I mean only my ears because I am the one who purchased the disc and I am the one who is going to listen to it. Now we all know what one person mixes on a recording does not suit every one so this is my solution and I can then if I am happy with them store them on de-fractionalised solid state hard drives and if I want I then store the good CDs and sell on the duffers. And the software if it's good enough for the BBC it is certainly good enough for me  and I happen to think that the BBC can mix superb recordings You should hear their Proms through my Stax and Sennheiser phones, it can be trully awesome at the right levels.

I do you guys determine accuracy?
Alan

Hmmmm, so I make my own loudspeakers so therefore can measure them fairly well in terms of frequency response and distortion. They are objectively pretty close to neutral, with no sweetening peaks and valleys that are often the darlings of high end reviewers. 

HOWEVER ! :) 

That has pluses and minuses. Plus: Plays all music and movies reasonably well. My god do they play movies well! 

Minus: Does not thrill you with enhanced vocals, or rock n roll rhythms. 

Also requires a certain amount of volume before they sound their best. 

So, as before, I think tone controls should be used more. 

Best,

E

My system has been shaped toward clarity for years. All other considerations aside. Having achieved it, Backing down just a tiny bit to have a trace euphemistic slide over the rough edges is no problem. At this point I would say very few (one) CD(s) have any annoying elements. (aside from a few with more bass than I want to play through main speakers, and have it annoy the neighbors, earphone stuff).           
I lay the reward on my Marantz SA-10... which has the best D/A conversion I have ever heard.            
I used to need a tube preamp as a fancy tube buffer to do the job of smoothing the broken edges.  But since I went all-in on Furutech Duplex, the fancy tube buffer is just a tiny difference. Basically I do not need it anymore. But I do like to use it anyway.

Come on, cds are never accurate, a lot of music is simply not there. Or as some might say there is simply no available device outside of pro equipment to get it out. Clarity is a good thing but for me it is not above all.

How it compares to live non-amplified instruments. For instance, do drums sound like drums? Do they have the same impact? Do voices have the clarity of actual people singing in front of you? Do acoustic guitars sound real? Bass is a little tougher since most concerts I attend use an electric bass so what I look for there is depth of sound & if it seems in any way bloated or muddy. Impact of course is important there as well. 

By the way, speaking of accuracy and clarity vs musicality or in addition to it, it was interesting to compare Purist Audio Neptune fluid and Tchernov Reference interconnects. About the same level. Tchernov are all about clarity and balance, Purist offers a lot of that too plus other things. I use both but prefer Purist with almost all recordings and I never use Tchernov with digital, there you can't compare, though Tchernov is still very good.
I know for a fact that at least some people who like panel speakers very much like Tchernov cables. I understand that.

Both are high end in my view but not the highest end, good enough for me.

There are two types of accuracy:

"Accuracy #1" can only be obtained if your system is the exact same system the recording engineer or artist uses before they release the CD or LP because that is what they use to tweak their artwork. Not only the same system but the same acoustic environment as well since your room affects what you hear.

"Accuracy #2" is a system that has zero losses from distortion from source to speaker in a room that is acoustically ideal. And we know that does not exist.

That's why I vote enjoyment.

gs5556 / Both #1 & #2 above are unattainable. What's not unattainable (yet still progressive) is using live non amplified music as the accuracy goal while enjoying the results throughout the process.