Tvad, I could not agree with you more. It is true that "one size does not fit all in this hobby". Hobby being the operative word. No point begrudging someone who wants his system to sound a certain way, even if that means it will have little resemblance to live music. After all, anyone who can't enjoy a great performance on a table radio, is missing the point, IMO.
Having said that, I think there is a great deal to be gained from applying certain standards to this hobby. Two in particular: that the end result should strive to sound as close as possible to live music, or that the end result should sound as close as possible to what the producer heard in the control room. The only time that I have a problem is when hobbyists start saying things like "component X is more accurate than component Z", or "component A blows away component B". I have to ask: compared to what?. And how did you arrive at this conclusion? Often times it becomes pretty obvious that there is no basis for those proclamations.
It has been said countless times that because every hall, or club, or studio, sounds different; and that because it is usually impossible to know with certainty what the producer or engineer had in mind when a recording was made, that comparisons to live music are irrelevant. I disagree. I think most hobbyists focus on tonal issues. These are the easiest to hear and pin point as problems. I contend that there are qualities to the sound of a live performance, even when amplified excessively or simply poorly, that come through "loud and clear", and familiarity with these can be very useful in evaluating a hi-fi component. These qualities usually have to do with the area of dynamics. The sound has a sense of directness, of speed, of connection to the performer that is immediately recognizable. It doesn't matter wether it's unamplified acoustic music, or electronic rock or jazz. Even if the sound has been distorted tonally by processing or too much amplification, that speed will be there to a greater degree than what one hears come out of our systems after all the amplification, eq, conversion, mixing, etc. that the sound suffers in the process of getting from the microphone to when it comes out of our speakers.
Having said that, I think there is a great deal to be gained from applying certain standards to this hobby. Two in particular: that the end result should strive to sound as close as possible to live music, or that the end result should sound as close as possible to what the producer heard in the control room. The only time that I have a problem is when hobbyists start saying things like "component X is more accurate than component Z", or "component A blows away component B". I have to ask: compared to what?. And how did you arrive at this conclusion? Often times it becomes pretty obvious that there is no basis for those proclamations.
It has been said countless times that because every hall, or club, or studio, sounds different; and that because it is usually impossible to know with certainty what the producer or engineer had in mind when a recording was made, that comparisons to live music are irrelevant. I disagree. I think most hobbyists focus on tonal issues. These are the easiest to hear and pin point as problems. I contend that there are qualities to the sound of a live performance, even when amplified excessively or simply poorly, that come through "loud and clear", and familiarity with these can be very useful in evaluating a hi-fi component. These qualities usually have to do with the area of dynamics. The sound has a sense of directness, of speed, of connection to the performer that is immediately recognizable. It doesn't matter wether it's unamplified acoustic music, or electronic rock or jazz. Even if the sound has been distorted tonally by processing or too much amplification, that speed will be there to a greater degree than what one hears come out of our systems after all the amplification, eq, conversion, mixing, etc. that the sound suffers in the process of getting from the microphone to when it comes out of our speakers.