Two Type of sound and listener preference are there more?

Micro and macro detail imperative to get the emotion of reproduced sounds.  What is musical to some, may not be musical to others.  There have been so many great posts in this thread about that already.  

A great speaker will give you all the detail that it is fed and it can still  be highly 'musical' for lack of a better term.  Why can't a speaker give you the emotions of a YoYo Ma playing Kol Nidrey while still being able to give you the bite of a horn section.  I honestly have never had 'hurt ears' from a brass section.  Honestly, live music shouldn't ever hurt your ears, unless it's over amplified rock or something like that.  

I was a drummer before the MS and my ears never hurt after any session I can remember.  Even the strike of a triangle shouldn't give anyone a headache when heard live.

Forget which poster said make a recording and play that back to see how the system sounds.  I love that.  We used to do that all the time in the studio with the Revox Reels.

If it’s on the recording it got there somehow. It’s ‘supposed to be there’.  Go listen to older jazz like the Swedish Jazz at the Pawn Shop. Audiophile recording. You here the glasses clicking and can almost smell the smoke in your room.  Musical as heck and on a great system just fun to listen to. Musical and accurate and detailed can and should all be in the same camp. Even great speakers and systems that have a different flavor can give you all of it and should. Jmho

V would be the Wilson gear.  Very fun with the new tweeter.  The IEM folks LOVE the various fun curves as they can afford to won a few different sounding ones.  Heck, Empire Ears www.empireears.com has two new full lines making it three lines of all price ranges that have totally different types of sounds.  That's like Wilson, Vandersteen, B&W and Magico all having three totally different lines of speakers in all price ranges from 1k to 100k adn they all have different curves to them.  Where would one keep all of them?  

Pretty obvious that with so many posts, there are so many types of sound folks like.  Great thread.  

Does the music make your toes tap?  There are different flavors in the high end.  Components certainly have a 'house sound' to them.  We all know what we like and don't like, but all too often we listen to dealers or even friends who are with us, thinking they know more and we should like what they do. 

This thread has made me wonder, what if you were to go into a rooms with different sounding systems set up and you didn't know the price, couldn't see anything.  What would you pick?  No personal contact with anyone while in teh room and not until you have chosen your system.  What would you chose?  I have often gone to dealers and asked ahead of time to have them set up their three best systems in three different rooms (if they had three) and not tell me the cost.  It's a fun test and it tells you a lot as to what made my toes tap, thats for sure.

Let's just go into everyone's brain to see how much their pleasure centers light up on each system and each tracked played.  That's the truth if folks want to label things.  It's even scientific to make those folks happy (daughter is a physic's major and I am more of a show me guy).

"We set up a Naim system with ATC SCM 40 on a Naim NAC 272, 250dr, XPS system with Isotek power conditioning, all high performance cabling, and the sound was very realistic, with an excellent sense of image width depth, clarity and dynamics. The top end was very clear.

We played Beatles a Hard Days Night and it sounded like a great 60's recording, with a tad bit of brittleness on top, went to Black Sabath and it was spooky. Played some more modern recordings and the sound was more refined.

The point is the Beatles recording sounded like a recording from its time, the slight hardness was in the recording. and the system accurately conveyed that, if you don't like reality a system such as this one might not be to your tastes, YMMV"

Using your words, how can you know since you weren't at the recording.  

Hearing is personal, so as you say "One personas nirvanaha is another persons hell."  Based on that, maybe you should not be so absolute and just say to YOUR EARS.......this is how something sounded.  Maybe not even write down what gear you used that you sell.  it's just a thought Dave, that's all. Nothing more than that.

Bottom line is that the question may make folks think, but in teh end, it's irrelevant as we like what we like and don't like what we don't like.  It's personal and maybe factors change constantly.  

I used to spend a ton of time recording in a studio.  I know what my interpretation was, but that also differed from others. etc...  A good friend of mine owns a store in Houston and he spent many of his years recording for some of the greats in the industry.  He has plenty of reels of 'live recordings' that he can call on.  It still comes down to what moves us and who doesn't.  

Statman makes the most sense. It’s really kind of a silly question when you read the posts and think about it. 

great story Wolf.  I love that.  I have spent a lot of time in studio years ago.  I never played so loudly that it hurt our ears, lol.  I would hate to hear how the final tape sounded, lol....wow.