In listening to your system(s)...what is most crucial to your enjoyment?

Increasingly I value the flow or continuity in music, that sense that you are hearing the continuing uninterrupted sequence of a musicians choices without spotlighting, added emphasis or color.  It’s actually a tricky thing for systems to realize but once you get it it’s very apparent. This should be true of all players in the mix, even those buried in the background. 

Timbre and realistic dynamics are most important to me.I've also spent a lot of time around musicians.My son teaches and plays professionally also.It's gotta sound real :)

To me, most of the audiophile attributes go out the window when it’s "right." I’m drawn into the performance and the sonic attributes are all simply ways of describing different aspects of the sound, none of which are of more importance if it ’sounds real’- something I only achieve on occasion when the recording and the system align in the room. Sure, I can examine each of those different attributes and describe them, but they are all just facets of the whole and none is the primary reason why the illusion is so convincing at times.
In terms of my personal sense of the importance of these attributes, that has evolved over time- midrange was always the most important to me, grainless, see-through. I learned to listen on Quad ’57s, starting in 1973 when I bought my first pair (and still have that pair, restored now in use in a second system).
Attack and decay of piano has always been important to me since that was my primary instrument and I have a better sense of how the system performs listening to well recorded piano. Many recordings are very challenged on this front.
Soundstage, tone, bass tautness, spatial placement of instruments, are, to me, all just further attributes that describe but don’t entirely inform the ’it sounds real’ illusion. I’m less interested in hyper-detail and more interested in the presentation of the instruments in real space, with body and dimension.
The ’flow’ that FolkFreak mentions is something that was like throwing a switch when I installed Lamm SET amps- no sense of mechanical reproduction machinery at play, but that improved more with a better phono and line stage, different phono cartridge, etc.
So, we can take it apart to analyze the what, how and why of it (which I guess is the only way to describe sound in words), but the end result is like I ’know it when I hear it.’ (I guess this is your question- what is it I’m hearing when I think it’s "right"?).
I tend to shy away from audiophile pablum and the usual warhorses, musically (I guess to each his or her own as far as that’s concerned), but being able to realize this on garden variety standard issue records makes it more meaningful and a little more challenging, given that I don’t want what I listen to dictated only by what sounds best.
Sorry for all the words, didn’t have time to make it shorter, etc.
bill hart

hello,

organic sounds and general authenticity.