Musicality vs Transparency & Detail

My experience of Shindo gear is that it is as "detailed" as the source it is fed.
It redefined "transparency" for me.
But somehow puts one off the track of such intellectual disection of the music and instead sucks you into the groove,funk,flow of whatever you are listening to.
I never feel like I am missing any details when I listen to my Shindo,and this from someone who's system used to be based on valhalla cables and the DCS stack.

I agree with Rushton. One way to put it is that true transparancy, and thusly true detail, has nothing to do with exagerated sense of detail via brightness or edginess, which are distortions. Noise that rides the signal, as opposed to noise floor, can result in a brighter, edgier, superficially more detailed sound but is actually masking true detail. Listen for a lack of harsh edge coupled with a sense of more information and naturalness, being sure to use reference recordings that you can trust to be naturally and well recorded. If you build your system around this you will have a magically revealing system that is very satisfying.

Bear in mind that bad recordings will sound bad, but you won't be adding insult to injury. You can, if you want, prioritize components that are smoothed over as opposed to simply lacking in harshness, and end up with a system that is forgiving of bad recordings, at the expense of low level detail that fleshes out the palpable you-are-there/they-are-here effect.

Assessing each component can be tricky though, since a better down stream component can reveal upstream coodies. It can be done though.

Bear in mind that bad recordings will sound bad, but you won't be adding insult to injury.

I'm reminded of the story about a well known reviewer who vastly preferred a given set of cables because they made one well-treasured recording sound wonderful. Unfortunately, that well-treasured recording was really a sonic disaster with sharp, edgy sonics. The cables smoothed over all the edginess, added a mid-bass boost, rolled off the top end, and made that one record very listenable. For this reviewer, there was no question but that this cable was far superior to another cable on hand that had made some outstandingly well-recorded orchestral LPs sound wonderful in the reviewer's same system just hours earlier, but allowed the "well-treasured" LP to sound like it's true self.
.

The other issue I didn't quite cover is that some components, most easily speakers, can editorialize the frequency response by being simply brighter or less bright, etc., by adding or subtracting frequency amplitude without necessarily adding edginess, boominess, or other distortions. A component that is simply brighter, or one that lacks bass, can seem more detailed but is not, of course.

I agree that true transparancy and true detail has nothing to do with an exaggerated sense of edginess or brightness. As the detail resolution and transparancy of my components increases, I find that the number of sonically "bad" recordings has gradually but surely diminished, while the number of musically worthwhile performances has steadily increased.

However, components are only tools in the hands of the person setting up and maintaining the audio system, and if he does not do a good job, good components will likely be a waste (or even counterproductive).

Regarding speakers that are developed for monitoring purposes, I agree that there are some that are quite good, but then there are also clunkers like the Yamaha NS-10m. I've heard studio sound that was quite good, but I've also heard obnoxiously bad sound in a recording studio. Once again, it's not about what things are called, but the individual component - and the person using them.