JoeThePop
Brussels Sprout King
Why I have always wanted my integrated amps and receivers to at least have bass and treble controls. The straight wire with gain leaves me no choice to “engineer” the sound to my room or liking.
Striking a balance between musicality and resolution
- Thread starter Carlos269
- Start date
This nails it for me. I've pretty much jumped off the upgrade merry-go-round, accept my limitations, and just listen to what tags me emotionally. There is very little night and day for me these days, but a plethora of hair splitting that I have to really focus in on to discern. In the systems that are noticably better, I can't justify the exponential increase in cost for the incremental increase in enjoyment. Some may feel I'm missing something, but I'm not feeling left out because others beleive they derive more enjoyment than I do from their systems.
I'll try listening to the samples above later through my DAC and main rig as they should fare better there than on my phone or laptop speakers. Hopefully, they will sound obvilously different, but I won't be surprised if even volume matched one doesn't grab me more than the other.
To each their own...
i'm not sure there is any meaning to do that.
I a nutshell what i was trying to say is:
1. Advanced audio reproduction IMO make sense only in a context of symphonic music (or some opera or choral excerpts ) not only die to complex harmonic structure and instrument interaction , but mostly due to meaningful and deep content of the music.
2. Audio resolution (IMO) is a very interesting exercise, when you can in the live recording in the Carnegie Hall hear sound of the subway train or in the vocal recording of your favorite singer you can hear how bubbles of saliva are popping up in the corner of the mouth.
3. Music resolution (IMO) is, for example when you can hear difference in emotional interpretations of the same music by different conductor, orchestra etc. when some well recorded music will leave you emotionally untouched and the same music in another recording will literally make you stop breathing...
I'm not sure if that achievable by very accurate reproduction of the SOUND of the original event or by some other means, but that what i'm trying to achieve and i think (hope) in the last many years i've made some progress.
Pat McGinty
Site Supporter
I've spent 30+ years at the intersection of musicality and resolution, and would like to add that musicality without resolution can work beautifully, but resolution without musicality is just a waste.
It's funny, but the situation is a tad more complex than you might expect.
Back in 1994 I introduced a speaker that went on to sell by the tens of thousands, got rave reviews and is still in prized by owners and on the used market. Kestrel. What made Kestrel special was NOT its resolution - which was merely "good", but its endearing emotive abilities. The trick was that the resolution was uniformly "good" from top-to-bottom. So it really hung together and expressed the music.
I was a newbie at the time, but noticed pretty quickly that, when guys requested a tweeter upgrade - yeah you'd get more resolved treble - but the speaker, as a whole, the speaker didn't work as well. I quit complying with those requests - you need to up the game across the entire speaker.
Really, you can just buy treble resolution. But midrange and (especially) low frequency resolution are a very different story. Top level treble is easy, yeah, but it needs to be part of a highly resolved whole to work out. It's that lack of balance that robs you of musicality.
But it's more than just detail resolution.
When you pay the price for an excellent tweeter two properties come in the bargain - detail resolution, of course, and near ideal dynamic resolution. The DR resolution just kinda naturally "falls out" of top tweeter design and execution. But that's much less true in the midrange and is an out-and-out battle in the bass. Truth be told: near ideal DR in the bass is exceedingly rare. And expensive.
I'll bet that the big, expensive systems noted as 'wanting' by the @prime minister had shortfalls, not so much on detail res, but on their evenness of dynamic resolution.
It's funny, but the situation is a tad more complex than you might expect.
Back in 1994 I introduced a speaker that went on to sell by the tens of thousands, got rave reviews and is still in prized by owners and on the used market. Kestrel. What made Kestrel special was NOT its resolution - which was merely "good", but its endearing emotive abilities. The trick was that the resolution was uniformly "good" from top-to-bottom. So it really hung together and expressed the music.
I was a newbie at the time, but noticed pretty quickly that, when guys requested a tweeter upgrade - yeah you'd get more resolved treble - but the speaker, as a whole, the speaker didn't work as well. I quit complying with those requests - you need to up the game across the entire speaker.
Really, you can just buy treble resolution. But midrange and (especially) low frequency resolution are a very different story. Top level treble is easy, yeah, but it needs to be part of a highly resolved whole to work out. It's that lack of balance that robs you of musicality.
But it's more than just detail resolution.
When you pay the price for an excellent tweeter two properties come in the bargain - detail resolution, of course, and near ideal dynamic resolution. The DR resolution just kinda naturally "falls out" of top tweeter design and execution. But that's much less true in the midrange and is an out-and-out battle in the bass. Truth be told: near ideal DR in the bass is exceedingly rare. And expensive.
I'll bet that the big, expensive systems noted as 'wanting' by the @prime minister had shortfalls, not so much on detail res, but on their evenness of dynamic resolution.
Really excellent contribution to this discussion. I agree that the coherence of the presentation is just as, or perhaps even more, important as a whole. There are many elements at play when it comes to audio reproduction and presentation and coherence is certainly one of the most important factors when it comes to musicality.
@Carlos269 opened a great topic. tho i'm one of those people who cant discern differences in youtube video sonics thru my computer speakers, so those did not help me here. imho drawing a balance b/w "resolution" and "musicality" is what leads to success in this hobby.
i believe that there can be too much resolution (in the way that i, and i think Carlos269) define it. it can lead to brittle edges etc. can there be too much musicality? its hard to argue yes, but if the attempt toward musicality hides too much detail, then i'd say yes. the answer for most listeners would be in the balance!
i believe that there can be too much resolution (in the way that i, and i think Carlos269) define it. it can lead to brittle edges etc. can there be too much musicality? its hard to argue yes, but if the attempt toward musicality hides too much detail, then i'd say yes. the answer for most listeners would be in the balance!
PS an analogy to audio resolution from the world of digital photography might be "sharpness". can there be too much sharpness in a photo? play with the sharpness slider in your photo program and see. to me, the answer is yes. after some point, the enhanced sharpness becomes a negative. i think that the same can happen with audio.
Lucky Pierre
Site Supporter
Amen, brother
To me, musicality is like art, in the ear of the beholder. While resolution is tangible and directly related to accuracy. For a home audio system to accurately reproduce music it must be highly resolving. From a technical perspective, we do not listen to pure sinusoidal frequency tones, but rather to complex composite sound waves. To reproduce these complex electrical and acoustical music signals the system must posses extended bandwidth at both frequency extremes because these complex signals are made up of both correlated and uncorrelated frequencies, both in and out of the audible frequency spectrum.
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While resolution and bandwidth could be important for fidelity, they don’t capture the soul of music. A system can be technically perfect yet emotionally sterile. (sorry for the triviality)
Tone, warmth, and timing evoke emotion far more than raw resolution.
Microdynamics and phrasing bring out the human touch in performances.
System synergy—how components interact—can create magic that specs alone can’t explain. (again sorry for the triviality))
Accuracy in most cases is an easy ignorable parameter: SET amplifier ? There are so many method to get way better bandwidth and distortions figures in amplification, but we somehow prefer to stay with the SET. The same goes with the high efficiency speakers, horns or direct radiators. Somewhere at the low frequencies primary frequence meets distortions (50:50) and proceed to go below distortion level, and that is still in the audible range. We call that "tone" ...
Musicality transcends resolution and "accuracy" It’s not just about what we hear—it’s about what we feel. A truly engaging audio system doesn’t just reproduce sound; it breathes life into it, revealing the emotional contours that make music unforgettable.
Tone, warmth, and timing evoke emotion far more than raw resolution.
Microdynamics and phrasing bring out the human touch in performances.
System synergy—how components interact—can create magic that specs alone can’t explain. (again sorry for the triviality))
Accuracy in most cases is an easy ignorable parameter: SET amplifier ? There are so many method to get way better bandwidth and distortions figures in amplification, but we somehow prefer to stay with the SET. The same goes with the high efficiency speakers, horns or direct radiators. Somewhere at the low frequencies primary frequence meets distortions (50:50) and proceed to go below distortion level, and that is still in the audible range. We call that "tone" ...
Musicality transcends resolution and "accuracy" It’s not just about what we hear—it’s about what we feel. A truly engaging audio system doesn’t just reproduce sound; it breathes life into it, revealing the emotional contours that make music unforgettable.
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Which brings us back to the original motivation for my original post. I enjoy SET and DHT amplification and know how “musical” it can sound. So musicality is a big thing for me, but along with that sound I also want to hear more detail and nuance, which I have been able to achieve. Yet there are others who believe that too much delineation and detail causes the brain to focus on those attention grabbing detail and this robs the music of flow and “musicality”. If you can use the audio recordings I shared, it is clear, at least to me, that my OKTAN6 ultimate horn system delivers more resolution during the playback of the same track, streamed from Tidal, than two of my other systems, the Test Bed and Pinnacle horn system, but is it the most musical of the three systems? That is the question I have asked and answered to myself and that is what made me post this discussion topic for the members here.
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What Murray Crosby invented in 1949 as emphasis and de-emphasis is very much what recording studios use today as two part preserved audio, and will continue to do so. The magic happens because of usually equal rate compression and expansion, and equal rate emphasis and de-emphasis. It is principally about preserving what the artist recorded in terms of dynamic range, which is the softest nuance to the loudest peaks. The mastering engineer if he uses compression will do so not as to compress, but as to, continue to preserve dynamic range in the medium of the day, which is because in time a greater dynamic range usually presents itself. So not so much as have compression and its artifact although useful with some instruments including vocals , but to look after the recording for a future date . Basically the rate of compression (a) will match the rate of expansion (b) like 2 to 1 and 1 to 2, which happens to be the ratio DBX used with Type 1 noise reduction. A great example being Thelma Houston's "pressure cooker" where the LP direct to disc preserved the recording well, but only so much so as when the LP could no longer be printed, which is when the two track master took over. Perhaps Bill Schnee can let us know, if it was Dolby or DBX used on the 2 track master ?
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My wife and I share a love of 80’s new wave and post-punk music. I was speaking with her about the subject of striking a balance between musicality and resolution. Her focus is mostly on the vibe and lyrics of the music and not the sound qualities as most would expect but she has a keen ear for what sounds right versus etched or thin sounding. Many times I accuse her of being a bass-head as she likes a sound with mid & deep bass’s fullness and impact, while I prefer a more articulate and delineated bass line. During this past weekend’s listening session I made the following two audio recordings of my Test Bed system playing a couple of our favorite songs after I had tuned the system to what I think is a good balance between musicality and resolution to hear what she thought:
No new audio recordings from last night’s listening session as the Test Bed system sounded the same as the week before, really great with a good level of detail and musicality. Here is another audio recording from last weekend’s listening session that conveys the balanced sound that I’m hearing in the room:
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