GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Accuracy vs. Musicality (and YMMV)

Post Subject: What is even possible?Posted by rowuk on: 1/9/2026

Thank you Paul for your well developed thoughts.
Over Christmas I had a discussion with someone visiting about what they wanted in playback. They claimed that their goal was accuracy, something in my view that is so impossible that I refuse to discuss it. There is no recreation in the audio world as the technology does not even come close. The best that we can get in my view, is PLAUSIBLE (reasonable placement and size of instruments, violins doing violin things, trumpets doing trumpet things with no claims that the instruments are a hologram of the original). If the sound field gives me the impression that it "could have happened", I am delighted. "Could have happened" IMHO needs texture, tone, articulation and above all space.
My goals for 2026 are specifically to get more of what I have in under 90dB to playback up to 95dB in an attempt to make the "louder" orchestral passages more plausible. I am happy with my chamber music playback and many of the symphonic recordings on LP, but the masters of live performances that have no compression offer challenges that I want to be better in my own 4 walls.
The composers intentions as a goal in playback is a dangerous rabbit hole as for the most part, we do not know if the composer had the period sound in their heads or if they had their own world and only expressed it with the tools that they had at the time. Would Bach have composed differently if he had modern chromatic possibilities? Would Beethoven have scored his 9th symphony differently if he was not deaf? What would Bruckner have done differently if he had modern instruments and tuning that allow 20dB more volume than his period instruments? I know that when my stereo is turned off, and I am reading a score, in many cases my imagination is NOT limited to the color of the instrument assigned to the notes being read. Maybe a big crescendo was only a wave in the mind of the composer, that they "voiced" as close as they could get to their intention. That "wave" in the listening room is subject to many influencing factors.

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