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About music listening 

   There is a lot of misunderstandings about audio quality in general so i will try to put some info here. It will explain a lot if you follow the objective way of thinking. Unfortunately music perception is very subjective thing.

  •  Different people hear things differently. Some of them are more sensitive to some frequencies or other nuances. Also you can train your hearing. It's not better hearing by itself it's just different way of perceiving the sounds. Like conductor of the orchestra can tell which violin is playing a little off. 

  • Music playing can sound good or bad will depend on the mood of the listener drastically. If you are relaxed and feel comfortable. You are happy and hungry for music. Have a glass of wine or other benefits so music can sound absolutely fantastic. And if you are stressed and tired, angry and in a hurry then the same music on same system can sound bad and can be not interesting to you at all.

  • Hearing is subjective and there are studies which show that you hear what you expect. https://neurosciencenews.com/hearing-expectation-17559/  So if you believe that A is better than B you will hear that even that is not true. It is not bad. If you like it and it helps you that is good. Just have to know it and understand it objectively. It is kind of placebo drugs. Even if they have no active substance they can help. And if they help the goal is achieved.

  • Distortions of playback system can make music sound worse or more pleasant. It depends on the distortions itself. Usually valve amplifier distortions are very nice sounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_sound#Harmonic_content_and_distortion. And because they have high output impedance, they lower the distortions of the speaker driver. Less high order distortions generated in loudspeaker driver itself http://hephaestusaudio.com/media/2008/12/j12-distortion-reduction-mc-current-drive.pdf and https://www.current-drive.info. Vinyl record also distorts much compared to digital record, but the record itself can be with better dynamic range. E.g. due to loudness war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war 

  • Also the process of listening to vinyl can add some benefits psychologically. It is the process. And you more listen instead of switching tracks. Listening from start to end helps to enjoy music better.

  • So listening experience depends on these and many other factors. Like reflections, loudspeakers directivity, room acoustics artificial stereo and other. Everything is not bad or good. It is the way how you address this. Very common approach is to change audio gear constantly and find the most satisfying listening experience. The variations are endless.

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And my approach is...

Knowing that mentioned above and other aspects i think that audio reproduction system has to:

  • Add little as possible to the sound

Even knowing that the system with added distortions can sound better subjectively, but that should be left for the audio engineers and musicians.

This way we have a control over the results. If you wish to add some kind of distortions yourself you can do it in digital domain.That way you can add in controlled way. You can change it anytime or simulate anything. With accurate system in general one can simulate non accurate system, but not the other way. That's my approach.

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