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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Accuracy vs. Musicality (and YMMV)
Post Subject: My mileage does varyPosted by rowuk on: 1/22/2026
 Paul S wrote:
Great Context, Robin. And from more or less the same time and place of origin, we have Handel. So much Music pouring from that area for so many years! Starting in my youth, I was agog at their familiarity with Music, including the way it seemed to pervade the area, to the extent that there seemed to be great musicians, ensembles, orchestras, singers and chorales in every berg and hamlet, and they immediately adopted and developed recording and radio as devices for sharing the wealth.

How does this connect with Accuracy vs. Musicality (and YMMV)? Like Romy's recent post declared, one does not gather what one doesn't know.


Best regards,
Paul S

To claim accuracy, we must understand what it is that we are talking about. In the case of audio playback, there is no "accuracy", no replication of the original by any stretch of the imagination.  If we are talking about the playback of Bach organ works, we can however get accurate content in the realms of rhythm, pitch, proportion, articulation which can lead to a plausible and satisfying "musical" experience. There are many recordings so transparent, that I can close my eyes and "see" the score - if the playback is adequate. If we lose pitch accuracy, the transparency suffers. Less articulate systems can be transparent, but the rhythm can suffer. The musical experience needs additional brainwork to fill in the holes.

This brings me back to Romys mention of granite - and seeing not the block, rather the sculpture possible. Accuracy or musicality are personally defined and the object to sculpt is very dependent on the fantasy and capability of the person picking and using the tools to model our systems. This is related to my post on Bach being a child of his time. Without all of the factors listed, Bach could have just been another composer, brilliant but lost to the future or mediocre and well supported. Because his time was well trained, documented, well financed, with great public interest, he thrived in ways that others did not. We can say that Händel, Telemann, Purcell, Boyce, Torelli, Corelli also were brilliant and prolific but we can not claim that they were a REVOLUTION, a turning point in musical history. What we can say however, is that even today, Bach is often considered way too intellectual for casual listening but is casual listening a subject for the GoodSoundClub?

Sculpting intellectuality, accuracy and musicality in a sound system could also be something where we need a "Bach" to create new rules of engagement. They also would have to be a child of their time. If I think back through audio history, there are certainly "pioneers" in their own rights but the holistic genius that created a "complete" work is still missing. The rules of engagement have not really changed since the beginning of playback. Frequency response and dynamics have improved, but there still is so much missing - in fact so much that there are arguments about Accuracy vs. Musicality!

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