Most audiophiles don't recognize the the music industry is a business designed to make money. Real money. Those of us interested in high quality reproduction do not constitute a large enough market to make 'real money'. For the most part superior recordings are made by boutique labels recording 2nd tier talent. Occasionally you'll get a great performance AND a great recording. Either from the boutique company or a mainstream company where the artist and/or producer is interested in high quality. Consequently most recordings are/were made with a great deal of compromises made to sound 'good' on mediocre systems. For many years, up until about 10 years ago, the medium of home reproduction was limited by the delivery system itself. Wax cylinders, shellac discs, stereo LPs, reel to reel, and cassettes, have finally given way to a home medium that has the POTENTIAL to reproduce a realistic presentation that comes very close to a live event. The problem is that what constitutes the audiophile market is still too small to have the recording companies prioritize quality. Given all of that, it is relatively easy to reproduce the vast majority of recordings as well as they can be reproduced given the compromises inherent in the recordings themselves. In many cases, depending on the age of the recording, you're hearing it better than the engineer, producer, and mastering engineer heard it. Unless one talks about purely digital recordings or re-masters made for CD, the original masters made for LP are band limited and compressed dynamically to 'fit' on the medium without distorting at any point in the reproducing chain. As long as the music itself is good enough, I don't mind 'hearing past' those limitations. Most of us have systems, hopefully, that are reasonably linear, and dynamic enough to reproduce the vast majority of recordings made. As long as one doesn't hobble oneself with acoustically poor listening rooms, flea sized amps, inefficient speakers, band limited, phase mangling, poorly designed, poorly implemented, noisy, and mismatched components, you're home free. ;) This can be achieved at a relatively modest cost, less than $3000. Of course that amount, to some, is ridiculously high for a 2 channel system, for others peanuts. Where a lot of people get into trouble is putting together 'flavor of the month' systems that sound good for awhile but then reveal their limitations after extended listening. Welcome to the learning curve! As with any sensory experience, the more you pay attention, the more you notice. The senses can be honed. The more one knows what to listen for the more discriminating one becomes. It is rare that one gets it 'right' from the start. Even if you do get it right, the advances in technology keep moving the goal posts farther and farther distant. The good news is that we're getting to the point where certain links in the reproduction chain have advanced far enough to the point human perception can't discriminate an improvement at a reasonable cost. I don't know where I'm going with this so I'll just stop.
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