OT about musicality.
I guess that most can recognize that we have SQ parameters that is of technical character and that the reason we call them technical is because they are quantifiable and objective in nature. Those technical character can be measured by: Frequency response, Impedance, Phase, THD, Impulse response and so on.
The question is are those measurements and description related to objective data enough to properly describe how music truly sound then using headphone A or headphone B? To me it’s not sufficient to capture the qualitative difference in SQ between them. If someone would ask me I would say that the qualitative aspect (aka subjective) difference are as imperative as the technical aspects then it comes to evaluating which headphone that I like the sound from best.
Just because we don’t know how to measure and calculate all sound character, and more important how they act together, doesn’t mean that we don’t experience them. Musical is a (somewhat vague) subjective description, no doubt. Though, most people when they share their impression of a headphone, DAC or amp does it solely by using there ear and in relation to other audio gear that they have. So if their SQ impression is purely subjective (even than they describe objective parameters), why would it be a problem to use a subjective description to express what we heard and fell?
To me musical is an impression of the SQ without divide it in specific characteristics and instead focus on the SQ as a whole. Every now and then I read a long well-articulated review, in the end am still left unknown if he/she liked it, did it make them want to listen more and tap their feet (that is musical to me). If someone OTOH simply would tell me that they liked headphone A and said something like: I could listen to it for hours and it sound so good and musical without sacrifice any technical aspect and then add some details and compare it to another headphone, I may find that I have got more valuable information than from the very long and overly detailed review.
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