Ever notice how it's mostly us guys who get so deep into the music? My theory is that, for many of us, music is where we go to feel emotions that otherwise, for whatever reason, are "off limits" for us. When I really, really listen to music, it's more with my heart than with my head. But I have found that the more deeply I hear into a performance, the more I deeply can feel it. This could become a long tangent, so I'll try to get back on track now.

To me, a speaker must do two things. First, it must do something so well, so magically, that I can suspend disbelief and escape into the illusion. That something can be imaging, coherence, natural timbre, natural and/or pleasing tonal balance, richness & ambience, bass "slam", inner detail & nuance, dynamic impact, whatever. But it has to do something very, very well. Now just what qualities have our highest priority on depends on our individual taste, listening style, experiences and expectations, degree and type of hearing loss, and limitations imposed by our environment.

The other thing that a loudspeaker must do is less obvious, but perhaps just as important. That is, it must not introduce colorations or inadequacies severe enough to distract us and spoil the illusion. Here is where I think the variation from one individual to another is the greatest - that is, I think there is enormous variation in our tolerance level for different inadequacies. For example, I'm fairly forgiving of less than perfect bass or poor imaging or limited dynamics, but have a very low tolerance for boxiness or upper midrange/lower treble overemphasis or long-term listening fatigue. I can think of quite a few speakers that have abundant "magical" qualities, and for me it is the relative absence of glitches that ruin the illusion that would be the deciding factor between them.

So I would speculate that the widely differing opinions you observed among GPAF attendees has not only to do with our individual likes, but perhaps ever more with our individual dislikes. I say this because, for me at least, the deciding factor between Speaker A and Speaker B is often the relative absence of aberrations that collapse the illusion and sever my emotional connection to the music.

Duke