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In my experience, a lot of the audio treadmill is due to not being able to get room to work well with the system and visa versa, so we tend to keep looking for improvements because things sound off. Taken a little further, I think the musical experience is so complex and full of complex balances, that it is just really hard to define better sound, making it harder to find.
Truly better sound to me has all the more apparent things like excellent spectral balance and range, natural speed including good hit that is not overstated and very fine micro speed, excellent space and detail complexity across the spectrum.... not hard and not thick... natural bass hit and extension that is fast, not boomy or muddled... etc
But maybe learning to discern when better is better is the biggest thing. And I think that it can take a lot of practice, but also figuring out what to look for. A baseline for me, does it do all the right things with a context of sounding like real playing of nice instruments in a really good room? But what are the things that make a great musical experience that our body/consciousness can identify when it feels authentic, but we can't necessarily easily analyze?
Seems there are just countless balances that can "sound pretty right" based on ideas, and not really "be" right to the subtle discernment of the subconscious... So how to find it?
To me the biggest "real maker" (assuming all else is balanced itself, and balanced between all the rest) is the finest harmonic information in really good space. If these are incomplete or not there across the spectrum, all else can sound really good, but for me it is the natural harmonic stuff that does the magic part, making it realer feeling and more fully engaging.
But unfortunately, this has not been a big measure for many developers, and a lot of highly rated audiophile stuff just does not do brilliantly with this information.... And being so fragile and easy to kill by truncating it in a digital front end, a lot of it may never be there. Or if the front end can hold onto it, something later might squeeze it together too much due to lesser parts and wires, concentrating complexity into harder sound... or masking it away. In a system, it seems there are literally hundreds of ways to lose it little by little, part by part. And back to the all important system balance with the room.... most rooms accentuate or cancel lots of frequencies to various degrees, and the wrong reflections can be big smearers too...
So really, I think our desire for better sound has a very real basis... especially if we get really close to realistic quality sound... if something feels off, it probably is.
And chasing more gear makes some sense... if it is in fact a real upgrade, but it is clearly not the answer on its own judging from how fast the audio treadmill spins for many.
With the very fine musical information innately the most fragile, and with all the many ways to mess it up, I am afraid most of us rarely hear really good harmonic "real-making" in all its glory. And without a reference that reveals it really well, how do we know what all is missing? I wonder how long it would have taken me to "discover it" had I not gotten my NOS Tranquility DAC and the rest of the front end recommended to show the DAC best. With that DAC ,all the parts were chosen finally by sound, and associated computer (with mods), cables, and even external drives were carefully vetted with blind testing.... So all were carefully developed and chosen with this critical harmonic content high on the "need list."
I was lucky with my Decware being nicely resolving and good at natural harmonic content, then with the help of Eric Hider, one of the Tranquility developers, I got a pretty exceptional front end for the time. And even then, it took me years to then further resolve my system and room and show all the Tranquility could give. The upshot of that, even if some is lost, it might intellectually sound pretty close, and feel pretty close, but when there are subtle qualities of natural music that aren't there, we still crave them, most likely because it does not sound as right to our senses and natural consciousness as our intellect. So for me, fine detail and space are major reads for getting to engaging immersion.
Just looking at micro speed.... the fine stuff requires just so speed to show it, allowing the fine detail and space to differentiate. We can hear the finest detail because of the space "next to it" allows us to hear it. And clearly damaged fine detail and space can happen even if our front end is rare enough to fully show this information to begin with. I have found fine detail can be smeared or masked way too easily.... might be some vibration causing subtle noise, or subtle noise from lesser quality power, or too much voltage pushing the amps/tubes harder and concentrating detail into hardness and making thickness... or power cables and ICs that appear good, but mask it.... maybe just a bit too much darkness or thickness in the balance masking it... and many other things! Ouch!
I also find many tubes are not so good at this subtler information. But most likely, it is a progression of decent stuff slowly degrading these valuable musical elements progressively. Fine detail in good space just can't be heard as well if it is slightly smeared... but the subconscious and our senses recognize a lack of natural harmonics just as well as unnatural balances of all the more obvious things we listen for.
So for me, if there is one, harmonic content is the most critical read. And some aspects of fine detail in space are easiest to read, like the complexity of textures, and having them top to bottom... room spatial sounds throughout the range, helping to differentiate and authenticate the players in space, ..... the quality and duration of decays across the spectrum, perhaps one of the easiest reads letting us know we if we have solved smearing, with good speed, and very fine information in space.
If it is mostly there, and supported by a natural baseline set of all the other balances.... nothing missing, and nothing poking out.... no matter what flavor of sound I am working with, I can more easily find musical engagement. Just think how important complex textures and micro speed are to our musical excitement.... complete and with good smoothness, great textures can add such sweet complexity and reduce hardness.... good micro speed can liven it all up with very fast leading edges along with supporting all the fine detail and space I seek..... And if decays are clear and extended in time, from the bass to the very top... then I can be pretty sure I am getting most of what is there on the recordings. Add just a bit of "real warmth," that sweetens the sound a little without the darkening, slowing, or masking anything much, this seems to get me close... then it might be a little luck to get the very deep beauty, but for me, exceptionally complete harmonic content is a critical read to get me close.
What an amazing trip!
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