I'm surprised that a lot of people's philosophy seems to be somewhat similar to mine in what they are looking for in an audio system. And that is....how does it sound?
As some of you know, I'm pretty subjective in the way I approach audio. Having first admitted all the faults of the wonderful device that is the ear and the brain in subjective listening like short term memory, subjective bias, fooling oneself, not as sensitive in some regions as one may think.... I put extreme faith in what I hear as being the principle guide. This means I do trust what I hear. I do trust what I remember. And I find it counter productive when people tell me that I shouldn't be hearing what I'm hearing. How did they know?! I certainly didn't tell them!
For me, the subjective approach is important and though we do hear differently and we do place different emphasis on things that we like, I do not think that we are all so vastly different from each other that we have tremendously different types of experiences. But regardless, it comes down to does this sound good to you. And if it does, pursue that. Because if all the theory in the world can't tell you what you are going to like and it is absolutely the only measure that matters.
Anyway, I am a fan of room treatments, they providing some of the best value for money I've spent. I am also a fan for purist two channel. I decided a long time ago I would rather have the best two channel setup I could have than a decent multichannel for the same amount of money. Once I reach my satisfaction with two channel, I may switch towards adding on multichannel.
So being that way, it means I like dual mono stuff or monoblocks. I like torroids, class A, balanced architecture etc. Not really concerned about cables though I do have thick ones. I also like the way dual subwoofers sound.
Having played acoustic instruments since I was young, I found that I gravitate to hearing acoustic instruments played in an acoustic space. Though close miking still tends to happen a lot due to recording limitations, I really do prefer to hear the space of the recording and the instruments placed within it. My priorities have been three main things.
1. Soundstage and reproduction of room ambience and space.
2. Detail in microdynamics.
3. Tone.
1. Soundstage - where I find things lacking is a seamless left to right integration. The sound has to come towards you but also go behind the plane of the speakers as well. Good reproduction of room space. I've only heard this in very few setups. This is the ability to place the room of the recording in your room. Not an easy task.
2. Detail in microdynamics can really push a system to be revealing. Microdynamics is a reflection of the speed of a system and this is how you can integrate very quick sounds which normally would collapse in to a broad musical mush. Microdynamics allow individual performers to express themselves and make things more realistic.
3. Tone is usually where things tend to fall down for me in a setup where other things may be done admirably. if it doesn't sound like real instruments - especially in the mids and treble, then it doesn't sound right to me. If a violin, guitar or piano sounds too "treble heavy" then that's not the system for me. I find amps have trouble producing a full mid range with weight in it. I've only heard a few amps that do convincingly deliver that real life weight. Bass can come across as muddy in many systems I've heard usually due to poor rooms.
That's about it.
An aside: I have had experience with blind tests and level matched tests and some people put a lot of trust in it which is great for them! For me, having seen the result of the tests - which usually comes to being "you guessed about random", I realized, the gear I listened to that sounded better still did sound better to me after these tests. They certainly didn't make the good sounding gear sound worse or the worse sounding gear sound better.
So you can guess what I did after that.
I would like to point out the null or "no better than random" result in DBT tends to be subject to all kinds of questionable intepretations which usually circle around "proof of no audible difference". It doesn't mean that.
