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Usually I tend to avoid these kind of discussions, but decided to chime in here anyway.
The reason IMHO why many people here prefer a 'transparent' audio system is because the recordings themselves are many times actually quite 'coloured', and to make it worse they are that way in various random ways: bright, bassy, muddy, distorted.... depending on what the artists/engineers wanted to achieve for a specific record. There is usually no rule and IMHO no genre/artist-specific sound that is consistent enough to base a system design on.
It is perfectly OK to prefer a specific kind of sound, but one should be aware that if you imprint that sound via your audio reproduction system it will be imprinted on to *all* recording you listen to, so you will get mixed results depending on the specific recording you listen to. Some recordings will for sure sound "better" to you (e.g. the system's colouration will correct for the original deficiency in the recording), but some will just as likely sound "worse" (as the original colouration of the recording will be over-emphasised by the system's colouration of the same type). It is basically like you are doing engineering corrections to the master recordings - but to all of them in the exact same way. It will fit at times, and not at others. It is unlikely (and difficult to argue) that a specific, constant colouration would make everything sound better.
With a 'transparent' system you should hear what is on the recording - be it good or bad. Again some recordings will sound good to you and some bad, but now the result depends mostly on the recording itself. To me this is quite liberating and allows one to focus on the music rather than listening to the equipment.
In addition, research on listener preference seems to confirm this hypothesis. Anecdotes showing other results don't really challenge the established research. That is not to say established research is infallible and couldn't be ultimately improved by more (controlled) research
Note that if we're using what the 'majority' feels as an argument, we could possibly also argue that audio reproduction quality is almost irrelevant and we should all be using BT speakers, soundbars and built-in TV speakers Without statistics and controlled research to back it up even this statement be a straw-man argument, however, and wouldn't carry much weight in reality
The reason IMHO why many people here prefer a 'transparent' audio system is because the recordings themselves are many times actually quite 'coloured', and to make it worse they are that way in various random ways: bright, bassy, muddy, distorted.... depending on what the artists/engineers wanted to achieve for a specific record. There is usually no rule and IMHO no genre/artist-specific sound that is consistent enough to base a system design on.
It is perfectly OK to prefer a specific kind of sound, but one should be aware that if you imprint that sound via your audio reproduction system it will be imprinted on to *all* recording you listen to, so you will get mixed results depending on the specific recording you listen to. Some recordings will for sure sound "better" to you (e.g. the system's colouration will correct for the original deficiency in the recording), but some will just as likely sound "worse" (as the original colouration of the recording will be over-emphasised by the system's colouration of the same type). It is basically like you are doing engineering corrections to the master recordings - but to all of them in the exact same way. It will fit at times, and not at others. It is unlikely (and difficult to argue) that a specific, constant colouration would make everything sound better.
With a 'transparent' system you should hear what is on the recording - be it good or bad. Again some recordings will sound good to you and some bad, but now the result depends mostly on the recording itself. To me this is quite liberating and allows one to focus on the music rather than listening to the equipment.
In addition, research on listener preference seems to confirm this hypothesis. Anecdotes showing other results don't really challenge the established research. That is not to say established research is infallible and couldn't be ultimately improved by more (controlled) research
Note that if we're using what the 'majority' feels as an argument, we could possibly also argue that audio reproduction quality is almost irrelevant and we should all be using BT speakers, soundbars and built-in TV speakers Without statistics and controlled research to back it up even this statement be a straw-man argument, however, and wouldn't carry much weight in reality