10 Characteristics of Great Audiophile Sound

Ask ten audiophiles what defines great sound, and you’ll probably get ten different answers. That said, Chief Audioholic Gene DellaSala recently made a video exploring the characteristics that he thinks define a truly great audiophile experience, and they’re about as universal as I’ve come across. Some of these topics, such as dynamic range and bass extension, are objective enough to be measured. Others are more abstract (though no less important), describing how a great audio system makes you feel. Together, these ten characteristics help create the kind of immersive, emotional, and rich sonic experience that audiophiles strive for.

1. The speakers should disappear in the room.

This is one of the first characteristics that new listeners notice when they hear great stereo recordings played back on a great system for the first time. You should not be able to pinpoint the speakers as the source locations for what you are hearing. The opposite of this phenomenon is a single mono speaker. For example, my brother Dan has one Sonos speaker mounted in the corner of his kitchen above the table. He uses this for background listening while cooking and moving around the kitchen, so even if he had a pair of speakers, there would be no “sweet spot” for a convincing stereo effect. But no matter where you are in Dan’s kitchen, you can tell exactly where the sound is coming from. By contrast, in a high-end two-channel system, a blind-folded listener in the sweet spot should have no notion of where the speakers are in the room. If you have never experienced this, I urge you to go to a dealer that sells big tower speakers from high-end brands like Wilson, Magico, YG, RBH Sound, and the like. It totally messes with your mind in the best way possible. On a recent trip to Las Vegas, I took my friend Frannie to a high-end audio store called Lifestyle AVI, which is one of the few places where you can hear PS Audio’s new line of speakers. (See our article PS Audio Aims High With Its First-Ever Loudspeaker - The aspen FR30.) These are fairly large tower speakers that sell for $30K per pair. Frannie is new to high-end audio, and I was curious about her reactions to the experience. One of the first things she said to me was that the speakers didn’t seem to be doing anything. They were “just sitting there,” seemingly disconnected from the powerful sound unfolding on the massive soundstage in front of us. What Frannie was noticing was an impressive lack of boxy coloration and cabinet vibration — two things that reveal lesser speakers as the sources of sound. In this instance, the speakers truly disappeared as mechanical devices, leaving only the music.

2. The soundstage should be wide and deep.

The soundstage should be wide — extending beyond the far edges of the speakers themselves. But the so-called “wall of sound” that some listeners shoot for only covers two dimensions. A good soundstage should also be deep, extending far behind the speakers, and in some cases, even beyond the wall behind them. It’s useful to have some audiophile recordings on hand if you want to test this. Look for well-engineered recordings of unamplified music in a real acoustic space. It can be any kind of music you like: a jazz quartet in a cozy club, a symphony orchestra in a magnificent concert hall, or an a cappella choir in a reverberant stone chapel. A good recording of this type should allow you to hear the acoustics of the space and the spatial cues of the sounds interacting with that space. It takes a really good system to recreate the recording space inside your listening room, and as Gene points out in his video, achieving a wide and deep soundstage requires not only good equipment, but also a properly-treated room and a careful, symmetrical setup (side walls are imperatively important). Of course, not every recording offers a wealth of soundstage depth or a realistic presentation of live performers on a stage. But systems that can correctly reproduce these kinds of recordings are doing so much right, that it’s almost guaranteed that other types of music will also be delivered in a satisfying way.

3. Strong phantom center.

One of the most common features of stereo recordings in popular music is that the lead vocals tend to be placed in the center of the soundstage. In the context of a two-channel system, where there is no center-channel speaker, vocals should emanate from the “phantom center,” — an anchored and corporeal-sounding location directly between the two speakers. Unless you only listen to early stereo mixes of the Beatles, much of what you hear will be built around a phantom center. This is true even in instrumental music. Without a well-anchored phantom center, the rest of the mix will not be presented as it is meant to be heard. The phantom center should also be stable across all frequencies. (In the Sony stereo system I bought in middle school, the phantom center hovered between the speakers convincingly enough throughout the midrange, but splashed out to the sides of the soundstage in the high frequencies, revealing the tweeters as sound sources.) A strong phantom center has as much to do with room acoustics and system setup as it does with loudspeaker engineering, so there’s no one trick for getting it right. The good news is that it is very easy to recognize when you have gotten it right; everything snaps into focus, so much so that it might even sound as if you have a center-channel speaker playing.

4. Effortless sound at all volume levels.

Some systems sound amazing at low or moderate volumes, but then they poop out when you turn up the volume. Perhaps the speakers are too small for the room, or too insensitive for the amplification power available. Either way, it’s obvious when speakers start to compress or distort at higher volumes, as if the system is struggling to keep up. If you want a lifelike presentation of music — or if you just want to rock out — dynamic range is just as important in a two-channel system as it is in a home theater.

Conversely, some speakers are not engaging at lower listening levels, but seem to perk up and demand your attention when given a bit of juice. Gene says that an ideal system should sound satisfying and effortless at all volume levels. Want to listen late at night? Lower volume levels shouldn’t mean a less involving musical presentation. And of course, cranking up the volume shouldn’t produce sound that is strained or unpleasant.

5. Deep, tight, punchy bass.

Even if you’re not as much of a bass-head as Gene is, bass plays a vital role in listening pleasure. (See our article Deep Bass Makes The Booty Shake.) If you’ve ever pulled up next to a rattling car blasting multiple poorly-installed subwoofers, you know what boomy, one-note bass sounds like. Audiophile bass is a completely different beast: articulate and textured, punchy and impactful. It should play effortlessly deep, yes, but always remain tuneful and composed. At Audioholics, we recommend using subwoofers, even if you have large speakers that are already capable of producing low frequencies. The best location for your main speakers is not necessarily the best place to make bass in your room. Adding subs will even out the bass distribution in your room, and can also open up the possibility for more fine-tuning with EQ.

6. You’re in disbelief of how good it sounds each time you listen.

This is perhaps the most abstract and most subjective of Gene’s criteria, but it’s also probably the easiest to understand. Whether you’re new to the audiophile world or you’re a seasoned listener, you know right away when the sound you’re hearing just leaves you shaking your head in disbelief. There is a magic to really good sound that is more than just the sum of the electronics, speakers, cables, and acoustic treatments in your room. If you’re lucky enough to have a truly great system, you should feel this sense of awe often, especially when you’ve been away from your system for some time.

7. Your listening sessions last longer than planned.

Again, this is pretty self-explanatory. Time flies when you have great sound. Maybe you only planned to listen to one new album that just came out, and then suddenly you realize that three of four hours have passed. (Streaming makes this a much bigger problem for me now than it was 20 years ago.) Or maybe you know that it’s late and that you should get to bed, but you just can’t pull yourself away from the music. One more song. Okay, one more album. Although Gene doesn’t mention it specifically, one of the main requirements for long listening sessions — and one of my personal hallmarks of any great system — is unfatiguing sound. Some systems sound engaging at first because they sparkle with detail or beat down the door with bass, but after half an hour of listening, your ears and brain need a break. True audiophile sound, if such a thing can be defined, has a natural quality that doesn’t enervate, but rather restores the listener’s sense of overall wellbeing. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the sound itself has to be overly smooth or relaxed, just that the listener can soak up the music without becoming tense, tired, or irritated. When your listening sessions always seem to last longer than you planned, you know you have great sound.

8. You hear details in recordings you don’t hear from lesser systems.

I’ll never forget the first time I listened to “I Feel Fine” by the Beatles on my first Sony Discman. It was 1993, and I had gotten the brand new Beatles 1962-1966 CD set for my dad for Chanukah. I then immediately “borrowed” (stole) the discs and listened to them nonstop. During the famous guitar feedback sound at the beginning of “I Feel Fine,” someone in the studio whispered something. I had never heard it before, but I had only ever listened to the song on the car stereo, or on my parents’ less-than-stellar home audio system, via Dad’s 30-year-old vinyl record. That fateful Discman listening session was the first time I realized that my favorite songs were hiding details, maybe even secrets, that were not audible on less resolving equipment. I am still not sure who whispered, or what was being said at the beginning of “I Feel Fine” (though there are others out there on the internet who have noticed the sound and offered various explanations). But the point is that a great audiophile system will reveal all kinds of details in your favorite recordings that you never knew were there. To achieve this, you’ll need a low noise-floor and revealing gear. Or, as I discovered all those years ago, a headphone-based system is a great alternative if you want to catch the subtle details in familiar material without spending the money to create a controlled environment and build a high-end system. But when you find yourself noticing details that you don’t hear on other systems, that’s a great sign that your system is delivering an important component of great audiophile sound.

9. You can hear a huge difference in source material.

Lossy compression has come a long way, but there’s still a big, easily-audible difference between a lossy Spotify stream and a lossless version of the same track played back from CD, or from a lossless streaming service like Qobuz or Tidal. The differences between CD-quality and high-resolution tend not to be quite as pronounced, but on some recordings, they are also easy to hear. The thing is, you might never hear these differences if your playback equipment isn’t resolving enough. There’s a reason why the average Joe listening via AirPods or a bluetooth speaker might think Spotify sounds just as good as a better-quality source. Those playback devices simply don’t illuminate the differences that exist between the different sources. But when you listen via a high-quality audio system, the differences should be obvious. Sometimes, this creates a double-edged sword. Some of my favorite music — Weezer’s 1996 album Pinkerton, for example — can sound pretty harsh on a resolving audio system. Why? The recording quality simply isn’t that great. If your favorite tunes aren’t well-recorded, you can pick and choose your audio gear accordingly. Not all high-end systems are as ruthlessly revealing as a mastering engineer’s monitors, but any truly great audio system should make it easy to hear the differences between lossy and lossless, between the original version and the re-master (for better or worse), and between an audiophile recording and ‘90s emo rock.

10. You long for your next listening session.

Finally, if you are lucky enough to have achieved great audiophile sound at home, Gene reckons you should be excited every time you sit down to listen. And when you’re working, or commuting, or buying groceries, you should be longing for that next listening session! Music is one of life’s greatest pleasures. You should look forward to your listening sessions, just as you might look forward to talking to an old friend, eating at your favorite restaurant, or coming home to a loyal dog wagging his tail with excitement at your door. If you’re truly lucky, you can share the fruits of your audiophile labor with friends, family, and loved ones. As great as it is to have achieved audio nirvana, sharing the audio love is what it’s all about. At the most basic level, music is about making human connections, and while you don’t need an audiophile system to enjoy music, having great sound really can make the experience more meaningful.

What is your definition of great audiophile sound? Share your thoughts in the related forum thread below.