Attached some nice speakers to my 55 inch tv and was listening to the music stations they have up in the 900's. And I find I prefer listening to blues as opposed to electronic. But, this is just because the recording has so much more life. In theory I prefer electronica (at least generally speaking). But I'm sick of the 'sterile' feel.

Reverb for example. Reverb perhaps essentially. It exists to tell you what the room is where the sound is emanating from. One hears reverb and should be able to tell to a large degree what the room was like. It's crucially important. I love huge reverb. But, increasingly I'm realizing/thinking that it must be authentic. It can be a VSTs preset. Using 'cathedral' setting isn't the optimum. Optimum perhaps, or better anyway, would be taking a dry recording and playing it in a cathedral very loud while rerecording it from far away. And short of that, the best reverb for voice is simply standing very far away from the microphone.

So music recorded on a computer. The biggest issue is reverb. That it's all messed up compared to real instruments. That one listens and can tell the sound they're hearing isn't authentically bouncing off real walls and chairs, etc. And so the life is missing. And it's inferior.

...but it's inferior in the way that seeing the zipper on the Dr. Who monster costume is inferior. Which, actually, it's all about imagination anyway. You should already be using your imagination. You should already know the monster isn't real. That you see a zipper shouldn't matter. It's slightly absurd if the zipper matters. And actually being bothered by imperfect reverb is somewhat similarly absurd.... Although only in the sense that each instrument symbolizes something beyond the actual instrument. The bass is a living thinking entity, etc. If the bass is just a bass, truly just a bass in your mind, then I guess imperfect reverb is more of a legitimate gripe.

If on the other hand the bass symbolizes something else, then imperfect reverb is a zipper on the monster costume.