Some sound tastes BAD. This kind of sound is discussed often and widely.

Some sound tastes sweet.

Some has a strong taste – and many people (usually males) who like strong sound do not care what it actually tastes like, just that it is stong.

But, after one has learned to cook up a good system that tastes pretty good, what is left?

Nourishment.

Without nourishment, no matter how good the sound tastes, one is eventually left with an empty feeling. Over time, this empty feeling grows and grows. This feeling that SOMETHING IS MISSING.

Eventually one (‘s passion) may up and die without all the essential ingredients necessary for a healthy sonic existance.

Can we come up with the X basic sound groups necessary for a healthy sound system?

Perhaps our Audiophile’s Guide to the Galaxy speaker, amp, digital and preamp tables might be a starting place:

Impressive, Enjoyable, Emotional, Natural, Sweet, Real, and Magical.

A healthy system should have a appropriate percentage of all these sound groups.

Perhaps that percentage changes over time, as one ages, and/or as one grows to be more of a sonic connoisseur .

I do think there is indeed a real sensitivity as one matures to the absence of, or an imbalance of some sort, with one or more the basic sound groups in a system. A system can taste… great, but….. it has too little protein, or too much, or it has too much fat, or too much salt, or too much…

Can there be too much enjoyability? or real? or natural? or magic?

Seems like the problem is usually with too little of one or more of the sound groups with respect to the other groups…

We are like Goldilocks, the key is balance.

Or maybe.. the Coneheads.

Perhaps the goal, in a well-balanced diet of course, is to be a Soundhead – ‘consuming mass quantities’ of ALL of the sonic food groups?

To MAXIMIZE each and every key ingredient of the sound as much as possible….?

Just asking…