People ask me how to tell when a system is right.

The answer is simpler than most of us expect.

Are you pulled in like a magnet?

When you reach for the volume knob, is it to turn the system up or down? 

When you stop cycling through the same reference tracks and start pulling out music you haven't played in years, just to hear what it sounds like now.

When you find yourself smiling at a familiar song because it showed you something it never showed you before.

There's no checklist for this. It isn't about soundstage width or treble extension or whether the image is precisely centered. It's a feeling that arrives before the critical mind gets involved—a pull that makes the rest of the evening disappear.

That's the system working.

Everything before that moment is just tuning.