“It sounds more musical.”

We audiophiles say that all the time, usually with a pleased expression suggesting we have communicated something terribly important.

Then someone asks what musical means.

Well…you know. Musical.

The term has taken a bit of a beating because it is vague and badly overused. A violin is musical. A song is musical. How can a DAC or amplifier be musical?

For many of us, it’s shorthand for the old Absolute Sound ideal: reproduced sound that approaches unamplified instruments and voices in a natural acoustic space.

That’s a useful idea even if the word carrying it has been ridden hard and put away wet.

Words are containers meant to convey meaning—often decipherable only to a core group of like-minded people. If our community shares the meaning inside one of them, the word works. The danger isn’t using musical. It’s using it as a substitute for listening closely enough to say what moved us.

Whatever you want to call it, for most of us, we know exactly what you mean.