[Zuman]

I'm also a member of WhatsBestForum, and more than three years a well-known member posted a thoughtful and comprehensive message titled "Natural Sound." That thread has more than 5,500 posts as of today.
The original poster defined the following criteria for what he considers "natural sound" reproduction via a hifi system:

-No aspect of the sound calls attention to itself
-The sound is balanced
-The system sound is absent from the presentation
-Wide listening window: able to enjoy most/all genres of music
-Portrays the character of each recording, nuanced venue information
-Allows a wide range of volume adjustment for what is most appropriate for a particular recording and still be engaged
-Superior information retrieval
-Natural resolution, not “detail”
-Able to scale up and down, large to small
-No “sound”, only music
-Room is energized and music is “alive”
-Enjoyable outside of listening sweet spot
-Images are stable as listener moves around the room
-Draws listener into the music
-Relaxing, zero fatigue
-Open, effortless, and dynamic sound
-No need to crank the volume
-No added or artificial extension
-No analysis of the sound into bits and pieces, music experienced as a whole
-Result is beauty and emotion.

It's hard to argue with that list, but I've come to realize something about myself that I have a sneaking suspicion may be shared by quite a few other audiophiles/hifi enthusiasts: In many cases, I actually like the sound of my stereo system better than I like the sound of "live" music.
I performed live music (brass) for about 30 years, and I'm familiar with the sound of live music from a range of positions (on stage, from the podium, from the audience, and in different venue sizes with different acoustic characteristics). I've also mixed live music both indoors and out, and sat in the booth while real experts did the same. There are an immense number of factors that contribute to the sound that either reaches the live audience's ears (including where they're sitting) or that ends up in a final recorded production, and not all of those factors may suit my personal taste.
There...I've said it. I'm actually more interested in satisfying my personal taste when I'm listening at home than I am in faithfully recreating a live sound that was influenced by architects, producers, engineers, weather conditions, listening position, and a whole lot of other factors.
As an example, hearing instrumental textures and micro-details, such as the friction of a bow on strings or the breath of a singer, can be thrilling to me. Similarly, precisely locating a performer in a soundstage is also wonderfully satisfying, perhaps because it fills in the information that my eyes would provide if I were present at the performance. And my stereo system does these things far more effectively (yes, I mean with greater emphasis) than I experience when I'm actually "there" at the show.
I understand that curating my system's sound to deliver these kind of sonic attributes means that it may be less-than-faithful to the original sound the engineer and producer intended, and I also recognize that the pursuit of these attributes can have different results with different recordings. Nevertheless, I'm willing to become a partner with the performers, conductors, engineers, and producers in defining the sound at my listening chair. And I actually find it liberating to not be a purist!

[Mag]

  I'm surprised that nobody else has tried to tackle a response to your post. I'll give it a shot, keep in mind that I don't have a trained musicians ear just an audiophile ear.
   For the most part I agree with the list on what is Natural Sound but will add my 2 cents.
Okay. first up is very low distortion. I found with equipment of .1 that that is too much and will mask the sound of better equipment. Distortion level of .01 or lower will not mask sound. Point 2, Natural Sound you can crank the volume and the music does not distort. In other words the Recording is very good, but as mention will sound good as well at lower volumes. Point 3 is hyper detail in a recording is from a high gain setting, this is not a natural sound. Lowering the gain to normal levels will give a more natural sound with the loss of some detail, too low and you loss all detail. Point 4 is Transparency, this goes hand in hand with low distortion, but transparency has more to do with the quality of the recording, a good recording does not sound masked in any way, codecs such as low mp3 rates can result in a loss of transparency as well. Point 5, System sound, again this distortion level, low enough distortion = no system sound. Point 6, is pure tones, like the chords in guitars, the sound or instruments. This comes a result of having a good recording, transparency, low distortion, volume level.
  I could not agree more, our systems can sound much better than the real thing because we audiophiles use better equipment and better room acoustics.

[I.Greyhound Fan]

Most of the time I prefer my stereo to live music.  Live music is limited due to the venue, speakers, amplifiers, etc..   Now there have been intimate venues like the Dakota Jazz club here in Minneapolis where I have heard live music that sounds much better than recorded versions.  By the way, I have never heard live music have air and transparency.  Those are HiFi terms that are pleasing to our ears.

I do believe that natural sound and hifi sound are interchangeable.  I prefer a smoother, slightly warmer sound that I find pleasing to my ears and my gear gives me that along with detail and resolution and a huge, deep sound stage.  I also get all the micro details like fingers sliding across guitar strings and the breath of vocalists, tapping of feet, etc..

[FullRangeMan]

Well, one of the things that bothers me about the Hi-End commercial selling speakers praised by the famous magazines are the low definition when in the low volume/SPL in the bass/midbass area under 250Hz. There is nothing to be done if the loudspeaker has low efficiency as under 96dB.

Many years ago I became convinced that this problem is caused by the use of cross-overs and the absence of point-source emission drivers, one can not work miracles when there is several freq cuts in the music and several speakers to drive.

So I go listen my FR speaker and the music is all there with details and a credible 3D sound-stage.

[Tyson]

I've found that for the music I like to listen to, a point source is not ideal.  For things like large scale classical, I really prefer line arrays.  To me this is the most natural because it gets me closest to the sound of a large hall, in my room.

[Early B.]

Here's my take on it:

-No aspect of the sound calls attention to itself  -- That sounds boring. I'm always listening for certain sounds. It's unavoidable. That's why audiophiles build systems around what they like to hear. I'm a bass head. If I don't hear bass where it ought to be, I'm skipping that track.
-The sound is balanced -- OK (whatever that means...)
-The system sound is absent from the presentation -- Huh???
-Wide listening window: able to enjoy most/all genres of music -- OK
-Portrays the character of each recording, nuanced venue information -- if most recordings are in the studio, do you wanna hear the studio?
-Allows a wide range of volume adjustment for what is most appropriate for a particular recording and still be engaged -- OK
-Superior information retrieval -- that's a "hi-fi" thing, for sure
-Natural resolution, not “detail” -- OK (but it contradicts the above)
-Able to scale up and down, large to small -- do you mean dynamic???
-No “sound”, only music -- makes no sense
-Room is energized and music is “alive” -- do you mean dynamic???
-Enjoyable outside of listening sweet spot -- why? There's a reason it's called a sweet spot
-Images are stable as listener moves around the room -- same as above
-Draws listener into the music -- makes no sense -- why listen to music that you aren't drawn to?
-Relaxing, zero fatigue -- OK
-Open, effortless, and dynamic sound -- repeated above, although "open" and "effortless" doesn't imply dynamic. Some open baffle speakers are "open" but can lack dynamics.
-No need to crank the volume -- Why? A good system allows you to crank the volume without distortion.
-No added or artificial extension -- OK
-No analysis of the sound into bits and pieces, music experienced as a whole -- an audiophile analyzes the sound down to the bits and pieces
-Result is beauty and emotion. -- you don't need a high-end system to have an emotional connection to music. Have you ever jammed out in your car stereo and felt good about it?

Let's face it -- it's useless to try and define what music sounds like. Decades ago Stereophile created a dictionary of audiophile terms, but it hasn't been adopted because many of the definitions are circular, i.e., one audiophile term is defined by three other ambiguous audiophile terms. There's one thing that defines an audiophile -- we like to experiment to see how far we can go to make the music sound better to our ears. That's it.   

[I.Greyhound Fan]

I have to agree with Early on this one.  I find a system that has an even sound to be boring.  My listening area is a live room and my Maggies have the famous 1.6QR bass hump and I like it.  I had a pair of  PSB T3's and sold them because the 1.6's sounded so much better.  Even my audio buddies agreed. I sold the T3's to a friend.  I also own a pair of PSB Synchrony One's and they sound better than the T3's in most respects in my system.  The T3's have a very flat frequency response from what I remember and I found them boring and dull and my Pass amp and BAT preamp are very dynamic.

My system does not sound great at low volumes but when I had my Pass X-1 preamp, I could listen at lower volumes all day as it keep its dynamics and detail at lower volumes but the BAT sounds so much better at medium to loud volumes and I listen at medium volume most of the time.  My AVA Ultra preamp also sounded pretty good at low volumes.

[rollo]

I've found that for the music I like to listen to, a point source is not ideal.  For things like large scale classical, I really prefer line arrays.  To me this is the most natural because it gets me closest to the sound of a large hall, in my room.

  Scale or sound stage matters after proper tonality and harmonics are achieved. Agree it brings us closer to live event. Miss the Pipedream line arrays.

charles

[FullRangeMan]

Do you had owned the Pipedreams?
How is owning this speakers in the daily life?

[rbbert]

IMO "natural sound" is a poor choice for a name and does not describe the "sound" that Peter is after, but is more along the lines of self-justification for his choices.  "Natural sound" would be as it is in nature, or in our context without any changes to the original performance or recording, in other words high-fidelity (not "HiFi sound" as it is used in the OP or in the long WBF thread).  "Pleasing sound" or "Sound as I like it" would be far more appropriate descriptions, but of course neither of those has the impact of "natural sound".  "HiFi sound" is used derogatorily and thus is presumably distinct from high fidelity.  Regardless of how each of us describes our systems' sonic goals I strongly suspect we are all after sound that we like even if it differs from "high fidelity", which BTW is not really achievable at the current state-of-the-art (although some megabuck systems do come close with small scale music).

EarlyB has already pointed out the inherent contradictions in much of the description of this "natural sound".

[VinceT]

"Room is energized and music is alive"

I like that one. A lot of venues and live gigs I have heard I prefer not to have a natural sound because it didnt sound good. I would also add if the system "somewhat conveys the energy and emotion of the performers". That to me is the magic that natural "organic-if you will" sound would be all about. I've seen some great live shows where the energy was in the air and the crowd was feeling it. The same can be said for some studio tracks. All those attributes listed are good all around goals for any system.