First apologies to OP for OT.
I found the above post very interesting and honestly very confusing to me. I hope I am qualified to talk about at least the aspect of listening to music.
IMO, the above order is all wrong (may be I have misunderstood something). The first thing a musician or a deep music lover is looking for is the tonality. Musicians try to get a certain tonality of their voices and instruments through years of practice and experimentation. Ravishankar's sitar has a very different tonality from Vilayat Khan's. Abdul Karim Khan's voice sounded very different from Faiyaz Khan's. Tonality, IMO, is the most important thing in any music reproduction. If one gets it wrong, there is no point going any further. If a system makes Ali Akbar's sarod sound like a guitar, I would not be able to listen to it even for half a minute.
Next, comes dynamics, both macro and micro. Without dynamics, the music is devoid of emotions. Generally a system with great transparency/cleanliness (that is, high signal to noise ratio) will produce good levels of macro and microdynamics. The phrase "Black spaces" in the above quote probably refers to at least part of this. But it should be right after tonality in my list.
Then actually comes imaging (related to 'separation' as talked about in the quote) and soundstaging, but only after the above two. I like to know exactly where each musician is located. This gives a feeling of physical space to the recorded music being played. In a live unamplified music performance, this is already there. In a recorded music being played through a system, it is not easy to achieve. However, if achieved (both through proper recording and then playing it through a good system), this gives a sense of immediacy to the music. Soundstaging is a related concept, basically totality of the imaging of all the performers makes the soundstage.
Next, I look for openness of the sound. This is one feature usually not talked about, but I conceive it as follows. If a recorded music is being played from a system in a particular room, imagine a listener in the next room who is oblivious to the source of this music. Would the listener think it is reproduction of music, or would he think of it as a live performance. JA of Stereophile discussed this aspect some time ago, and it is a relevant point. No matter how expensive is the system, the listener in the next room would always be able to differentiate the difference between live unamplified music to the recorded and reproduced music. This is what I call lack of openness and naturalness in a system. It is there in all systems I have heard (and I have heard quite a few in my life so far, although I usually do not remember all the brands and models, because my focus usually always comes to the music). Although, never perfectly done, one should try to get this openness and naturalness in the system to best of one's abilities.
Last in my list would be SPL levels or loudness of sound. Of course one needs to have audible levels so that one can hear every nuances clearly. However, I like to mention one thing I find important in this. Every amp comes alive after a certain level of volume. To evaluate the amp, one of course should not listen to volumes lower than that.
Regards.
PS: BTW, for the only relevant part related to this thread, let me just mention that I like my current stereo integrated amp (Leben CS300) immensely, because for its price, it does a tremendous job in all the departments I have mentioned above. It is a very well-balanced amp. In fact, it is hard to find a serious weakness of this amp, if one has the speakers to pair with this tiny 12 wpc amp.
