When I first heard an audiophilegrade system, it was as if my ears had been unmuffled for the very first time in my life. Besides the crystal clarity of the high end, the smooth mids, and the rich low end, what really struck me was the lack of noise I heard during the silence between the tracks and during the soft passages.
That’s how musical instruments sound in real life, I thought, and how they should sound whether the music is coming from real instruments, reproduced or amplified. But, too often, the dynamic range of the audio is hindered by the noise floor.