Do you listen to equipment or music.

@david_ten 

mixing my sobriety metaphor with your pregnancy metaphor hopefully results in many full terms of musical enjoyment and not postpartum depression 

In all seriousness, couldn’t be more happy to have nine + months of not thinking about any tweaks or upgrades (after almost a full year of trying way too much gear). Nice to know you can hit an endgame plateau (I acknowledge there may be others in the future) where the sound is so good that music and musical discovery is all one is interested in and is what makes you look forward to getting home.

that said, every once in a while I discover a piece of music that shows of the quality of my system in a new way and I say “sh*t my system sounds good!”.... then I go back listening to the music.

There’s hope.

Music first. It's all about the music for me. It's by biggest love and passion. I enjoy my system a lot and tweak it endlessly but the bottom line is the music. At times I disconnect from the critical listening and I just play music to enjoy it. 

Like most of you, I listen to equipment when something changes and music the rest of the time EXCEPT...

I NEED to be able to hear what the singer is saying. I just can't forget everything and drift into that wonderful state of floating with the music if I can't make out the words. I,m always disappointed when I buy an album and the lyrics (and musicians by track) aren't included. Luckily, I can almost always find them on line.

As a sideline...I'm involved in live music as a musician and live sound engineer. Talk to the sales people in either of the High End shops I live near and not only do they not do little "house concerts" at their shops (ask about that fact and note the bewildered response), they're generally unaware of live shows nearby, and often have very narrow musical tastes as if actual live music doesn't matter much. 

I think that most people had never listen to the true potential quality sound of their already good audio gear,because of the lack of proper means for cleaning EMI And RFI, and eliminating mechanical vibrations... Then because of that subconcious and conscious insatisfaction they listen to sound not to music in the hope to detect the problem...I know that because before my experiments in cleaning I was not satisfied by the same gear which I am in love now, the difference is that I listen now to the same equipment at his true quality top level...Cleaning is the beginning and the end in audio...After that when you hear an organic realistic holographic equilibrated sound that transform in music at the end, you listen, and forget the hype and the upgrading virus...