The Sound or Music


I listen to all genres of music but really enjoy it with good sound. I know of people who just love one particular type of music but don't care at all about audio. My late relative just loved classical music and had hundreds of good records but his system was like bad transistor radio. He had means but was not interested in better system at all. Music, for him was 99.9% and sound 0.1% of the pleasure. He was most likely missing half of instruments of orchestral music, he listened to - either by limited frequency response or very poor resolution. He was a music lover. Am I a music lover or just only an audio freak?
What about you?
128x128kijanki
"perfect stereo system, but limited to your favorite 300 recordings"...or "crummy boombox, and thousands of interesting recordings"

"you must choose one only"

Elizabeth you are a very cruel person!
Just call me: Elizabeth the Cruel
HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH
as I cackle gleefully....
(I'd have a hard time too....)
I would prefer the better performance. I still listen to a lot of Louis Armstrongs's Hot Five & Hot Seven and Roberts Johnson's original recordings. There's an older version of Barber's Adagio from the late 50s (I think) that is one of my favorites. It lacks in sonics, but it's a wonderful performance.
Can I have a very well designed "boom box" with a full iTunes subscription service? I'm a simple person, I think my audiophile membership has expired. :D
300 records is not enough! If it were 3,000 records, then I'd be tempted.

About a decade ago I started to get heavily into early Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and various Delta blues artists. The quality of the recordings presented problems for me. Ultimately it forced me to change me attitude towards what a system can do. Wide and detailed soundstages with gut shaking bass and shimmering highs is nice, but in and of themselves they really don't have that much to do with music.