Are "listening to" or "listening with"

Many many years ago, like Steve Gutenberg, I worked in motion picture projection booths. First as a projectionist, then doing industrial and circuit board design for a competitor of Dolby's.

As a projectionist, avoiding film scratches, and dust, ensuring lamps were rotated and offering proper edge to edge lighting, not to mention sound quality were always on my mind.

To the point that I could not watch movies anymore. In a real sense, the age of digital film was a sweet relief to me. I had literally trained my eyes/brain/reward centers to scan for imperfections, identify them and then rush to fix them. I was no better a movie watcher than anyone else. In fact, I was poorer for it, as I lost sight of framing, pacing, arguments and story telling, let alone human interaction on the screen.

The point I wanted to make is too often as audiophiles we do ourselves a disservice. We start listening TO equipment, instead of listening to music WITH equipment.

As with anything, to your own tastes be true, buy what you like, but make these choices about listening TO or WITH conscious ones. Know that if you listen TO you have a tough time listening WITH. Please yourself, but know that you are hacking your brain when you listen TO gear, and that this hacking may or may not be that rewarding in the end.