What does listening to a speaker really tell us?

Pawlowski,
I think that's exactly what has most listeners conclude that XYZ component/cable/system is the "best", because it makes the music sound the way they want to hear it. We are always the litmus test for the system AND the recording. And where do each of us purport to stand on that malleable scale of evaluation? At dead-center neutral. Our perspective always looks to be the most sensical, the one against which all others are measured generally as being equal to or less than. Add one more like-minded vote to our own and we have successfully converted opinion into fact. Or so we would like to believe.

Pawlowski I like your formula idea. Let's say Performance plus Recording plus Playback equals Experience. Which props up which? Maybe they're all interdependent. A purist might say let's get the Playback to be totally invisible, remove it from the equation, get it to approach zero. That's a comfortable concept, right? However a pragmatist might give Playback a positive value to enhance the likely outcome. A realist might rationalize the value of whatever he can afford. A hedonist might escape the equation and redefine the Experience. Obviously there's more than one way to dig in. So how's this for a new equation for how do we know? Experiment plus Observation equals Awareness.

"I would think one would like to put the burden on the performance/recording to meet our needs and use our system to prop them up."

I 2nd this! Exactly what I have written several times before on this forum & over on AA.
IMO, the "awareness" of knowing whether a system is being true to the music comes w/ the knowledge of what instruments sound like in real life. This education occurs over a period of time in most of us. Then using this awareness & a budget, it behooves the listener to buy the most neutral electronics & speakers available for his/her budget. What I have also noticed is that every price range seems to have some components which are most neutral. The crux of the matter lies in finding them. As the budget grows, one can upgrade judiciously fully aware that not every more expensive piece is necessarily better sonically.

If I understand them correctly some people are arguing that if a specific piece of equipment makes them feel good, then it must be good equipment. That's an absurd notion. If that line of reasoning really were true, then a glass of alcohol would be considered an audiophile upgrade. It certainly increases toe-tapping musicality and the emotional involvement factor. Let's not lose sight that there is an objective reality somewhere beyond the firing pleasure synapses in our brains. No single piece of equipment adds emotion, musicality, involvement, etc. to music. All equipment, both recording and playback, can only add distortion to the electric based signal passing through. Neutral equipment simply distorts less than non-neutral equipment. All good familiarity with how real instruments sound, known high quality recordings, measurements, specifications and extensive long term listening can help one determine the relative distortion levels of a piece of equipment. This does not mean in the end we will all agree, since it's very clear that people have their own hierarchy of preferred distortions.

Audio is quite simply, at this stage, a quagmire.