SQ vs. Music

After suffering the slings and arrows of relatives’ braying about how I’m just "listening to the equipment" I began to catalogue all of the things that I listen to besides the music and equipment: noise; vinyl quality; vocal quality and timbre; acoustic instrument resonance even to the extent of trying to identify the piano by its sound; sound of the hall; effectiveness of the mic setup; conductor’s control and interpretation; my room’s acoustics; there must be many more. If all of the above perform optimally you’ve got some "SOUND" to evaluate, whether it’s music or equipment. You could run it through an old NAD integrated with a pair of almost any modern speakers or phones and you’ve got excellent sound!
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Wise man speaking...

I concur with you.....

Many moons ago I listened to music on a cheaper stereo.  And enjoyed it.  My financial circumstances improved causing me to go down the rabbit hole searching for perfect sound.    Spent years listening to SQ.  Upgraded everything from fuses to room with acoustic treatment and stopped when SQ finally became reasonably good.   Now I listen to music BUT hardly.  Having listened for  hours every day for years to tune SQ I find my music boring. Tried streaming new stuff but the thrill Is gone .   But I have a great system should require 

I select the type of music and then the artist/group l like listening to. I try to rotate equally among all of the records I have of the artist, but there are a few that get skipped over or artists with only 1 or 2 albums that never seem to hit the table. It’s nice to play something I haven’t listened  to for years that I enjoy and remember why I bought it. It’s disappointing to pull one of those out that sound terrible & remember why I never play it. Luckily there are only a handful of those.

if I am looking for a little treat, I’ll put on a UHQR of the group I’ve selected. I don’t keep them sequentially within the main record groupings they fit in. They are also my reference point when I change something in my system. I know I am a little (or a lot) OCD about my records being organized perfectly. Think about the guy from the movie Diner. My wife has never touched a record. One time I thought a record was missing (Changesonebowie) that I don’t play much and it drove me nuts. Somehow it got embedded into another record which is hard to do if you use outer jacket sleeves, but it happened. A couple weeks went by looking for it and I was unnerved the whole time.

I never put on a record just because I want to hear something that sounds good. It’s a den, not a stereo store demo room. If I don’t like the music, I will not buy it just to see how good my system can sound.

Same orchestra playing same composition. Different conductors. In one case the performance is spectacular and in another so so. What is going on ? Same sounds and combination of notes and silence, even the same musicians. Conductor is our hi fi, without the conductor it's nothing, just outlines.

inna,
Good point about different conductors.  I have several versions of the Beethoven symphonies, some seem to be faster (though the track times are not), some seem more "dynamic" than others, etc.

When I was visiting dealer after dealer, auditioning speakers, it really bugged me when I'd bring in a stack of CDs for my audition and the dealer insisted on demoing with music I would never listen to, but that made the speakers shine.  I'd deliberately include a few older CDs, back in the day when the mastering equipment was not the best, to make sure I'd be able to listen for extended periods of time; I could not make it thru the first track of the original "Born to Run" CD, as the "highly resolving" system being demonstrated brought out all the rough edges in a way that was not at all pleasing.