Jazz listening: Is it about the music? Or is it about the sound?


The thread title says it all. I can listen to jazz recordings for hours on end but can scarcely name a dozen tunes.  My jazz collection is small but still growing.  Most recordings sound great.  On the other hand, I have a substantial rock, pop and country collection and like most of us, have a near encyclopedic knowledge of it.  Yet sound quality is all over the map to the point that many titles have become nearly unlistenable on my best system.  Which leads me back to my question: Is it the sound or the music?  Maybe it’s both. You’ve just got to have one or the other!
jdmccall56
I posted a few months ago that many of my old rock albums sounded pretty poor on my new system - now some I only listen too on an old system I have in my workshop in the garage. I have not heard a really unlistenable Jazz album yet. In fact all The Modern Jazz Quartet albums sound amazing on the new system and have brought me back to listening to more Jazz. I have replaced some of my old rock with 180 gram reissues when available and that has helped.  
assembling a system that can deal with the wide wide range of recording quality of the various forms and sources of music we listen to is a key learned skill in this pursuit

that been said, it is still hard to have cake and eat it too... whereever on the spectrum you choose for your system’s tonality

and oh, yes, to the top line question... it is about the music... the brilliant music... they system is there to convey and hopefully not distract