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

IMHO, with jazz you get both – good music and good sound. Like @whipsaw mentioned, Rudy Van Gelder (Blue Note) engineered tons of material from the bebop/hard bop/post-bop eras. Several other labels had good production quality as well, like Prestige, Riverside, Columbia, Verve, and Impulse. I don’t know if there was an unspoken standard or a small group traveling within that genre, but most of the stuff they produced was pretty consistently good.

 

Yeah rock, R&B, even blues, can be all over the place. But again, I think that was a function of engineering and where/how they were recorded. Earth, Wind and Fire’s first album sounded like it was recorded in someone’s garage. Their sound improved substantially with the move to Columbia. Chicago (CTA) put out great stuff with Columbia as well.

 

The other day, remembering my high school days, put on “Stand” by Sly & the Family Stone. It was pretty bad. I liked that album playing on the system I had back then. If one’s system is fairly resolving, capable of faithfully reproducing what’s been recorded, then sound quality will necessarily vary based on how well it’s been engineered. It’s the old adage “garbage in garbage out” at work.  

 

One last thing, keeping with the central theme: is it the music or the sound? I had a plumber doing some work and I asked him “… anything or anybody you care to hear while you’re working?” He suggested Vince Gill, Randy Travis, and a couple of other country artists I can’t remember. That day – song after song - I discovered how much high quality sound comes out of Nashville. Those guys really know how to engineer great sounding music! Am I now a country music fan? Well no, all things being equal, music trumps sound. Just saying …      

there are many good sounding, well engineered jazz labels... to me though, manfred eicher's ecm sets the bar as the gold standard over the years and still, today

you must like the selection of music/artists though... 

As a long-time jazz collector, to me, it is about the music first. That's not to say that sound quality isn't important too, but in looking at my collection, it contains a lot of jazz history. Back in time, there were some pretty poor quality recordings that contained fantastic music. Charlie Parker albums readily come to mind. "Bird's" influence on jazz musicians cannot be denied, including current ones. His recordings belong in any serious jazz fan's collection. 

Frank

It is about both but when you get the best recordings of really great music the thought about the sound goes away and yes the better the system the more the flaws of most recordings are shown. When you have the best music and it is not recorded or played back well it is a shame because you do not want to listen to it.

@OP,  I get it.  I listen to the Bill Evans Trio, Waltz for Debby, album nearly every week.  Sonically, it still blows me away.  And it's a 1962 recording, made live inside the small Village Vanguard.  

I think MillerCarbon has some good advice about trying to focus in on what's off with other genres so you can improve your system to maximize your pleasure across all music.  Nonetheless, I'm with you--jazz can be so pleasing and its recording quality pretty high, generally, that we can start to feel like other genres are more difficult to enjoy or not as pleasant.  My situation has gotten better on the other genres--yet it cost me a bit to get here.