what system musicians prefer? Do they care?

Neil Young cares. 

Gano, you really opened a can a worms on this one!

When you really get right down it, what does it matter what musicians or anyone else, for that matter, prefer in a home sound system?  All that matters is what YOUR ears like.  I would hazard a guess that most musicians (including some friends of mine who aren't famous and played  local clubs) have professional type sound equipment at home they use in their own home studios to record their own music and that of paying customers.

I'm sure somebody will chime in and correct me about this but I seem to  recall reading somewhere that The Grateful Dead, at least at one time, insisted upon using only McIntosh amplifiers for their concerts.  I also recall reading someplace that Sting preferred using McIntosh amps, as well, and, as I recall, that's what was used at Woodstock.  What's that old saying?  If you remember the 60s, then you weren't really there.

Anyway, most rockers, back in the day and then some, before the ear monitors professionals use now, probably blew out a good part of their hearing ability after a couple years touring on the road.  Standing right in front of those huge Marshall stacks and in front of those old monitors hour after hour, night after night, year after year, didn't help!  As such, I would be highly skeptical about what those folks would have to say about a home audiophile quality sound system.  I'd be infinitely more inclined to seriously consider the opinions of the great symphony orchestra conductors or studio cats with a reputation for being obsessively compulsive in the recoding studio and driving recording engineers crazy with take after take after take until everything sounded just right (e.g. Steely Dan; famous recording engineers; etc.).  Even then, there is no substitute for your own two ears.  After all, what do you buy a sound system for anyway?  To please your fiends?  Or to please yourself?

Certain musicians are fantastic listeners as well as certain audio people but being a musician does not mean you have a great ear for sound i have come to learn that it is a gift you either have the ear or you do not.

I studied music for undergrad and I’m a classically trained musician (violin, piano). I played classical for years but mostly play world music and some pop/rock these days with electric violin and keyboard.

I agree with philbarone: Myself and the musicians I know are trained to listen to what’s going on in the actual music, and sort of filter out and ignore the sound quality of the recording. Great audio reproduction is interesting, but it’s so different from live music that it’s really its own thing. Some musicians care about that thing, but in my experience, most don’t.

Put another way, there’s every bit of music to hear and experience from a crappy radio vs. a great sound system. Articulation, pitch manipulation, tempo, instrument usage, and dynamic choices come through pretty well even on a static-ey AM station. Agreed you lose a huge amount of timbre and sound fidelity, but you don’t lose much if anything of the musical performance characteristics. Thus Victrolas and early radio were very lo-fi but still wonderful. If I really want to hear the timbre of an instrument or the subtleties of blend and hall characteristics, I want to hear it live.

I personally love both - the music itself, and the fascinating, dense depth of sound great audio systems can produce. But I think they’re very different things that don’t have to go together for people to enjoy one or the other.

Even if musician listen attentively " musical interpretation " and filter out "sound"; even if audiophile filter out "musical interpretation and listen attentively the "sound";

There is a common basic  ground: the playing dynamic of a pitch timbre acoustical instrument, which is at the same time music and sound....Or a particular singing voice...