Tough decisions

[PS Audio]

<!-- #thumb --> <p>My son Scott loves music; perhaps more than I. *He’s willing to listen even if the recording is awful and is able to turn off the rejection mechanism so ingrained in my head as an Audiophile. *Part of me wishes I was just as able to be that selective – because I’d get a lot more music on my plate than I do now – but then …..</p>
<p>What’s interesting to me is that as a budding Audiophile himself, he fully appreciates the wonder of a great musical performance AND a great sound presented on a proper system – yet he can toggle between the two modes.</p>
<p>For me, if the music is good enough and I object to the recording quality, I simply put it on my portable music system and listen when I go for a morning run. *On the ear buds I can listen to almost any quality of recording and enjoy the music without prejudice because of the recording – but put it on the big system and I reach for the eject button.</p>
<p>“Back in the day” when I got started with high end audio, it was every person’s dream to have a “kick ass” stereo system and a huge collection of records – so much so that many of us had not much else to our names – there was the stereo, the records, perhaps a water bed and a smattering of furniture. *We listened to everything and only criticized the music itself as being worthy of our time or not.</p>
<p>As I got older and my system got better, I started demanding more: good sound AND a good performance.</p>
<p>I am not willing to give up either at this point and so I spend time searching out better equipment and great performances that I haven’t heard. *I am pretty convinced it’s not a bad thing – I wonder how close my experience relates to your own?</p>
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[Shadowfax]

I have run into similar practices as my system got a little better. In my main rig, I rarely play anything that is not recorded reasonably well. Some music I love never gets spun there because of sound quality like Triumph - Stages. The show had great energy and I love the songs, but it was recorded really poorly. Many other disks on my shelf like that.

But in my secondary and tertiary setups, I do less critical listening, even though they are decent sounding setups. I have no problems streaming Pandora thru my OPPO 93s in both other setups and will play almost any disk there if it's just background music or just to kill the silence.

I guess in a way it can be interpreted as either listening to the gear or listening to the music.