How does sound influence your appreciation?

Most of the  greatest musical events i listened on recordings for my taste are bad recordings.

But the musical impact is so huge we forgot sound...

 Musical meanings convey by human gesture transcend sound recording  in any means or format on any system.

Meanings survive the recording death.

i concur with your post.

I never needed a good system to appreciate the music i love.

But a bad system/room is a problem to solve if we want to explore complex choral music or big orchestra as in symphonies. Anyway a piano sound horrible in bad system/room. An organ is nowhere near what it is: a beast...

And human voices ask for a good system/room for the voices timbre and nuances...

I dreamed about a high-fi system of great qualities all my life. I succeeded only few years ago without big money investment ( thanks to basic knowledge especially acoustics ).

It could be that a bad sounding system leaves only the musicianship to be appreciated, so it differentiates more than a good sounding system, which also reveals the pleasing sound qualities of the instruments, voices, and the concert hall. Bad sounding systems leave bad musicians no place to hide.

An audio system /room can be an obstacle to what we listen or help the perception...

My system/room dont bother me now, as in the times i was unsatisfied because of my ignorance level...

I listen music 5 hours per day minimum...

I never think : what if i could upgrade...

Before, when i was passive consumers with no experiments, no studies, no increase day by day S.Q. with each experiments, more than 10 years ago, i bought and sold and dream an impossible dream : I want a 100,000 bucks system minimum .. I was a brainwashed  passive consumers...Only dreams were possible i thought...

As you see we change with studying and experimenting ...I did it after retirement 24 hours a day for few years to understand acoustic in my system/room...

My system/room gave now the minimal acoustical balanced satisfaction if i take into account all factors at play..

My taste in music had no relation to sound but as said the OP :

Since I’ve gotten my system to a very good place, I find myself liking the performance of almost everything I hear.