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

"I can listen to jazz recordings for hours on end but can scarcely
remember a dozen tunes."

If you can’t remember what you are listening to, either the music is not leaving an impression on you or you are not paying attention to it. I suspect you are multi-tasking with the music in the background and are probably a digital listener. There is nothing wrong with that per se. People listen to and collect music for many different reasons. Some want the best recordings, some want rare or historic content, some collect from a certain era, etc, etc. I don’t have any music in my collection that I don’t like and wouldn’t play. It’s mostly jazz and I can name most any song from any album. I don’t try to intellectualize the music as many do, I just listen and enjoy it on a nice system that allows me to do so.

If I’m auditioning a piece of gear or changing something in the system, I cannot relax until I get everything in synch and singing together. At that time I am listening to the sound of my system. Once everything is satisfactorily tweaked, I'm back to listening to the music.

Money trumps all.

mijostyn circa 3/25/2021

Ain’t that the truth. The above phrase has quite a meaning in today’s times.

One of my favorite record stores have been back open to the public for awhile now and it’s time for me to do some crate digging again. I never knew how meditatively pleasing it was for me until it was taken away. I’m ready for all this melancholy to go away. Oh what covid 19 has wrought. There is a tinge of blues in my post here when there shouldn’t be. But I guess that’s part of music and life.

A good sound help me to better appreciate what is not already my cup of tea...Enlarging my understanding musical scope...

Good music the one i love already dont need good sound but they are a marriage made in heaven anyway and like in a love affair, it is love that matters here not the need first...

My sound is so good now, i even listen nowadays the musical genre i listened to the less in the past : complete opera, because i can now see the singers walking on the theater or singing around me in some particularly good recording job...

It is thanks to my room mechanical equalization, because i has been able to control with it and some others device  the "listener envelopment " acoustical phenomena ...

Good sound help indeed....

Pesky, that's funny.  I had almost forgotten my first preamp was a Soundcraftsman with full spectrum equalizer.  Had that 4 years and have never had tone controls since.

Simple...

It should first be all about the music and if it's to your taste/pleasure...

Then look for a better recording and/or performance.

Duh?

DeKay