The Sound or Music


I listen to all genres of music but really enjoy it with good sound. I know of people who just love one particular type of music but don't care at all about audio. My late relative just loved classical music and had hundreds of good records but his system was like bad transistor radio. He had means but was not interested in better system at all. Music, for him was 99.9% and sound 0.1% of the pleasure. He was most likely missing half of instruments of orchestral music, he listened to - either by limited frequency response or very poor resolution. He was a music lover. Am I a music lover or just only an audio freak?
What about you?
128x128kijanki
Thank you Elizabeth - I feel a little better.

Jamiek, Hellofidelity - Imagine that you have choice of two versions of the same orchestral performance:

- exceptional performance recorded 50 years ago with
really bad sound and a lot of noise.
- recently released, not as great but recorded beautifully.

What would you choose? Said relative of mine would not hesitate selecting first one while I would always select the second. I'm perhaps audio freak but am not as bold as Elizabeth to admit it.

Onhwy61 - In example above it might be trade-off between 10% performance difference for 90% sound improvement. Is it still sound over substance?
Whole experience is important to me - substance AND sound.
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"perfect stereo system, but limited to your favorite 300 recordings"...or "crummy boombox, and thousands of interesting recordings"

"you must choose one only"

Elizabeth you are a very cruel person!
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I would prefer the better performance. I still listen to a lot of Louis Armstrongs's Hot Five & Hot Seven and Roberts Johnson's original recordings. There's an older version of Barber's Adagio from the late 50s (I think) that is one of my favorites. It lacks in sonics, but it's a wonderful performance.