I started off listening to my parent's LP's around 1967 or 68. They had a collection of classical, folk, and a few other things that don't twig the mind at the moment. Graduated to top 40 AM. Then in high school I went the prog rock route of some my fellow goners of the same age group. Back in the mid 70's most everybody listened to much the same thing at school. After high school I got my first decent (in retrospect it wasn't as good as I thought at the time) stereo. I was mired in prog rock, hard rock, and skinny tie music. I had one or two classical LP's almost as token representation. Zoom ahead twenty years and now at the age of 43 I still have some of the above excepting top 40, but lots of classical, blues, jazz, punk, heavy metal - really heavy, nu-metal, soft rock -if not too sleepy or whiny. So what does this mean? I've found that having a decent rig gets me listening to more music period! Now that I'm listening to more music I find I want more variety and am willing to give a listen to things I once would have dismissed arbitrarily. I wouldn't have changed this for anything in the world. I can be listening to the Melvins for one disc and then switch to say Mahler the next without blinking an eye and be quite moved by either. It isn't about the quality of the sound but the music itself and you would really believe this if you've ever heard a Melvin's recording. So if I'm listening to more music I can now justify spending more money on a better hi-fi. Of course this really becomes a chicken or egg kind of thing - do you start listening more then buy of buy then start listening more. I suspect a little of both. For me it was a matter of replacing a bunch of twenty odd year old equipment which had served me well with some new stuff for the next twenty years. I'm glad I did. Oh yes, Hell Yes.