Am I an Audiophile, a music lover-or both?

Gosh, thanks for reminding me. I was unaware cheapness was an art.

I once started a thread on another forum titled.."Are you a music lover or an equipment lover?"  My goodness the responses got heated, most falling into the category of "without the music your equipment is worthless" to "without the equipment you'd have nothing to play it on". That said I've seen and read about many people who are simply  listening to their equipment and not the music.  I have fallen victim to this "Audiophillia Nervousa" disease myself on occasion and have thankfully gotten of that bandwagon.  I love primarily classic rock but was introduced to Jazz by music dealers demoing their wares to me and I'm grateful for that as I cherish late night listening sessions with that genre of music.  As much as I love music I readily admit that I love equipment even more, some of the mega buck stuff is downright droolworthy, most of which I'll never own. There is no reason you can't be both but one thing that is telling is very few of my friends have even decent sounding systems but when they are over my house spinning tunes what I hear most is "that's a great song!' but they rarely comment on the quality of the sound (maybe my system really sucks!), I guess most people fall into the category of music lover first

@geoffkait me too indeed unaware, but I'm well aware that Rationality is the art that not too many possess especially audiophiles. 

@czarivey When you hear something new in a recording you know so well, all Rationality disappears from your consciousness.  There may be a correlation between how fast your Rationality disappears vs which audiophile priority has changed with the new/modified/different component under scrutiny.

I'm wondering as I read this discussion how many of us have listened to a particular recording and been unimpressed by it only to listen to the exact same recording another time and really enjoy it?

I had a rather dramatic example of this recently with a recording of Rachmaninoff's Symphony #2.  Based on reviews I read, I purchased a version performed by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.  The SACD had very nice sound quality but the performance left me unfulfilled.  I was so disappointed that I purchased Andre Previn's rendition, often noted as the standard of performance for this work.  It was great to listen to.  The music was stirring.  A couple weeks passed and I decided to try the Singapore recording again and low and behold I really enjoyed it, both musically and sonically.  The only thing I could conclude that may have led to the change in appreciation was hearing the Previn in between and being opened up to new aspects of the work that enabled me to appreciate the Singapore's perspective on the work.

The nice thing now is that I am enjoying both performances!  Perhaps there is no ideal performance of a work just performances that reveal different virtues of that work.