Do you listen mainly to Audiophile CDs and records?

Geoffkait     11-06-2017
"Now that I think about it I actually tend to avoid audiophile CDs and recordings like the plague. The only exception would probably be for testing purposes."

What kind of testing do you do with a bad CD?  How well they fly?  🤔

By testing I meant product development or testing of some tweak or another. Bad CDs I carry on me to maybe use as weapons, you know, like those Ninja throwing stars. Better safe than sorry. 😛

I tend to listen to better recordings of good music more often than good music recorded poorly; but I've found some real jewels among my old LPs once they are cleaned up and played on the system I have now vs. the one I had in 1980.
Similar experience with CDs and SACDs. I also discovered some of my old CDs were HDCS, once they were introduced to a proper UDP.

For great performances in classical music I sometimes cannot listen to them on my main system. The Toscanini Pastoral on EMI or Callas and Di Stefano in Tosca live from Mexico City on Melodram are really as good as it gets but no way could I listen to them on this very resolving system.  I have a good second system for that.

Old classical recordings that sound great on my main system are the Reiner RCA box or the Karajan Decca box. The Deccas are better in terms of sound than his later DG recordings.

I listen to music I like. My collection consists of rock, pop, blues, country, bluegrass, indie, jazz, classical, odds n ends.  I like to rate my albums on sound quality, class A-class D. Approximate percentages are:
Class A- 5%
Class B-35%
Class C-50%
Class D-10%
Actually, I own a couple albums  I consider A+, which are Roger Waters Amused to Death (on DVD-A), and Patricia Barbers Cafe Blue Un-Mastered (on SACD).
The majority of what I listen to is SQ B and C.

Tom