Musician vs. audiophile

**** Surely there must be musicians who are tone deaf. You yourself said they use ear plugs sometimes. Yet they still play on. One assumes they just watch fhe director and hope for the best. ****

I really am surprised at your apparent cluelessness about this subject; I expected more.  I would be glad to educate you if it interests you, but a certain amount of openness to being mistaken is necessary.  Do you even know what exactly you mean by “tone deaf”?

Pure bs about musicians being deaf. Who picks out the equipment that the musician uses? Would I ask a guitar player to pick my cymbal array or would a piano player ask a drummer if the piano is tuned? I know what a ride cymbal sounds like, I could ask 100,000 non drummers and they wouldn’t have a clue. If musicians are deaf, why do guitar players change guitars out almost every song? Why do some bands use Marshall amps and others use fender tube amps? It all makes a difference. 
What I don’t get is that you can go to a outside jazz concert, say acoustic alchemy is playing, and everything sounds fantastic. The group is using $1000 fender amps, and maybe the sound system that everything is playing thru costs a few thousand $$$$, why do audiophiles think they need $200,000 worth of equipment to recapture this sound? The specs on fender amps/Marshall amps are very limiting, but in our dedicated audio rooms, the specs of our speakers and amps are much better than what the source was. I go to a lot of concerts, some are fantastic sounding while others I would rather be at home listening to this group thru my system.

My step father was a musician as well as a uncle in the family . Neither one cared about hifi systems . The uncle told me he did his listening in his Honda SUV . i'm sure he opted for the upgraded sound system . No speakers in his house however . He is a piano/keyboardist . My passed stepfather was a guitar/ singer in many bands he formed . Mostly christian rock. Again he had no speakers in his house except a portable boombox he listened to Dire Straits cd's on while picture framing as a business . This has lead me to believe musicians do not care for hifi . Never asked them why but it is odd to me .

This is all wonderfully academic for sure, but i have heard Wilson speakers sound sublime and quite wonderful at times, and dreadful
at other times, depending more on EXTERNAL FACTORS than an internal flaw in the speakers themselves.  As for musicians having a different sense of what sounds more like the real thing or not, I cannot agree less.  If they just don't care due to their stubborness and/or narrow point of view, that's separate from knowing good and well what sounds natural and what doesn't.  The 1st time i heard a good pair of acoustic suspension speakers back at the ripe old age of 9 or 10, i knew that i was hearing bass that went deeper, far less harmonic distortion, and highs that were more open and airy.  Was it Majico good or B&W good?  We can argue over THAT, but let's not kid ourselves over the basics.  The poster & wife simply have issues with the end results they are getting when they sit down to listen to music, and a trustworthy audio shop (or a capable friend) could help them out to get better sound regardless.  And furthermore, they have speakers that cost an arm and a leg to start with, along with other esoteric components.

@bdp24 "James Boyk, Pianist In Residence at the California Institute of Technology (where he teaches), is a performing musician, recording engineer at his label Performance Recordings, equipment reviewer, and long-time audiophile. In one talk he gave, he described how the timbre and tonality of his piano changes as a long-held notes/chord fades to silence, the relative strengths of the fundamentals and all their overtones changing as the notes fade. When he evaluates equipment, James listens for the ability of the product under test to reproduce that changing timbre he knows is contained in his recordings of he playing his piano. Wow! Last I heard, his monitor and pleasure listening system consisted a pair of the original Quad ESL’s, tube electronics, and a Linn Sondek table."

That's pretty much where I ended up...a tube amplifier driving a pair of Quad ESL57s.  Like James Boyk, timbre / tonality can make it or break it for me.  I try listen to sounds I'm completely familiar with, and a component that alters that loses me.  Don't want to risk kicking any sacred cows, but some of the most highly esteemed components sound quite wrong.  I will say that the Quads do (far) better at that more than any other loudspeaker I've come across