what system musicians prefer? Do they care?

Put another way, there’s every bit of music to hear and experience from a crappy radio vs. a great sound system. Articulation, pitch manipulation, tempo, instrument usage, and dynamic choices come through pretty well even on a static-ey AM station.

I think that one would need a really good sounding stereo to hear these things.  I have listened to many crappy AM radios and I'm pretty sure I couldn't  hear someone slightly bending a note or adding just a touch of vibrato no matter how beautifully it was done by the artist on one.  Articulation and dynamics?  These don't exist on crummy systems.

Most musicians don't listen to stereos for enjoyment.  For them listening to music means playing or listening to others play.  What they want out of a stereo is very different from what audiophiles want, and there's nothing wrong with that.  But as long as I am a non-musician music lover, I will listen to a great stereo over a crummy AM radio any day, and I will hear much more of the music through that great stereo.  To hear more of the music is why I upgrade my stereo. The better it gets the more of what the musicians are doing  I hear . 

Douglas_schroeder and tomcy6 state the issue surpassingly well.

My friend who's a classical musician uses Philharmonic 3 speakers with Van Alstine amp and pre he also loves Maggie's for the clarity.

Several Maggie owners among the Classical musicians that I know, johnto.

I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience with Classical or Jazz musicians and their audio systems, but as I said previously, I know many who have systems that are far better than “crap”. Now, it is true that many musicians don’t have a lot of discretionary income, but many successful working musicians manage to afford decent sound. Of course, one man’s good audio may be someone else’s crap.

I agree with phasemonger. I think there is sometimes a tendency to equate the “sound” of music with music itself. Musicians listen primarily for performance values (the music) and not just the sound of the music. I disagree with the comments made suggesting that high end equipment is absolutely necessary for the appreciation of performance values. It may be for some listeners, but not for all. Of course, we’ll chosen (!!!) high end equipment makes those performance values more obvious, but the “necessity” for this has to be weighed against a given listener’s ability to hear and appreciate them if a general comment about the necessity can be made.

Please don’t misunderstand, I love my high end audio toys. However, while I enjoy reveling in the huge soundstage and extended frequency response of my main audio rig, there is seldom a time when I feel I missed the musical message of the performance listening to the same recording over my car’s radio. I think it’s possible to become too dependent on the ear candy aspect of high end audio. How many times have we read a comment by an audio reviewer (!) to the effect that component X or Z finally made it possible to tell that the instrument playing on a particular recording was an English Horn and not an oboe? The difference between those two sounds is obvious even on a “crappy radio”.

Personally, I feel a worthy goal should be to always strive to be a better listener of the music as much as of the sound of it.

@frogman Great posts!