what system musicians prefer? Do they care?

Car often sounds better as that much glass is heaven to a 4 amp .I often hear more instrument separation from a system that cost Volvo100$ tops than the 25K$  in my house.

Perhaps you can clarify the point you’re making. Music is sound. What you are describing as performance values (Articulation, pitch manipulation, tempo, instrument usage, and dynamic choices) are sound, often very subtle uses of sound. In my experience, subtleties in music are heard better on a quality music system and are hidden by noise or are just not reproduced on a crappy system.

So I guess I’m not clear on how music (performance values) can be separated from sound and how a better sounding system doesn’t reproduce performance values better than a crappy system

Music survive sound....

It is a spiritual event before being a sound event....

I apologize, i cannot resist to answer...

A badly recording of Furtwangler Bruckner symphonies may exceed in value most new interpretation and one of the greatest musical events in my life anyway was on bad recordings...

Were there a way to compare a thousand Classical Musicians to a thousand rock players perhaps 20 rockers
would compare and perhaps 5 in the upper area .

tomcy6, fair question, I will try and clarify.

mahgister puts it well and as an extension of philbarone’s succinct comment, “musicians listen to the content of the music before the sound of it”:

I believe that I acknowledged that well chosen (!) high end gear can make performance values (content) more obvious, but that it wasn’t absolutely necessary to appreciate the musical message and that the need for this varied depending on the listener and his priorities. I also said that none of this is a judgment of how anyone chooses to or is able to enjoy the listening experience; it’s a personal call. This is what I wrote:

**** Of course, well 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. ****

Yes, as you suggested the content of the music is obviously communicated via sound. However, a distinction (conscious or not) can be made between certain aspects of the overall sound. Some of these are musical content and some are not. The aspects of the sound that I find are sometimes the focal point for some listeners have little or nothing to do with the musical content. These things can be subjectively positive or negative depending on the listener and are what I described as the “ear candy” aspects of high end audio (the sound):

Sound staging and its effects (realistic or not), hyper detail and air-less separation of instruments, exaggerated high end passing off as “accuracy”, overblown bass, bass that is too dry, overly thick midrange passing off as “warmth” or “musicality”. These and other aspects of sound have nothing to do with musical content. Sometimes, depending on the listener, focusing on these can distract from the musical content:

A flute blending beautifully with a muted trumpet in a perfect unison line, a seamless crescendo by a string section, “is the bass player too relaxed for the drummer’s back beat?”, “did the piano player add the flatted 9th to that dominant chord?”, a singer’s expressivity, “is the bass player staying away from the piano player’s left hand?”, the guitar player bending the pitch (to use your example). These and many other musical considerations are things that remain obvious even when sitting away from the sweet spot and are what are referred to in the comment “musicians listen to musical content before the sound of it”.

In my experience crappy equipment does a much better job of destroying sound than it does destroying musical content.

**** Music survives sound **** - mahgister

Hope this helps.

Got it. Thanks!

I find much more to appreciate on a good system, though, and will try to keep a good system as long as I can hear, which may not be all that much longer.