How much reality do you really need?

rvpiano, being an audiophile is all about the sound. It really has little to do with the music. Loving and appreciating music is another endeavor entirely. An audiophile is concerned about the technicalities of sound reproduction. A music lover loves music. It is actually very unusual for a human to not like music. Our life's experience is all about rhythm.  

rvpiano, excellent question...

I'll turn the question on its head:  How much reality do you want to escape from?  Seems to me we are all in the "Disneyland" business of escapism.  If you're not then you're listening to the equipment (reality) rather than being in an altered state of mind.  Being carried away into the ether has always been my goal.  Floating.

Regards,
barts 

as we can see in our world today, reality is reality, but each person's belief of what is reality can be different, dreadfully, woefully different - musically for example, a person who goes to live springsteen performances at the meadowlands has a totally different take on reality of music than a season ticket holder to the boston symphony...

so asking 'how much reality one needs out of their hifi' is a lost cause, an exercise in futility

furthermore, recordings are made with substantial imperfections and losses, and then the reproduction of the recordings incur further losses... some good systems can sometimes add some 'enhancements' to deliver a more pleasing illusion to the listener in the course of reproduction (e.g. vacuum tube distortion), such is the subjectivity in this pursuit in working with biomechanics of our hearing and our tastes

so one can say audiophiles are about 'the sound'... that wouldn't be totally wrong... but smart and seasoned audiophiles are about the sound in service of delivering beautiful, engaging musical experiences... 

...short of that, we are playing games with semantics, not having a discussion of the substance of the pursuit

10:46am”… being an audiophile is all about the sound. It really has little to do with the music,”
I suppose for some that is true.  But for others, chasing the goal of sound perfection gets in the way of the music.

The better the sound, the closer one gets to the music. It is, after all, all about the music.

Frank