Turned back into a music lover

Having  known many 1st class Classical artists  it was painful for me  as they put their  all year after  year,

When you throw all you have for years the stress is  unreal  be you a soldier 

or a pianist  !

I am very  happy  that rvpiano  came thru  without PTSD ,(no joke)

i usually listen to music to enjoy music, decompress, clear mind of all else, revisit a particular artist to experience his/her/their brilliance - in effect this is 'the harvest', the reward of all the effort made to build a very nice sounding system...

interesting thing is with streaming, i'd probably rate my time listening to saved music/favorites about 2/3’s of the time, the other 1/3 is spent discovering new music, perhaps an older album of an artist, or their new work, or a recommended new artist or album entirely

since there is a good amount of time listening to new music, i must admit that i get thrown back into ’listen to the hifi and not the music mode’ as i can be struck by how some may be well or poorly recorded.... listening to new music, one is more in evaluative mode, seeing if the music is enjoyable, and the sound of it is part of that

so actually this aspect is somewhat cloudier than it was before, listening to cd’s or lp’s from the established collection... of course, i would get new lp’s or cd’s in those days ... but much less often than i am discovering new music these days

+1 “For The Love of Music”……

The other day, a metaphor came into my mind.

I enjoy this as much as a good TV film. Or more.

Listening to analog LPs in my living room. 10cc Sheet music.

I like films. For enterainment, the best leaves my stereo system behind.

But I did reconsider - now listen, this is "filmatic", clear, emotions connected - why not stay with the music...so I did not go to the TV room.

Re; "For the love of music" - I rediscover 10cc, Yes, Steppenwolf, Jefferson Airplane, and many others - thanks to a good music system.

@rvpiano

If you can delight in the many wonderful subtleties of a performance instead of listening for audio thrills you’ve turned back into a music lover. The behemoth that is your audio system tempts you mightily. But if you can somehow evade that temptation, you can fully enjoy music again.

First of all, your post seems to create a false dichotomy; that either one is a music lover, and ignores their gear, or, one only pays attention to how good their gear is at reproducing music, and doesn’t care about the actual music. As if, one can only be one type of listener, or the other.

But what about those of us, that for the vast majority of the time, only care about the music, and completely ignore the gear reproducing it. But at other times, maybe for a couple of hours a week, or every couple of weeks, all we do is pay attention to the gear, while making changes, and listening to only ’audiophile approved’ recordings, even if we don’t actually like the music, just so we can more easily hear the changes.

So, am I constantly switching between being an ’audiophile’ to music lover, and back again? Or is it more likely that I can hold 2 differing ways to approach audio in my mind, without being in internal conflict?

NO! I am always an audiophile AND a music lover.

For me, the music comes first, and is by far what is important to me. But that doesn’t rule out the fun I can have, from time to time, by just paying attention to the gear.