Real or Surreal. Do you throw accuracy out the window for "better" sound?

This is something about myself as I live with an audiophile who is not enjoying music if the production, I mean recording, could be better, in his view, done! Even the perfect execution of the piece of music, in his view, is not worth listening to if there’s something wrong with the recording. I agree and disagree at the same time.

Most music lovers dont need to be audiophiles and dont really want to be one at all cost...Music is all for them...

A serious audiophile  in my opinion must learn musical concepts and styles , and also acoustic concepts, to be serious...A superficial audiophile with obsessive disorder and compulsive disorder to some degree will refuse to listen to classical music badly recorded for example because he  always FOCUS his attention on sound quality recording to TEST his system level  and not on musical interpretation or  not onto his room acoustic properties  and  ways of translating optimally the bad as well as the good recording ...And he will do anything to improve the fidelity of the recorded translation BUT  with the focus on the gear component with costly cables for example way more than with the real acoustic controls of his room ...

This is more gear fetischism than learning experiments in acoustic and learnings experiments with other  embeddings controls for his system ...Price tag will mean something ultimate , and he can be a measured fanatic audiophile or a subjective hearing audiophiles that does not matter ...None of them experiment in mechanical,electrical and acoustical embeddings... Objectivist and subjectivist audiophile tend to be gear fetichist or tool fetichist  and are enemy brothers on the same ground : the gear measures or the gear "taste" and price tags first and last ...

The superficial audiophiles , being objectivist or subjectivist, put acoustics science to be secondary to the electronic gear system , and they reduce complex acoustics concepts to simple recipe of room acoustic ( buying panels) and they are more occupied with sound than with music genre and style  learnings  ...

I consider myself fortunate to be able to appreciate and enjoy high quality audio and visual reproduction even though I don’t require it to enjoy content (although some content can be pretty rough on the ears if it isn't reproduced really well, or sometimes if it's reproduced too well.) I have magic moments listening to classical music on the cheap FM radio in the car, sometimes when it’s not coming in very well. I’ve been emotionally moved by pictures printed on cheap media, or movies watched on 20" CRT televisions. I think most audiophiles and videophiles are the same way. Maybe we need a term like mediaphile for people who are excited about all kinds of high quality audio/visual and perhaps even 3D printed reproduction, castings, fine scale modeling, etc.

@asctim 

I made a set of two way open baffle speakers for a friend with subwoofers below. I hung the speakers from the ceiling with decorative chains. The baffles were made of a sandwich of Corian and MDF. They were very heavy for their size. Worked out very well. Just a thought. 

@asctim 

Curious that you would use the word impact. Your father may not have been going for impact. Impact sounds like the image has an aggressive quality where the it 'pushes' at the viewer so that the viewer is impressed. The artist adds saturation, brightness, and sharpness so that the image stands out and attracts the viewer's attention.  I can see this as being superficial with the appeal quickly fading and the viewer hungering for something with even more pop. Your father may have wished, on the other hand, for the viewer to be drawn into his photograph rather than impressed by it. I find naturalness tends to achieve that.  All of this is analogous to music playback. An obviously enhanced blue sky will take me out of a photograph just as a metallic edge to a cymbal hit will take me out of a song.  

brev  How can a "metallic edge' to a cymbal hit take you out of a song?  I have yet to hear an audio system that ever comes close to the true metallic edge of live cymbals!  I know.... I own over 20 cymbals.  There's simply no way a 1" tweeter can generate the energy of a 20" piece of brass being hit with a stick.  I think it's why many musicians don't obsess over audio systems... they are not even close to what the actual instrument sounds like live, when you are playing it.