What exactly is critical listening? Who does it?

That was a helpful clarification ("critique" vs. "analysis").

My biggest issue is with the claim listening purely for the music is the highest/best mode or goal of the audiophile. How can this be when the very essence of this hobby/obsession is sound quality.  So now we're supposed to ignore sound quality and transcend into this blissful world where sound quality is of no consequence. 

I agree 100%. Such statements seem like ways to avoid analysis. Then again, there's someone who has not dodged analysis, Mike Lavigne who says,

"critical listening is a tool. not the goal."

Mike's post laid out in nice detail the iterative back and forth which brought his system to a happy state of completion. Now, I don't know how you take his comment, in its wider context.  I, for one, would not have put it as definitively ("the" goal). After all, there is positive enjoyment of sound as well as of musical content.

So, one counterargument to the music-first is roughly that: viz.,  sound-is-a-positive-good-too.

Another route is what we might call the "sound and music are inseparable" argument. Your comment about having multiple elements go hand and hand speakes to that. 

(Consider someone enjoying the juicy-sweet-crunchy taste of an apple. If I said  "Ok, but aren't apples really about the crunch?" they would look at me as if I didn't understand what it means to eat an apple. To me, your comment conveys that kind of point.)

True critical state of listening is a mindful state where one recognizes all these imperfections yet accepts them on their own terms. 

Agreed. Think of the difference between a perfectly symmetrical beautiful face and one which is beautiful but interesting, asymmetrical. Hawthorne got to the heart of the falsity of perfection with his short story, "The Birthmark." 

Certainly for most of us there eventually becomes a time when certain flaws cannot be ignored or intolerable. 

This happened to me when I started listening to a much higher percentage of symphonic music. The flaws (or shortcomings) were now too pronounced in the speakers and I needed to make a change.

I'd add one other point which might give a bit more room for the "listen to the music argument." There are times I get lost in the music because of its (let's say "semantic") content. This is akin to watching a movie and forgetting you're watching a rectangular screen, or reading a novel with a certain size and type of font. The goal of "getting lost in the music" is, on this interpretation, about forgetting the media (even the pleasurable aspects of that media) and letting the semantic content completely suffuse your experience. That kind of consummatory experience is one we all have and which is a legitimate goal. But -- here I return to your point above -- it's not a "superior" goal or the "only" goal. 

Critical listening is done by critics.  

Sound vs music or is it sound and music. Sound vs music means are we most focused on the either the sound or music, sometimes the sound  most stimulates our senses other times the music. What is most salient vacillates at times for me, responsibility for this may be assigned to the recording, the music, the performance of that music or the system itself. The sound quality of the recording may detract or enhance  the music itself, obviously this can be a good or bad thing. 

Sound and music not in conflict or opposition. We could be 'lost' in the music, sound recedes into the subconscious. We could also become 'lost' in the sound, music recedes into the subconscious. And then there is the happy medium where sound and music become one, we are not consciously aware of the difference. 

People often report being more easily seduced into just listening to music on low end systems, there is no conflict since we simply ignore the sound. This much more difficult with high end systems in which sound may become of paramount importance. How can we not be focused on sound with all that we've invested into sound! I'd suggest we're nearly always conscious of the sound of our system, especially when we are admiring the sound reproduced by our systems.

So the question becomes, is consciousness of sound considered a critical state of listening whereas lack of consciousness of it is not? Is listening to the sound inferior to listening to the music? Is consciousness of all these things a negative or critical state of listening? Is transcendence or suspension of consciousness considered to be the highest form or goal of listening to music reproduction on a high end system? I'd suggest setting and propagating this as a goal is a disservice to the audiophile community, this invites discontent by setting a nearly impossible goal. 

Why are there so many Long comments posted that just meander all over the place.  I guess humans are critical about everything.

@emergingsoul Absolutely, perhaps audiophiles by nature are more critical than the average person. Who the hell cares about sound quality anyway, really pretty silly in the whole scheme of things.