What is your listening bias

Quite frankly, I've stolen this idea from TAS. The question entails:
1. What points are important for you, when listening to reproduced music. ( soundstage, proper rendering of mids, highs, lows, transparency, dynamics )
2. Where are you prepared to compromise and where not.
3. In the building up of your system, how much a role has the mnestic imprint of live music played a role.
4. In how far are you prepared to voice your system and shape its sound to reach your goal.
5. Do you give more weight to the fact, that your system has been built up according to the precepts of scientific reason, or do you rather trust your own ears and aural predelictions?
For me, I've always attemted to recreate the sound of indidividual instruments as closely as at all possible, be it as a solo instument or playing tutti. For me a violin should sound like one, an oboe like an oboe, brass like brass etc and I've been willing to sacrifice a bit of soundstage to that end. I also like voices to sound as natural as possible. If neccessary I'll shape the sound of every recording to meet my tastes and expectations. Dynamics are also very important and the proper rendition of transients, especially in the p to ppp section. So transparency is equally important. So far, I've found the old shady dogs and early mercuries to come closest to what I expect from a good recording.