Are we music lovers or gear lovers?

We're both. Audiogon principally provides a place to buy and sell hardware and some software. It also provides (luckily for us) a forum where we can exchange information that may be useful in creating our own collections of hardware and software. On the 'new today' list today there were 261 classifieds for gear and 32 for music. Obviously the members of the Audiogon communitiy principally use this site for gear and discussion of gear. Personnally, I turn to Amazon for software since I can navigate their extensive database of classical music (all that I buy and always CDs) and read both editors' and buyers' reviews of specific CDs as well as listen to excerpts. And you can buy either new or used software on Amazon. The combination works for me.

FYI, AA has a music forum. Check it out here:

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/music/bbs.html

It seems to me that the love of music for most people is assumed. It is the means of arriving at the music which is debated. I would guess most of the AudiogoNers were happily listening to music before they knew anything about HiFi. I still have albums I listened to on my integrated Readers Digest (yes, readers digest) system back in the 70's. I had no idea the music could sound so much better. As with all hobbies there are people who have the money to spend on what ever they want but most of us are working stiffs who skimp and save to buy the best they can afford or justify. They do it because it adds to the enjoyment of the music, but there are also the times when we temporarily lose focus. Then we come back to reality and back to the music.
Listening to equipment will never satisfy a person, but like Shakespear said: "music tames the savage beast," or as the Bible indicated 'soothes the tormented soul.'
Happy listening!

Music is the excuse to upgrade you gear. Audio is an ends vs means reversal of cosmic proportions. My credo, often repeated, is : set yourslef a budget, buy the best gear you can within that budget, only upgrade when you believe (after careful evaluation) that an upgrade provides an appreciable benefit and not just relief from the itch to change something, spend your money on records and sit down to some tunes. Many think that I just don't get it when it comes to "high-end". I, on the other hand, like you seem to have observed, think that audiophiles are looking into the wrong end of the telescope. Good day.

I'll probably repeat a few points already made but strongly disagree with some comment's above....
1.As a music fan who is interested in audio reproduction only as a secondary concern-this site is quite clearly an Audio site and not a music one however it does have a certain duality and as such is open to healthy discussion on both.
Most of the posts are rightly geared towards audio.
2. I have never ever met a serious music fan who is not interested to some extent in the reproduction and recording of music,even the crappiest gear will show differences in recording quality and relate the aesthetics of any recording's production in relation to the music.
In fact it is this very difference that stops some people from spending lots of money on audio equipment not the other way around.
3.I mainly post on music because my music knowledge strongly outweighs my audio knowledge.
4.Lgregoir your girlfriend has asked a question and made an observation that struck me too, however after a little while I realised that passion and happiness wether achieved through listening to music or a quest for perfect reproduction might actually be different strains of the same disease....a healthy balance would be nice but nobody is right or wrong.
5.A lot of audiophiles have pretty conservative tastes in music,a lot of muso's have pretty blinkered views when it comes to audio reproduction and so on,nobody's perfect except Cornfedboy,I learned that here.....:-)