Are your systems more Plato or Aristotle?

My subwoofers are more like Arnold Schwarznegger.

I'm having a hard time differentiating between essence and substance. If substance is the detail, extension and faithful reproduction of music -- I would go there. If essence is the overall character of the music without substance -- i.e., the emotion and dynamics of it even if the details are missing and it has lots of midrange colorations -- sorry but that's not for me. But frankly, I'm not sure essence is possible without some pretty good level of substance nor can high levels of substance exist without conveying some solid essence.

If my interpretations are wrong, then please correct me and I'll start over. But these are not mutually exclusive concepts -- as one improves, so does the other.

Eldartford, that must mean your speakers are like Courtney Love?

My system is a Hegelian dialectic between the subject, the listener and the object the audio system. The subject and object are mediated by the music reproduced by the system.The subject is also in an another dialectical process between the listener and the listener's historicity within society. And this is mediated by what you listen to. I will also pose an another dialectical consideration, that the subject and object will spiral in the dialectical process until only great music is listened to on a great system. A great Hegelian and Enlightened Utopia!