Tell me if i got it wrong..

Are we talking about Tubes and SS or is this Dianetics?

Leave her out of this, Bry!

Asa, thanks for replying to my questions. To the extent that I fully understand your posts, I still don't see where you've established any connection between solid state equipment and any of your various states of listening. Furthermore, interior mental states are essentially opaque to scrutiny. Is it possible that the cognitive-absent mental states you describe are attainable without external audiophile stimuli? Why invest in audiophile equipment when you can just meditate on the idea of music reach a trans-cognitive mental state. It certainly would be cheaper.

Forget it, gentlemen, I'm out. Every so often I become overly optimistic and put my finger in the water to see if anything meaningful will come up and bite. If you want to understand what I'm saying, then order the articles I wrote for Ultimate Audio magazine under the name Mark Bucksath on Musicality. For those of you not threatened by different ways of speaking, ideas, etc, thank you. For those of you who revel in anonymity in a microcosm to vent your neurosis, congratulations, you're a dime a dozen.

Well that puts rather a gloom over the day doesn't it?

I enjoyed this thread. Admittedly, it did make my head hurt a little. The notion that our primal instincts affect our listening, "visualizing" and ultimately the appreciation of music is fascinating to me.

Thanks to all who participated. I feel I've learned a lot from reading this thread.