"audiophiles listen to their equipment"

@sudnh I agree. New music is always the most entertaining, and I don't need as high a quality. For example, streaming Tidal on my music server is not as high quality as playing from its SSD, but it's a way to hear much new music, so I really enjoy it.

@stuartk 

”psychoacoustical experience of a tri-tone interval has little to do with sonics.”

If the system is incapable of reproducing it, then you are correct: there will be none to be heard. 

As I have said elsewhere, audio is not an end in itself: its purpose is to faithfully reproduce what the artist, with the help of the recording engineer, intended you to hear. 

I can’t believe how we go through this topic with seemingly infinite variations. 

I'm old so...

First it was the table radio with the pretty glowing tubes.  Wonderful... how does it all work?

Then Ham Radio to talk with the world, and more equipment fascination. 

As a teen it was all about the music... loved the Do-Wop but how bad was that sound?  Darn Barry Gordy left us no SQ.

Then, sixty years of equipment and sound fascination at the same time.  Thousands for stuff for slightly better sound? Better cables in my rig?  Pretty stuff?  More realistic?  You bet.

The best of both worlds.  Now to enjoy hours at a time.

My ears, my money.  

All good...

I can enjoy how it sounds and listen to music at the same time if I'm listening to my main system with all the right pieces in place.  When there is a suboptimal component in the string, it is easy to become less engaged listening to the music.

When I get bored after a long stretch of swapping different components in/out just to see what changes for better or worse, it's another trigger to stop and revisit other hobbies for a while. Stepping away from it for a while helps to hit the reset button in the brain for me.  I've found this to be necessary to appreciate the system more too. I've learned swapping components may not always be better, just different types of sound. A good friend convinced me a while back it's all about personal preference and your mood at the moment.  Stop and revisit later if you need to.

When the desire to listen to different music kicks back in, I restart for another stretch to simply listen to lots of different music again, and let the components be.  

... And what of us who listen to our equipment to better hear the music?

Having designed/built my own speakers, I’ve spent years developing the crossovers to attain the sound as close to as I desire from the set of components at hand.

For example, I can spend hours instantaneously A/Bing conjugate capacitors of just a few mfd difference, or even different architecture, to listen for a difference, and if so, which I prefer.  And because tracks vary so widely, it takes a lot of tracks to decern if there is an audible difference and which is preferred.

BTW, for those out there that like to tinker, or are just never quite satisfied with the system, by all means build your own speakers and you can spend years tweaking the crossovers at very little cost when compared to swapping out components and/or cables.