Concentration

This is second thread I've seen in recent days concerning listening modes. I find it incredible that audiophiles claim they don't listen to sound and furthermore find it an inferior listening mode. Tonight was my first listening session with newly purchased Audio Note Quest 300B monoblocks, I was most certainly listening to the sound and I had a most enjoyable listening session. I now have three SET amps to choose from, each with unique sound qualities that are totally engrossing. I continue to find it amazing that audiophiles purposely ignore the sound of their audio systems, seems like it totally defeat the whole purpose of this endeavor. 

I can understand how taking an analytical approach may lead to dissatisfaction , but can't that perspective also lead to an appreciation or admiration of sound quality. How can a qualitative appreciation of sound be an inferior mode of listening when it brings you closer to the musicians and the music they're bringing to us. I can't help but notice how the musicians appear to be in my listening room, minus a high.y resolving, transparent system I'd not have this experience, the sound of my system never loses it's salience for my senses. 

I've never listened to my reference audio systems casually, number one it's not possible as I've always been drawn in by the quality of the sound. Another concern is finite life of tubes, some of these tubes are pretty expensive and rare, why would I use up this finite life to serve as background noise for other activities. 

Obviously we're listening to the sound and music simultaneously, the two are inseparable. Which is most salient at any moment in time is the question. I can't recall a single listening session over many decades of listening to high end systems when sound quality or qualities didn't rise to primacy at certain times. This mostly due to the high variability in recording quality, how one could ignore the often extreme differences in sound quality between recordings seems unfathomable. The only time I can ignore this is when listening on midfi systems like I have at work or in cars, these systems homogenize recordings to a large extent

. I'm also very content listening to mediocre recordings, being attentive to the sound doesn't have to be a necessarily judgmental exercise. Beyond this, paying attention to sound quality can quickly morph into the music and/or performance of that music rising to primacy, I don't listen in only one unchanging mode.

The idea of the prismatic mode of listening so apt, I listen in all modes @hilde45 mentioned. 

What has become most salient to me over decades of building systems and optimizing and improving them is a growing preference for more complex music played with acoustic instruments. As one's system improves much easier to follow complex and densely recorded lines, you get to finally hear much of the low level info that you may have missed in the past. And acoustic instruments have a 'natural' timbre  which allows one comparison to a 'live' instrument. And so it seems the quality or qualities of our systems may impact our choices of music we choose to listen to. I continue to listen to many other genres and more simplistic, less complex music in which sound doesn't play as big a role, perhaps nostalgia, other emotions come into play. And all this can be seamless for me, with streaming I can play exclusively within a genre or randomly play from all genres, this all a single cut from an album. With random play I can go from lets say a classical cut to a honky tonk cut, listening modes may change quite drastically from cut to cut. I just let it be and let the music take me in whatever direction the robot chooses, amazing experience to let someone or something take over the CHORE of choosing which music to listen to. I'm just along for the ride!

Am I the only one that does this? The title of this thread mentions concentration, for me the above mode of listening requires the LEAST concentration. Back in the bad old days I remember having to look through multi thousand cd, vinyl collections, later on streaming library in order to find exactly what I thought I might want to listen to. I might spend 15 minutes deciding on some album, cd to play, that was not seamless listening for me, far too much concentration.