I am a musician of sorts but when I play I am often distracted by monitoring how well I am playing (piano), therefore I like to relax and listen as someone else performs. But when I go to live concerts I often have to contend with unskilled performances, people coughing and opening up candies etc. Though I admit many times live performances bring me to tears of joy.
Which brings me to listening at home, at night when everybody else is asleep. On good gear I can really get into it. The audiophile part of it comes in becuase it is exciting to hear an improvement and then be blown away with more treasures of detail and dynamics found within the music collection that I already own. I personally dont have much trouble shifting between music lover and sound analyst. Years will go by as a music lover and then there will be a flurry of equipment focus for awhile, then back to music lover.
Which brings me to listening at home, at night when everybody else is asleep. On good gear I can really get into it. The audiophile part of it comes in becuase it is exciting to hear an improvement and then be blown away with more treasures of detail and dynamics found within the music collection that I already own. I personally dont have much trouble shifting between music lover and sound analyst. Years will go by as a music lover and then there will be a flurry of equipment focus for awhile, then back to music lover.