Does it have to sound good for you to like it?

Similar to live music, how else ?

On the other hand, I don't want to 'imagine' how it should sound, I want to hear sounds as close to the reality as possible. It is not possible to get deep into the music if you don't hear enough of it. It makes no difference whether you are a professional musician or not, we are all to a degree musicians.

immatthewj, of course the better your rig is the more you hear all the distortion and noise and compression and lack of things that should be there, but on the other hand you also hear more of what you want to hear. I strongly prefer this to hearing less of everything, both good and bad, on lesser system.

Right. Sometimes I do listen to mostly for the sound but rarely, though the music still has to be good. If I don't like it I won't listen at all.

mikhailark, if the band, Pink Floyd in this case, decides then why did they settle for less? They had enough resources to make that recording much better. Analog recording technology was fully developed by 1975.

Does great recording quality make average music sound better and almost acceptable ?

By the way, Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd is average quality. Who produced it ? Great album, though.

Some audiophiles probably do that but I believe most don't. Arrogant statement indeed.

There are two quite clearly divided camps here.

Besides, that's when true audiophile rig shows real class - when it achieves an impossible task of making poor recordings sound tolerable.

I'd say, poorly recorded analog recording definitely sounds better on better systems, but with digital...it's inconclusive to me.

I will listen to great music regardless of the recording quality or the equipment I have at the moment, including iphone.