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

This post provokes answers to one of the perennial questions on this forum, implied by a snide remark attributed to Alan Parsons: "Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment."

Sometimes, I listen to the equipment. Then the recording quality takes precedence, since it is the most important determinant of the listening pleasure.

Other times, I listen to the music. I still love the Furtwängler performance of Brahms's first symphony best, for instance (monaural and not much above AM radio sound quality). 

But then, there's this (from rok2kid above): "Classical is unique in that it's the same music played over and over by different ensembles.  You should not have to put up with bad recordings because there is always a better one available.  Fortunately, the recording technology seems to have peaked at the same time as the great conductors and orchestras." This is just ignorant. All three of those sentences show a failure to understand anything about so-called "classical" music.

rok2id: "Please take the statements I made one by one and point out the ignorance of each." Funny; I was originally going to do just that.

1. "Classical is unique in that it’s the same music played over and over by different ensembles." The same score (usually), but not the same music. If this were true, there would surely be no point in listening to more than one performance of a given piece, nor would it make sense to have preferences for certain performances, nor to have preferences for certain performers. To suppose what you wrote is like saying that all beers are just the same beer over and over again, or that there can only be one interpretation of "Hamlet," or... etc.

2. "You should not have to put up with bad recordings because there is always a better one available." Again, begs the same question by presuming that all performances are just "the same music being played over and over by different ensembles," and that therefore only the sound quality distinguishes one recording from another. The interpretive differences between different pianists, or cellists, or conductors is, musically speaking, far more significant than the differences in sound quality between primitive and SOTA recordings.

3. "Fortunately, the recording technology seems to have peaked at the same time as the great conductors and orchestras." jfrmusic addresses this above with his remark about early Decca stereo recordings. There are SACD re-issues of orchestral recordings from the early 1950s that sound as good as well-made recordings from last year. And when, please, did "the great conductors and orchestras" "peak"? Read Harold Schoenberg’s book "The Great Conductors." I wish we had good recordings of Mahler conducting premieres of his own symphonies—or of Beethoven conducting his!