How does sound influence your appreciation?

My system is now at the point it is very revealing of the recording so I gravitate towards the best recordings when listening to Classical. With Qobuz I can survey many recordings of the same work until I find the best recorded version. Unless it is really a weird interpretation I am not as critical of the performance . If it doesn’t sound good I can’t listen to it. 

When my systems were less resolving and/or had specific issues I needed to tightly control my choices of which recordings to listen to. With ever increasing resolving capabilities I find myself most enjoying letting Roon auto play from my huge library of streams and rips. Having to consciously curate my listening session is a now a huge imposition or distraction from the sheer enjoyment of listening. Funny how I can now appreciate even the tunes I don't especially care for!

This is complex for me and depends upon my mood.  Let me start with stating that there are some excellent performances of iconic music that are so poorly engineered in both analog and digital, where early digital engineering exacerbated the sound quality issues, that I can not listen past the issues into the performance.  So with recordings in this group I can affirm sound quality impacts my ability to enjoy the performance and musical composition.  From that point it depends on my mood my objective for my listening session.  At times, I want a critical listening session, not only to enjoy the performance and composition, but also to revel in the engineering quality of the recording and my system.  My focus is on reproduction of timbre, dynamics, staging, and imaging.  So, in these instances I also can affirm sound quality matters.  Most often, greater than 90% of the time,  I am just trying to relax, using music as the tranquilizer.  In there sessions I find myself  engulfed in the performance and composition, reveling in the conductor’s interpretation, musicianship, interplay between the musicians, and swings in mood and energy that a composition leads you through.  I am lucky that have my system established to a point that permits me to travel this path into the musical performance as well as taking the aforementioned critical listen path depending on my mood. During these sessions into the performance for relaxation, sound quality matters not.  Maybe, for me,  it’s a form of audiophile/music lover dissociative identity disorder.  

An audio system /room can be an obstacle to what we listen or help the perception...

My system/room dont bother me now, as in the times i was unsatisfied because of my ignorance level...

I listen music 5 hours per day minimum...

I never think : what if i could upgrade...

Before, when i was passive consumers with no experiments, no studies, no increase day by day S.Q. with each experiments, more than 10 years ago, i bought and sold and dream an impossible dream : I want a 100,000 bucks system minimum .. I was a brainwashed  passive consumers...Only dreams were possible i thought...

As you see we change with studying and experimenting ...I did it after retirement 24 hours a day for few years to understand acoustic in my system/room...

My system/room gave now the minimal acoustical balanced satisfaction if i take into account all factors at play..

My taste in music had no relation to sound but as said the OP :

Since I’ve gotten my system to a very good place, I find myself liking the performance of almost everything I hear.

@audphile1 

Thanks for truly understanding my post.