Neubuilder: I agree with the last half of your post. Full appreciation of music, like literature, depends on many things. There is an intellectual aspect, such as history and biography, that is helped with education (not necessarily formal). More importantly, in my mind, is a genuine love for music. Even with those it is difficult to fully appreciate music on a boom box. Can you fully appreciate a novel with every other page or line missing? Sure, you might follow the general storyline and even come away with a fair idea of the author's message. But you would have missed the details that make characters life-like and scenes vivid. Does this mean that people who listen to music on low-fi systems don't love music? No! Perhaps they don't have the means to purchase a better one. Or maybe they spend their money on live performances (something that no system, yet, can match). Why don't more music professionals own high-end systems? Who knows. Perhaps they don't sit and listen to music in their living rooms like much of the public does.
Love of MUSIC or love of GEAR
I think the appeal of audio gear is more complicated than simply a love of music. In my experience I have not seen much of a correlation between the love of music and the pursuit of high-end gear. That is not to say that audiophiles do not necessarily love music – I think that they do (or they at least have some kind of aural fetish)– or the gear would not make sense to them. But if the full appreciation of music was dependant on hearing it played through the best gear, then musicians, composers, CBC FM radio hosts (yes, I am Canadian) – would all be audiophiles. As it stands, this is not the rule but the exception. (I would bet that there are more architects than musicians that have high-end systems.) I propose that the pursuit of high-end audio has something to do with an obsession with the POTENTIAL of gear to produce music. Wrapped up in this ‘potential’ are the aesthetics and physical appearance of the gear, its smell, feel, ergonomics, size and mass, technological innovation, myths associated with it, etc. The pursuit of gear in this context is its potential to offer a doorway to a world of music as expansive and rich as we can imagine, that we can open at will - by ourselves or with others who are willing to listen.