OP,
Absolutely.
When I was new to high end audio (fifty years ago) hearing details with new equipment that I had never heard before really tickled my fancy… and with bass that slapped me in the face. Later, a broad soundstage with individually placed instruments were what blew me away. Then the microdetails on the edges of the images and a lowered sound floor… etc.
Occasionally I would hear a system that would just connect to my heart and soul. But typically it lacked the details and bass. Over time, I slowly unraveled what treble in real musical instruments actually sounds like, also, real brass, and bass in the real world. Over the last twenty years I was able to put that emotional connection, and real rendering of treble, and midrange bloom to render voices with the right weight and get all the details and bass into a system. All, these steps changed my values in sound quality.
Folks have different values and are in all different phases learning and in evolving. Like some folks I knew as a youth… they listen to the same stuff they did when they were young. My world has evolved and included most kinds of music. Different companies cater to different groups. This is why you must listen to different equipment, like Audio Research, Rowland, Boulder, Krell, Martin Logan, VTL, Cary… etc. Each has a different house sound. Find the right one for you.
One combination of components I should have been blown away with included Boulder preamp / amp, Magico speakers… don’t remember the source. But it was a system designed to scrape every last detail off the CD. My partner and I had to leave… our ears hurt… the distortion and noise from getting so much detail had destroyed the music. There were some folks lapping it up, overwhelmed with the detail they could hear and the bass punch. It is hard not to think they had hearing damage…
