What is your audio axiom?

All valid responses and all are appreciated. No criticisms at all. I do agree with many here about music as the paramount issue or significant part of the listening experience. If someone likes “not ideal recordings” or enjoys music that is not necessarily high fidelity it is not something that bothers me all that much. The question I posed is more in line with the high fidelity or audiophile experience. Given two identical albums ( just an example) that were recorded well but one sounded better because my perception of the recording makes it sound more live, organic, true to the artist intent or desired listener experience. I would prefer that one. Of the recordings I listen to, the better sounding ones, are more appealing to ME. That’s why I proposed the thread topic because I thought it would be enlightening and informative to expand that question to other Audiogon audiophiles.

BTW everyone here has different priorities with regard to listening to music. It’s a big world with different people and different ways of doing things. That’s a big part of this forum. Share, learn and grow. Of course listening to music is important to all of us.

Appreciation of the performance, together with sound quality of system and recordings is not mutually exclusive. To presume music appreciation transcends sound quality of our systems and recordings is to diminish audiophiles and our pursuit of SQ.

The point of this pursuit is to enjoy and/or appreciate these three components of musical recordings when played on high end systems. If you can't have appreciation of all three things simultaneously you have issues with your system and/or perspective. I don't need perfect or even high quality recordings to appreciate both sound quality and musical performance. Flaws are ever present, the secret is to have a system and mindful perspective that allows one to accept these flaws without judgement. To ignore the qualities of sound both the recording and my system delivers would be a negation of everything I strive for as an audiophile.

When I built my first pair of speakers, I was at the JBL profession dealer. I was purchasing upgrade components going from Two way, to three way speakers. The manager was with a guy dressed in a suit and they approached me in conversation. The suit asked me why I don't buy better speakers than building them myself?  I told him,  "You have never heard my system, or speakers I built." Being a young, proud collage man I was proud of what I made, and had heard many systems costing much more than mine, but was 10x more invested to sound better. So my response back to the man in the suit was " I bet my JBL 14" aquadag woofer, my LE 20 which I am upgrading sounds better than anything you have! 

 His response. I am the JBL district manager, and I commend you on your great skills, your love for Hi Fi audio at its finest using our speaker components, and I bet they sound great with that LE 14 as the foundation. May I suggest the components best in your price range for the upgrade? And away we went.

Wow!

Let the music be your guide.
It’s the surest path to ultimate satisfaction.

@mylogic + 1 - Indeed, I enjoyed music no less when I was a teenager listening to it on a transistor radio. A new Beatles song was every bit as thrilling on that. It's a different experience today, but enjoyment of songs is the same.