what system musicians prefer? Do they care?


I have never aspired to be a musician, although I am very artistic.  I am bad at singing and never enjoyed dabbling at playing an instrument. But I enjoy listening to music tremendously and I always wondered if being a musician would improve my experience as a listener. It seems to me that musicians (good ones) would have a lot more expertise in sound, what is good quality sound, a good system, a high fidelity speaker.... but I have never seen any proof. Am I just imagining it? Are good musicians mediocre listeners? Are they not obsessed with good sound? Any musicians out there to comment?
One example I know is the  Cambridge Soundworks Mick Fleetwood Speaker System, which I finally purchased last year, I knew my collection would not be complete without it. It's evidence of great talents crossing paths: a  genious speaker designer Henry Kloss, and Mick Fleetwood, one of the greatest drummers of the century (and  the previous one). But I don't see musicians weighing in on what are good systems are, how much is it worth spending and what to focus on. It's much more like rich douchebags bragging about the price of their systems on these forums. 
gano

Showing 2 responses by jjss49

1) you can have money and not be a douchebag, you can be a douchebag and not have money (though obviously, extravagant d-bags call the most attention to themselves) ... but money and character are pretty much independent variables as far as my experience goes, just like some poor folk sure ain’t nice folk

2) that being said, in my travels, i’ve found that trained musicians tend to value the realistic tonality/timbre in music reproduction rather than more ’hifi’ attributes like imaging, detail retrieval and so on

3) many working musicians are indeed busy and unless they are lucky and talented enough to be famous and successful, most don’t usually have the money to pour into a high end hifi system

4) those who are, are known to have some pretty excellent systems, like keith jarrett, fred hersch, burt bacharach, yoyo ma, gregory porter, tom harrell ...

5) but many don’t, presumably for the same reasons that many successful chefs eat very basic, elemental food at home... when something is your work, you don’t want to do a lot more of it much for pleasure

6) this may be of interest, if curious ... https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/great-photos-of-musicians-with-hi-fi-gear.941493/
i concur wholeheartedly with the important and critical distinction between rock/electronic music musicians versus those who play acoustic instruments

just like folks who go to a ’live’ event in the meadowlands with 60,000 fans (pre virus of course)... yes it is sure live but you are listening to banks of huge pa speakers driven by harsh industrial amps... if that is your reference for ’live music’ then you will think certain speakers and gear sound just right

otoh, you go to village vanguard or the met or a live symphony and hear unamplified or minimally amplified music, hear a singer’s voice, grand piano, acoustic bass or snare drum propogate naturally through the room to your ears, your reference would be entirely different