what system musicians prefer? Do they care?

There is nothing like being able to pull out one of the many hundreds of recordings I did as an engineer and listen to the honesty of what I originally heard represented in its natural glory ! No thundering bass, because it doesn’t exist in the real world unless you are talking about a pipe organ. Only an amplified instrument can provide it. No stand-up bass fiddle can push out that much sound without the help of a hefty amp and speaker. It’s a fact. Not to say that the resulting sound isn’t enjoyable, but it’s not natural. Now that every instrument seems to have its own clip-on microphone it is not really the listener’s fault that the natural sound of every instrument has been compromised to a degree of unintelligibility ! Such is state of much music today. Don’t count me in !

Perhaps you can clarify the point you’re making. Music is sound. What you are describing as performance values (Articulation, pitch manipulation, tempo, instrument usage, and dynamic choices) are sound, often very subtle uses of sound. In my experience, subtleties in music are heard better on a quality music system and are hidden by noise or are just not reproduced on a crappy system.

So I guess I’m not clear on how music (performance values) can be separated from sound and how a better sounding system doesn’t reproduce performance values better than a crappy system