Personally,i fall into cat.1 and 4. A combination of all categories would be great only is the software was good and let me elaborate on this.Yesterday and the day before,i decided to re-arrange my system to see which component to use and which to get rid.
What i found is,when i listen to a good recording(any kind of music.Classical,rock etc),with my system at least,i feel as if i am in heaven.When the recording is bad,i feels like sh.... lol I am not a die hard vinyl-o-phile but at least,when an lp is badly recorded is listenable but with a cd.....well,that is a different story.