I find your post very interesting, and while pondering your perspective I found I have one of my own.

Having owned so many systems over the years while chasing audio nirvana, I have formed an opinion that noting details vs listening to the whole is both involuntary and system specific…I’ll explain.

Numerous systems that I have assembled have been of the nature that would cause me to take note of details within the whole, one system may draw attention to bass instruments, another would be the best guitar system, still another would render vocals scary real…yet these same systems would leave me wanting something, something unidentified.

In the late 80’s I put together a system that was so detailed the listener could follow any instrument or vocal of their choosing. I would get feedback from Friends that my system allowed them to hear things in an album or CD that they had never heard there before…but again, this system left me wanting.

Hey, I’m the kind of person that would chase down the ideal at any cost; I purchased the Krell KSA-250 when it first hit the market, purchased Classe M-1000 monoblocks when no one else had heard of them, spent crazy money on everything EAD could build in digital front ends…and when the B&W 801 S3 came out – I had to have them – then modified the crap out of them.

That entire paragraph was intended only to evidence that my homework is complete…but all that gear equated to…something just not quite right. What I was looking for, or listening for, entirely without knowing it, wasn’t there. When I would sit for hours and listen to these systems, one system would be of the type that would cause me to be aware of certain “things” within the music, while another system would draw me into the whole performance (preferred), and yet when I wanted to focus on a detail it was not easy to follow.

The system I have today has taken me many years to assemble, predominantly because it required a bit of time travel within my own mind to remember and determine the most musical gear I have heard, and then of course once identified and purchased, some of the gear took serious time and money to have restored.

But today I listen to the “music”. I find myself sitting down with the intent to spend an hour listening, only to have the Wife bellow that I’ve been “down there” for the entire day. When I choose I can follow JPJ of Led Zeppelin on bass to my hearts content, I can single out Andrea Corr even when her Sisters chime in…but what I enjoy the most about this most recent system is that I get completely lost in the music…and only when I so choose do I take note of the details.

My 402 cents….