Anyone for scratchy music?

Ever since CDs became mainstream there has been a counter-current of audiophiles who insist that valves and vinyl make for a warmer sound. As for MP3, hard-core audiophiles won't even consider it.

Over the years I've also noticed that classical musician friends are largely indifferent to the whole issue - their sound systems tend to be pretty ordinary, even though they pay a fortune for instruments and agonize over the timbre and nuance of live performances.

I raised this point with a couple of musician friends recently, knowing that their whole music collection is digitized and played on a Bose+iPod set-up. "How can you be so picky about performance and so indifferent to sound system quality?" I asked. They had to think about it for a moment. And they came to the conclusion that the important thing for them was to hear what the musician was trying to do with the music rather than how well it was reproduced. They don't expect recording and playback to be more than a shadow of the real thing.

As for myself, I'm absolutely delighted that I can get all CDs and audiobooks and podcasts onto an iPod. And I'm amazed how different it all sounds played through room speakers, different earphones and car systems.