Ian Crisp wrote:

>Non-musicians, and those who listen to a lot of music but lack musical
>training, do not have this ability to such an extent and therefore rely
>much more heavily on accuracy of recorded sound, and their appreciation of
>good performance is more likely to be influenced by recording/reproduction
>quality than is a trained musician's. In general, of course.

An interesting theory, but I suspect that your data set is rather small.
I don't think there is anyone on this list who is less of a musician
than me.  My kids have been trying to teach me to read music for a couple
of years now, and I still have a hard time following the score in my
daughter's Suzuki Book 2 during piano practice.  But very early in my
continuing obsession with classical music, I came to realize that sound
quality is probably the least important factor in my enjoyment of a
recording.  One of my first purchases was a mono recording of Beethoven's
Opus 70 piano trios with Casals that continues to be one of my very
favorite CDs because of the incredible warmth and excitement and feeling
of the performance, sound be damned.  I am not immune to the pleasures of
beautiful sound, but as far as I'm concerned it's simply icing on the cake.

But maybe I'm an outlier.

John Parker
Tucson, Arizona