First of all, I'm not an audiophile in any sense of the word. I happily listen to CD, vinyl or 128 kbps MP3 and I don't really hear any difference between any of them. For me, it's the music that counts, not minute variations in sound quality. When reading this debate, however, it strikes me as quite curious that Per-Olof, whose list of favourite records includes almost exclusively electronic stuff, should argue at such length about the importance of "the speakers disappearing" and "hearing the live performance". In the case of your favourite artists, there wouldn't be any music without speakers in the first place! So I don't really understand how you can argue that it sounds more "natural" or more "live", electronic music is artificial by definition and doesn't exist as live music (unless it comes from a pair of speakers)... Does your argument only concern acoustic music, music that can be played live on non-electronic instruments? If so, it probably makes some sense, but if not, it all seems a bit absurd to me. :) Erik