I have lived with very top end high quality systems especially for years early on in my career. It sticks with you. You do remember how things sounded and it helps to shape what you do later as an engineer very much so. It gives you things to strive for. It gives you direction in which way to turn with EQ and use of dynamics etc and reverbs too. It is all good. It helps you master as well. Everything. It is almost the same as doing an audio engineering degree. Lock yourself away with a super setup and listen to everything that has been recorded at least once.
(For me it was best turntable with pickups/arms RIAA equalisers and class A valve amps driving Quad Electrostatic speakers. This is an experience. Everything is so fast in this setup. Fast class A amp response coupled with ultra light diaphragms that can move so fast. Amazing transients. Perfect speaker response right over the mids to down low. We had sub woofers reinforcing the electrostatic speakers.) When I ask audio students how many are listening to previous well recorded music on hi fi setups, no one puts their hand up.
I was lucky enough to listen to a wide range of genres too on a system such as this. But even today I still have the same reproduction qualities. I still have the turntable from that era but can listen to high quality mixes at any time even now. In fact I believe now I am hearing things even better than back then. I am amazed. Think our pristine 24 bit premastered mixes we are doing in our current projects.
I like listen to well crafted mixes, (Analog or digital) It is still important to do it. I also do it in the middle of productions as well as mastering sessions. Always bringing in ref tracks to check against.
It is a sort of A/B mentality that stems from being involved with HI Fi enthusiast. I agree with
jamesg1213. I would have not missed being involved with those people at first but I out grew them. They taught me how to listen past the music and listen to the quality of the reproduction process. Good stuff. But they never got past that and that is all they did often. In their favour though they knew how to listen to whole sides of records and I really got that. It does not hurt to think about longer pieces such as 20 or 30 minutes at a time. I fell in love with the music and started to drift away from all the Hi Fi appeal after a while. I believed I managed both things well. The music, and how it was produced etc.. You can do both. And also you need to let go of the whole sound production process at times and just immerse yourself in the music as well. That is how you get better at your own music.
batsbrew has brought up something very good and important. The means are still there to do it today. There are plenty of great CD's around, you don't have to listen to Mps'3 at all if you don't want to. A decent turntable is a pretty cool thing to have. There is so much well recoded vinyl around.
It is also nice to go to live gigs and hear things in a live context. A jazz ensemble with say drums, acoustic bass, piano, sax and guitar in a lovely live room. These things all can add to a lovely well balanced acoustic sound. Good to hear it from time to time. Whenever I go to hear my son play Jazz gigs I am hearing the total acoustic ensemble sound too. It is usually pretty damn nice. Also I like classical orchestral concerts too. They sound big and beautiful and so well balanced and reach only exciting volumes too.