I have always tended to avoid most music where I couldnt understand to vocals. I do enjoy some old foreign jazzy stuff sometimes. But most songs that I have heard over the last few years I think I would be fine just owning the instrumentals. My MP3 play is mostly old instrumentals and a year or so ago I put a collection of 80's greatest hits on there somewhere. I even bought a set of Motown Instrumentals some years ago. You can still hear the vocals bleed through a little but but is cool to hear the music alone. I actually might to go find those and toss them in the player some time soon.

As for the gear... I love high end gear but never will push that on anybody. I sold music gear for years and that helped me to afford a some nice things. I never left any of my customers to beleive they that the "had" to have expensive gear or spend a lot of money to find satisfaction in what they can achieve. So even though I dealt with a few audiophile guys I could just as easily talk for hours with a guy that only wanted to spend a few dollars (or nothing at all) to get something goings. I actually enjoyed helping people get good results for very little money just as much as I enjoyed putting together my own personal studio.

In fact if anybody here has any audio related questions I'm happy to talk. anything related to computer audio or audio recording would be what I'm best at. I may not know it all but I'm always happy help figure it put and learn with you!