This is sometimes the old egg, chicken thing, in that which fosters which first.
I'd have to go with the music. The love of music brings about the system that is the journey.
Then when a person experiences a good system (at a friend's house/in a store setting), they look forward to obtaining a system that does a good job of increasing the appreciation that was there to begin with. As time passes, they tend to want a better reproduction of the sound as close as they can get to a real life musical event.
If along they way out of design or not, a knowledge base occurs and this creates an interest in how the different gear works. Some like to go into detail on the electronic workings, for others it is simply obtaining better gear that they can afford or improvements take place bringing about a better result and they arrive at their destination.
For me it was the music that inspired the desire to appreciate better sound and head in the direction of becoming an audiophile along the way.
Q