Have you experienced new audio gears change your music preference? (Genre/player/vocal)

[GaryY]

In these days, I feel myself weird that I like female vocal a lot which was never the case before.
Did some of you experience this case as well?

 

[DSJR]

Back in the dark days of the early 80's, when two makers all but took over the UK specialist industry, I couldn't play heavy orchestral or choral music due to mistracking of the recommended cartridge (many samples, not just mine).

Today with properly seal-optimised IEM's, I'm enjoying EM music better than I've done in decades as I'm getting the clean deep keyboard bass without waffle, boom or generally missing as previous headphones and speakers have portrayed it.

 

[Chr1]

Personally I get tired of the usual audiophile playlist stuff: Diana Krall etc, etc. Agree with the previous poster - electronic music is a good test for hifi gear. Deep electronic bass, 808 drum kicks are very demanding and sound obviously bad on poor gear. Always liked electronic music but now like quite a lot of neo-soul, modern R&B etc which I didn't previously listen to.
Mainly as they tend to be well produced and mastered.

 

[GaryY]

Personally I get tired of the usual audiophile playlist stuff: Diana Krall etc, etc. Agree with the previous poster - electronic music is a good test for hifi gear. Deep electronic bass, 808 drum kicks are very demanding and sound obviously bad on poor gear. Now like quite a lot of neo-jazz, modern R&B which I didn't previously listen to.
Mainly as they tend to be well produced and mastered.

Oh..it's quite opposite move than my experience. Diana Krall's albums became one of most often listening ones to me. I didn't know that it's usual audiophile's list.

 

[LearningToSmile]

Yeah, absolutely. Bass matters a lot more when you can actually play it.
Also it turns out a lot of old songs that my parents used to listen on the oldies station on the crappy radio we used to have when I was a kid actually do sound perfectly lovely - once you play them on a decent system.

 

[sergeauckland]

Changing audio equipment hasn't changed my musical tastes at all. In my view, a good system should play everything well, regardless of genre.

Maybe I'm lacking in imagination, but my musical tastes haven't changed significantly since my teenage years. I was into classical, jazz, folk, and prog-rock in my late teens, pretty much in that order, and I still listen predominantly to those genres in that order.

Having read something of the Grammy awards, I feel somewhat like the Judge who didn't know who The Beatles were, as I don't recognise the majority of the acts.

(Oh and I too like Diana Krall, have all her albums.)

S.

 

[bluefuzz]

I don't think my musical taste has changed much due to the better sound quality of better gear, but it has certainly been widened due to the massive variety of music available through unlimited streaming services. I do perhaps appreciate more folky/jazzy type music using acoustic instruments rather than rock/techno using electric/electronic instruments and effects. Whether that is due to the gear, the availability of the music or simply growing older is anyone's guess ...

 

[DSJR]

Changing audio equipment hasn't changed my musical tastes at all. In my view, a good system should play everything well, regardless of genre.

Maybe I'm lacking in imagination, but my musical tastes haven't changed significantly since my teenage years. I was into classical, jazz, folk, and prog-rock in my late teens, pretty much in that order, and I still listen predominantly to those genres in that order.

Having read something of the Grammy awards, I feel somewhat like the Judge who didn't know who The Beatles were, as I don't recognise the majority of the acts.

(Oh and I too like Diana Krall, have all her albums.)

S.

Yeah, but I don't think you slipped to the dark side as I did (with a friend with a superb little Quad system to pull me back from the brink (Linn Isobariks were horrible on string tone and natural voice)...

 

[sergeauckland]

Yeah, but I don't think you slipped to the dark side as I did (with a friend with a superb little Quad system to pull me back from the brink (Linn Isobariks were horrible on string tone and natural voice)...

No, the Barbariks were something I studiously avoided. My nearest to the dark side were Mission Argonauts, which worked wonderfully with Quad 405-2s paralleled mono blocks.

S

 

[GaryY]

I think I am differing the quality of recording more than before. But, of course, great singers still great to me, like SADE.

 

[Chr1]

Yes, this is the problem with good gear. You start to notice that a lot of the music you used to love was badly recorded.
Still love a lot of rock'n roll and grew up on new wave but a lot sounds rough to me now.
The curse of high fidelity unfortunately!

 

[DSJR]

I do have an issue still with less well digitally mastered music though. Dolby A units not properly equalised or set correctly for level causing reverb pumping with the rhythm (or is that too much 'no-noise' being used?). That exists on any system though

 

[Monster]

It's the other way around for me. Changes in my musical tastes have encouraged me to buy better audio gear.

 

[Multicore]

No but ... the capabilities of the equipment and listening environment will constrain the selection of music. For example, when I worked in a bottle shop I learned very quickly that orchestral music has far too much dynamic range.

Another way of looking at the same ... for some kinds of music that I'm going to listen to carefully I will only use suitable equipment.