Last night I was sitting at home again trying to make my B&Ws sound palatable through my megre system. I wound up nodding "Yes" to the first track Patricia Barber's "Cafe Blu". Yes, that sounds musical and wonderful! Then I thought: "Wait a minute, I don't want to be listening to f#%^&king Patricia Barber, I want to hear some Nirvana! Of course the compressed, trebly recording had me ejecting the disc within a minute. What the hell? Now, I can only listen to what sounds good on my stereo. *********!

Then today I was trolling the web looking for some new speakers when I came across this review by Herb Reichert at enjoythemusic.com. I had to have a laugh as his review of the Spendor S3/5 speakers hit on exactly what I'm afraid may be happening to me as I find myself searching the "audiophile" section more frequently for something that "sounds good", and staring at all these gauzy photos of harpsicordists and unknown babes from Hong Kong holding violins with "Mastered on Macintosh Equipment" emblazoned in gold across the $32 CD.

Anyway, for your enjoyment, here's the excerpt that made me laugh:


"My biggest gripe about the whole audio scene is that people who get into using higher quality audio equipment seem to let their musical taste devolve. Eventually, they only play music which they imagine sounds good on their hi-fi. They give up on their Led, Tull, Limp Biskit and Beastie Boys and start listening to this vapid, soft jazz and tepid female vocal crap. Most of them go into strict denial about their musical roots and wouldn't dare bring AC-DC to a demo at their local Sound by Satan. This, I believe is the number one sucky part of the whole audio business. Now-a-days my skin Kralls whenever I even see a CD with a sophisticated woman on the cover... I should say this right here, if you are one of those musically devolved audiophiles that listens to those tepid jazz babes (you don't have to raise your hand and identify yourselves) this speaker is the one for you. Nothing will make these vapid bitches sound more breathy and sexed up. In fact, no speakers I know of makes late night cocktail jazz sound more libidinous than the Spendor S3/5 do."

Sound familiar?

What I listen to on a day to day basis has shifted somewhat over the years. I still enjoy Pink Floyd, Zeppelin and Dylan but no longer exclusively. I now listen to Jennifer Warnes, Beth Orton, Holly Cole and many others. Part of this is due to suggestions made in the Music forum. I will listen to suggested artists and have found that I enjoy many of them.

As far as auditioning equipment is concerned I think that listening to well recorded pieces that test the limits of a system the best way. Trying to hear subtle differences between sources while playing Foghat or AC/DC is very difficult. I recently discovered an Asian singer Jacintha that has one of the purest voices I have ever heard. You can easily hear differences between components with her work. It is so clean and pure and loss or improvement in quality is easily discernible.

Definitely.
My home system has pushed me much more heavily into vocals, especially back when I had a pair of the original Time Windows.

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I've still got a pair of original Time Windows!

The reviewer made some good points, but then ruined the whole thing with this idiotic sentence:

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You want a horrible recording try deep purple's in rock album. Sounds like it was recorded in mono instead of stereo.

I've noticed my musical tastes have shifted as well. I really like jazz now, and those "other" rock bands. Coldplay, Radiohead, Flaming Lips, etc. But it's probably a result of me "maturing" as well.

I never got into classical and jazz music until later into my youth, but it wasn't just maturity level that geared me this way (you know how you've always hated veggies, but grew to love 'em), it's the equipment that I heard and bought along the way. The more sophisticated the equipment got, the better this type of music sounded. So what the hell keep going, and continue buying better and better equipment for this lush music. As great as this stuff sounds, I must admit that I don't find it very fun. Some may argue that there are many emotional passages. Sorry dudes, that's drama, not exactly a source of frolic material. I'm sorry, I cannot boogie to Beethoven or Coltrane. So what possesed me to listen to this stuff in the first place? Simple, it's extremely relaxing. The smooth long notes accompanied by mellow tunes and sparkly transients entice your brain through aural pleasure thus ending you up in the state of bliss known as sleep.

Well, I've come to the realization that I no longer listen much to the sappy acoustic goodness, rather I listen mostly to underground hiphop. What do I find in this music? First off it's a branch of my musical roots, and secondly, it too is relaxing yet groovy as well. I can just chill to this stuff, friends dig it, thus good party music = fun.

Also, due to lack of a good source and amp, I've grown accustomed to using a less high end headphone because it's less detailed. Why would I do such a thing? The recordiings are of poor quality, and these headphones are much more forgiving, I cant stand sibilance and other sharp artifacts.

Don't get me wrong, I still listen to Sarah Brightman, Norah Jones, and Miles Davis with the HD600s just before I go to sleep.

MacDEF - actually, I found that comment rather amusing. I thought he was more honest with that sentence than any other one, he was writing without limitations, unlike most other "professional reviewers".

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It is so true it's almost scary, I have local friends who only listen to the usual handful of audiophile approved CDs mostly because they have so distorted the sound in their very expensive 50k systems, that is all that will sound "good" When I go over to their house (to tell them how wonderful thier system is) I am forced to listen to (yawn ) all the usual suspects:
Diana Krall
Cowboy Junkies
Jennifer Warnes
etc, etc

When I bring over normal music like:
New Order
Cocteau Twins
Pat Benatar
etc, etc
We can't listen more than a minute or two because it sounds so bad, they will say what a terrible recording blah blah. But the sad part is 90% of normal reordings will sound bad on their system!
It really has to do with how they have "tuned" their systems.

I have purposely tuned my system to sound as good as possible on average recordings, and I could care less about the last 5-10% of fine detail you can only hear if you play audiophile CDs, which I own only a handful anyway.......my musical tastes seem to become more extreme as I grow older, I am looking for groups that push the envelope more.

I wonder what Fabio listens to on his "mega" system?

You can't expect everything to sound the same. I finally got my Eric's Trip albums (where everything is recorded on 4-track tape mixers, with cheap mics, in people's houses) and they sound great. They don't sound hi-quality, but the're very intimate, gritty, and 'earthy' sounding.

Then I put in some Diana Krall, and everything sounds polished, smooth and refined. But can't you get sick of that as well?

Something else that I noted when I first got my HD600's was that I found myself listening for things that you do not hear nearly as well on cheap equipment. I would concentrate on peoples fingers on strings, breath sounds and extraneous noises in the background. I found that this was a passing thing and with time my mind adjusted to the new equipment and I was able to enjoy the music once again.

I like to think that this hobby has let my musical tastes expand rather than devolve as the reviewer states. I now listen to a far wider range of music than ever before.

What my family appreciates as well is that with headphones my tastes are not imposed on everyone else in the house as with speaker systems. So I am in my own world for a time with no care at all for what anyone else thinks.

When I was shopping for my new headphones (ended up with HD 580's) I made sure to bring some Metallica and Black Sabbath for the auditions as well as the nice well recorded vocal stuff. I listen to a fair bit of rock and metal so I needed to know if the 'phones would let me enjoy this style of music.

This is why I ended up with the 580's instead of the 590's, they both sounded pretty good on the soft vocal stuff with the 580's being better overall but the 590's costing a lot less. I probably would've walked home happy with the 590's if I didn't give it a dosage of Ozzy Osbourne, which made my ears bleed after 10 seconds of listening. The 580's played Ozzy without hurting my ears which was well worth the price premium, and that's the main reason I ended up buying them.

What I have is a system that I can enjoy, it won't give you every last detail in a good recording, but it won't make your ears bleed on a bad one either. I can be just as happy listening to The Ramones as I am with the Cowboy Junkies, and that makes me happy.

I'm glad to see subjects like this being discussed. I often get the complaint that I don't list reference material in my reviews and this is part of the reason I don't (it was easy to believe sheer laziness, wasn't it?).

I've always been irritated by the audio boutique sales drone who asks me what kind of music I like. I tell them "jazz and classical" so that they'll take me seriously, yet when they have a good rig I really want to hear, I dig through my stuff or theirs until I find some old rock or pop that I like and am familiar with. This genre biased stuff is horse****. I listen to all kinds of music.

But luckily.. when I grabbed a 1983 Howard Jones CD to play on that Sony SCD-777ES > EAR preamp > McCormack amp > Vandersteen 3a Signature system, it was actually what I was hoping it'd be.

Sometimes I think the drones know their system is slanted to emphasize certain things and that's why they steer you the way they do. It really eats at me. I guess if you really only like one genre, maybe this stuff has some merit, I dunno.

In the last month, I've picked up some hip hop, opera, classical, jazz and classic rock. If ever I found myself thinking "you know, I don't like this genre on this component", you'd see a for sale ad from me.

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I couldn't agree more (although I'd probably try and tweak it to see what was wrong before dumping it). Ultimately the task of a system is to reproduce music. If it is inducing a coloration that is enhancing one genre at the expense of another, it is not a neutral transducer. If a system enhances the sound of ALL genres, IMO it's a better system.

I feel that the reason people start into higher end equipment is to enhance their prefered music, not to reinvent their tastes to suit their new equipment standards. What is fun though...is getting a great recording and really listening to how your own rig performs. Typically jazz and classical recordings are better, but that is not always true. To completely write off a genre of music one preferred only because ther equipment is now "audiophile class" is rather stupid. I mean...if one still enjoys that now ostrisized genre.

Being a music lover should really be what audiophilia is all about not being an obsessee about equipment. Equipment is there to reproduce music. We better not forget that. I like some really "cheesy" 80's hair bands, I listen to them on my main rig all the time. To the snooty-assed people out there this stuff is ****...maybe even lower than that but who cares? Does it make me feel good? Do I enjoy it? Yer damn straight it does. So I will continue to listen to what I want when I want. And I have a nice system to listen to it on.