How have your music preferences changed over time as you have upgraded your gear?

It's funny you mention it... When I lived in New York I had a lot of friends doing acappella stuff and I'd go to their performances and enjoy them quite a bit... But it never occurred to me to buy recorded albums of the stuff. The Chetsky disk/store has really opened up the Persuasions to me and good gear has made it more compelling to listen to - there's inflictions of the voice, the acoustics of the venue become much more obvious and interesting... It's not something I can hear well even with the 10JPN's out of the Icon, hence my desire for the full rig.

I've also appreciated jazz and classical more, and I agree overall it's easier to appreciate an amazing performance with better gear. But the Asian pop/rock stuff actually hasn't left my playlist, but it has helped sort the crappier tracks off the playlist ... I think in both the Japanese and Chinese mainstream there are talented performers and artists... But it's hard to find the catchy, karaoke room stuff as engaging as a talented performer anymore. Whereas before I appreciated talent on more of a technical level (like yah yah, she's good singer...), I think think amazing performers now speak more to me emotionally (wow this voice is amazing!). edit - A lot of my favorite western pop/rock bands suffer petty badly from the loudness wars, it's pretty sad...

Major changes in listening habits. Very little ambient music now... School is pretty intense and I don't have time for hours and hours of listening so I'll take 5-10 minute study breaks and listen then. Though truthfully, it's not easy to really get into the music when stressed, hope to do more listening during the break...

I was always rather eclectic, so no real changes but I have found a new appreciation as different headphones give me a different experience. That's why I've been rather horizontal with my purchases since I've been enjoying listening to way different setups give me a new "view" on a particular theme, a particular phrase, etc. I can't wait till I get some more high end stuff so I can enjoy a new aspect to my collection all over again. This is why though my wallet is crying big fat tears and bordering starvation, I just can't quit

Yes.

Preferences: Pop, Rock, New Age to Classical
1GB of 56k mp3's to hundreds of GB's of lossless

I spend more time in bed (listening to music ) than ever.

Thanks head-fi

Indeed! I never listened to classical music some years back, but these days I listen to some at least once a week.
Have come aware of hundreds of artists I never knew in the past as well. So clearly my musical preference have changed over time.

Not that much, but SACD really refocused me on jazz and classical. When buying silver discs, I always look first at SACD. Because the catalog trends heavily jazz/classical, I buy a lot more of those discs.

The black discs have pushed me a little more country. I've been a longtime fan of classic country and alt.country, so my junk hunting sprees turn up plenty of the classic variety. In a way, I'm almost thankful the genre isn't that popular, because it's easy turn up great stuff at bargain prices. Just try to find a classic jazz or rock LP in good condition at a fair price.

Can't say my musical taste has changed due to having better gear than before. My musical taste has expanded a lot over the last two years though, partly due to this forum. It's funny because I'm listening to a lot of 30's - 60's music and sometimes the recordings ain't too great (would probably sound better on less revealing equipment).

The type of music I listen to hasn't been affected much, but there were a few times that I absolutely loved a band in concert, but didn't really enjoy listening to their albums at home. It sounded like a wall of mud and noise. It was a revelation hearing this music with better headphones and now it's some of my favorite music to listen to on headphones. My old headphones were so bad that they just utterly could not handle music over a certain level of complexity.

I always have to stop myself when talking about those bands to some random person because I know I will sound really snotty if I ask what kind of audio equipment they have - "you can't really enjoy that album on iBuds, you know"...

Yes, in my case. Although I've always had a wide taste in music, adding better hardware has definitely moved me towards jazz and classical, more. I think it's mainly due to the awful mastering that seems to be commonplace with modern pop/rock recordings. It seems to me that my hardware seems to get the best use from jazz/classical, in general.

my taste in music hasnt changed too much since i joined head-fi. I would say that the only thing that has been expanded is that i have gotten into even harder metal, starting to listen to alot more death metal/technical death metal/black metal now. The "lets talk metal" thread has helped me find alot of sweet new bands. Since i joined i have tried to get into jazz and classical several times. I can enjoy the performance for what it is, but i would still rather listen to rock/alternative/metal than anything else and alot of people may say that metal doesnt benefit from good equipment, and i disagree, i say this all the time, but i honestly cant believe i even listened to metal before i got my jh-13's