[autumnholy]

However, most of my friends around me who owned more expensive gears (compared to friends who are satisfied with radio quality or apple earbuds) slowly converges their music taste to audiophile recordings and vocal centric musics as their gears "upgrade".
 
Me? With my new gears, I found some love for drums. Bon Jovi, Fleetwood Mac, Deep Purple, The Who, and etc. I don't know if it's the gear influencing my choice of music or otherwise, but somehow I do enjoy it more compared to before.
 
But one thing I notice of myself, when I'm tired after whole day work, vocal-centric musics can be really enjoyable. Does the gear affect my choice of music? I'd like to think so too. One thing for sure, I find pop songs or the ones from TOP BILLBOARDs rather unenjoyable. Some said it's due to the poor recording of pop songs, some said it's the commercialize of pop songs and their lack of "true" quality. I don't know. Just find it less enjoyable now.

 

[proton007]

Quote:

 
But one thing I notice of myself, when I'm tired after whole day work, vocal-centric musics can be really enjoyable. Does the gear affect my choice of music? I'd like to think so too. One thing for sure, I find pop songs or the ones from TOP BILLBOARDs rather unenjoyable. Some said it's due to the poor recording of pop songs, some said it's the commercialize of pop songs and their lack of "true" quality. I don't know. Just find it less enjoyable now.

 
Same here.

 

[NimbleTurtle]

Quote:

My musical tastes have affected my choice of sound equipment, not the other way around. I think musical tastes grow because of experience and thought, not because of the cans you wrap around your noggin.

I have to disagree. If "musical taste" can be defined as perceiving music in terms of different aspects of sound quality, a headphone can greatly impact taste. My experience with bass heavy earphones made it difficult for me to appreciate the incredible midrange and treble of higher class headphones. It's not to say I wasn't an experienced listener - I was. I simply didn't have my brain wired to prioritize midrange and treble as much as the bass. Listening to Radiohead on earphones is just complete boredom. Unrealistic timbre, vocals completely out of wack, lack of soundstage, etc. Some music aren't as affected by headphone type as much as others but in many cases, headphones do make a difference. 
 
But of course, taste can change ALL THE TIME. If I switch to a bass heavy headphone, I will no doubt grow accustomed to it over time - slowly but surely. It really depends on a person's patience and tolerance that determines how fast s/he change his/her taste. 
 
And this is also not to say that musical tastes can't be established without the intervention of an audio equipment. But if we were to talk about that, we have to talk about a whole bunch of other factors (music choice, childhood influence, etc.). 

 

[BrownBear]

Interesting thread idea. I think that with me, I see where you are coming from, and I do find myself listening to certain music because it sounds very good on my headphones. But I've never changed musical tastes. The music I love is the music I love, regardless of what headphones I listen to. That won't ever change. But yes, I do occasionally listen to something that I might not normally listen to because it happens to sound really good. It's always great to sit back and marvel at the sound being made, when it's so real and so true. I can't help but to respect it. And it's even better when it's a piece of music I really love.

 

[proton007]

That's certainly true. Some songs sound much better on certain type of headphones.
For me, it was more of a realization that I'd missed something that was always present, but the headphones/source wasn't just good enough to highlight those aspects.

 

[Xinze]

Hell yes. Before "Hi-Fi", it was electronic and rap/hip-hop. Now it's electronic and classical.