Does Heavy Metal music benefit from a high end audio system?

Depends on the high-end and the Metal.  Some speakers purposely have a mid-bass punch that make Metal more visceral, and others roll off the top to keep that Metal from sounding like a high-speed dental drill.  If the high-end speaker goes for a more controlled bass and an extended treble, some Metal may not sound as good.

Heavy metal artists put a lot of time and energy into achieving just the right amount of painful distortion. It may seem the way to play it back is with a system that adds even more painful distortion. This however is not being true to artistic intent. We must at all times be mindful of the artists creativity and aesthetic intent. Probably much of the reason audiophiles look down on heavy metal is they simply have not developed the transparency and precision of their systems to the level this most sophisticated of all music genres demands.

@wturkey,

"Absolutely! Unfortunately, a percentage of this genre has marginal recording quality at best. For example, Iron Maiden, to me is rough on the ears. Still enjoyable albums!"



Agreed.
By some dastardly quirk of fate, or twiddle of a post production engineer’s knob, it would seem as if Heavy Metal (also Heavy Rock, Punk etc) seems to suffer more than other genres.

There just seems to be an inordinately amount of bad digital transfers that seem to go against the very ethos of the music they are supposed to serve.

In particular the use of compression/loudness for this type of music is hard to stomach.

When you think of all the poor digital Motorhead releases through the years, it’s pretty obvious that those doing the transferring could not have been fans.

At one thoughtless stroke, casually discarding all of the theoretical advantages that digital had over analogue.

First, I don't equate "high resolution" with price. The recording engineers certainly don't record on $100K speakers. Or even $10K speakers (although Genelecs come close).

Secondly, Led Zeppelin is not heavy metal. Black Sabbath is recognized as the start of metal (although a few would claim it's Blue Cheer). Thirdly, "heavy" metal is now a genre of "metal". "Metal" is the umbrella term.

Moving on. As someone who listens to metal 90% of the time, the answer is "Yes". If the sound is recorded it's obviously better to be able to hear it as recorded. Take Metallica's Sad But True as an example. Bob Rock put plywood on the walls to get a bigger drum sound. In my car I can't really tell. But I can on my system.

Rock, hip-hop and metal recording has been plagued by the Loudness War, which squashes the dynamic range. So there are only a few songs I'd use in a demo. Where I find some speakers fall apart with metal is on congested extreme (technical death) metal. There's just so much sound all at the same time the speaker puts out mush. One such song would be Hideous Divinty's The Servant's Speech (warning: this is not for the uninitiated).

Some other songs to hear what a good system can do on metal:

Exodus - Deathamphetamine (good drums)
Oceans of Slumber - The Banished Heart (superb female vocals)
Andromeda - The Words Unspoken (interesting guitar/synth coordination; precise lead guitar tone)
Metal Church - Metal Church (drums)
Deviant Process - Unconscious (well-defined bass)
Distant Dream - Sleeping Waves (reverb; imaging; guitar dynamics)
Sylosis - The Blackest Skyline (well-defined forward rhythm guitar)
Xanthochroid - In Deep and Wooded Forests of My Youth (a non-metal well-recorded song from a metal band, with superb vocals, flute, acoustic guitar and accordion)

Here is some heavy metal played on a vintage system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrRdEYeL8Mw

My former, much more contemporary system of SME/Pass/Magico did not present this music in nearly as convincing a manner.