Selecting Analog Gear Based on Music Preference?

Sounds like the turntable really doesn’t affect the sound that much.

I wasn't implying that AT ALL, quite the opposite. Better tables will give you more or what you seek with all genres. 

Understand your DAC examples; my suggestion for digital would be an R2R DAC which would give you more of the relaxed nature of the Naim with more details too, but perhaps in a less forward way...sort of THERE without calling too much attention to themselves. Denafrips, Soekris, AudioGD, plenty of options that most describe along those lines.  Pontus II does the trick for me, FWIW. Cheers,

Spencer

This may be similar to what you are saying, but here goes. My hearing is changing. Ok, so what I am trying to do to compensate is to use gear that supports the sound that I need to hear. For example, horn loaded speakers may be more forward sounding but they would be my preference now more than before.

  So this may go along the path that you are describing, i.e., what sounds best to you for a given genre of music, equipment wise. It is a valid point. Don't ask Magnapans to play hard rock.  

When a Digital System is put together what ever the price tag, if streaming is used, the access to the music files is unlimited and done 'off the cuff'.

It is not really possible to tell if a music file from one genre is a better than a file from another genre. The most noticeable element will be the quality of the recording.

This passes over to Vinyl as well, and some of your chosen artists, will be from a period when vinyl was very high quality and others from the Digital Breakthrough era, when the Vinyl LP spiralled down rapidly to a very low quality.

New mainstream Vinyl LP releases today are with the same fate, I have returned new purchases more than once to get a acceptable copy, but inferior to owned 40 Year OId LP's

My advice would be to buy some pristine albums from enjoyed artists with pressed LP's from the 70's, or a re-release pressing from a reputable pressing company. Use these on your present set up to get the feel for the presentation compared to your digital, even A/B compare the formats.

This will give a better grounding on where the deficiencies are being detected from the source.          

@pindac great insight and suggestion.

I think there is better choices. Given the kind of music you listen to I would recommend a heavy unsprung turntable like a VPI. To me, the sound of a high quality massive unsprung table more effectively communicates the solidity of rock, pop and other bass heavy stuff.

While I now own a contemporary Linn LP12 which I really like… the analogy made to me between the two were VPI unsprung are like muscle cars and great quality sprung tables like the Linn are the Porche’s… agile and a bit more ethereal. I added a SRA platform to my Linn which gained back the missing solidity while keeping the liveliness of the Linn. While I can’t recommend either table too much… the VPI…. Or Walker… etc, sounds like your cup of tea.