Progressive Rock

My whole system was put together for progressive rock! I think the most dramatic impact falls to the speakers. I have Chapman T7's which really rock and throw a giant soundstage which is perfect for Floydian tunes. I've also heard the Legacy Focus 20/20's which were amazing with the Porcupine Tree I threw at them during the demo. They are on my short list for my next speakers. They really do rock! My other gear is tubes which are a wonderful combo with Prog. My Music Reference RM9II amp is beautiful with plenty of tube power for those wild Prog passages.

Keep in mind that most Prog is not well recorded, especially the 70's stuff. Most prog bands don't get the big contracts and so things are done on a shoestring. With the great equipment a good amount of the music sounds like it was recorded in a garage, which it very well might have been. With the big dollar bands like Floyd etc, things are truly amazing.

I always take Prog to my demos, and most shops are happy to let me listen, and some even ask, "Who is this?!"

Of course, the ultimate is vinyl, and thankfully bands like Porcupine Tree are still releasing material on vinyl. I love my Rega P25!

Prog on!

I guess I would say that my system was built for that purpose as well since prog rock, new and old makes up a significant portion of my collection. But ultimately, I found that the things that make the great prog rock great, are the same things that make orchestral and certain big band works enjoyable, at least to me - the ebb and flow, the large scale dynamics, and the intricacy. So I selected components capable of both detail and bombast, and landed with Jeff Rowland and Aesthetix for amplification, Simaudio and VPI for sources, and Wilson Audio for speakers. And yes, I always bring the first Gentle Giant album along to audition equipment.

Cheers,

My budget was alot less than $12,000 for speakers, I put a $5000 price on my entire rig. I ended up with Paradigm Studio 60 speakers, they imaged reasonably well, had the grunt down low and decent high frequency response. Been very happy with these and they're the only remaining piece after 6 years on the upgrade treadmill. They always responded to improvements upstream, never were the weak link. Getting to the point though where they're next to go.
Although alot of the prog releases are of mediocre recording quality, the remasters are often terrific!
The Rhino remasters of ELP, The Ocean digital remasters of Yes, the mini LP Fripp remasters of King Crimson and to a lesser degree, the definitive remasters of Genesis are all of high quality and shine on good audio gear. Porcupine Tree's catalog is high quality, Floyds stuff has always been top shelf.
Guess my preference for a progressive rock system is full range speakers and electronics with good imaging. Within reasonable $$ limits tho. Many audiophiles have $15,000 dollar systems and $1000 of CD's. I have over 2000 CD's ($20,000) and a $5000 system, wouldn't have it the other way.

Rock is not high-end-ish music.
It's more complicated to record well and therefore it often doesn't sound as good as Jazz or Classical.

Revdog, prog bands even with big contracts such as Jethro Tull havn't been recorded well on the most cases.

Contrary, Can being always an undergrownd band without any mega-million contracts, has excellent recordings (every single one of them), thanks to the Holger Czukay's extra talent of a recording engineer(no extra spendings to producers etc...). The reasons that it couldn't be played in NYC CES are
1)they're unknown to the public
2)they have a lot of sophisticated cacophonic reefs that would only be understandable to an experienced listener or musician.

FZ having some relation to a mix of everything also didn't sound well on many of his albums.