Why Lots of Current Music Sounds Miserable...

Entrope which of these recordings you refer to have you heard in your system?

Hmm, let me play the devils' advocate here. Maybe we're being myopic, not seeing the bigger picture. We at Audiogon are concerned with sound quality issues whereas I think the general music consuming public is caring less and less about such things. I work with lots of people in their 20's & 30's that are very well educated & are obsessed with popular music of all genres. As a rule, they couldn't care less about high fi issues. They do care about HOW they get their music delivered to them and vastly prefer their Ipods and computer hard drive storage/Itunes because of convenience. All they care about is maximazing file storage space and choose MP3 as a rule because it uses less storage space. This phenomena isn't limited to my friends, it's world wide. Loud bass and zippy treble with compressed sound cuts through the ambient noise that's the backround for most music consumers. People tend to use music as an sound track to daily life now, and they don't approach music listening as a passive activity requiring concentration. Even many older people I know have given up their component stereos for the convenience of the Ipod/Itunes music delivery systems. The audiophiles world is one of increasingly less less relevance I'm afraid.

Regarding bass boost, it seems like there was a time in the 70s / 80s where the opposite was occurring - thinned out bass, I'm guessing to help improve clarity on boomy speakers of the time (before "perfedct sound forever", too). Specific examples: Cheap Trick, live at Budokan, Blondie, Eat to the Beat, great albums that sound way too thin on a high end rig. Anyone else notice this?

Let's hope that modern music is in a state of flux and will eventually evolve into something better. (I guess things are always changing.) I was listening to some of the old "talking blues songs" recently, ala Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan, Woddy Guthrie, Johnny Cash (especiallly "I've Been Everywhere, Man"} and I couldn't help but hear "rap" in there somewhere. I don't think that many, if any, rap mucicians would ever admit to being influenced by folk/country. I'm not a mucicologist but I would bet that rap and talking blues hearken back to something from the roots of music; let's just hope that it evolves into something better.