Has audiophilia changed your music taste?

I started off listening to my parent's LP's around 1967 or 68. They had a collection of classical, folk, and a few other things that don't twig the mind at the moment. Graduated to top 40 AM. Then in high school I went the prog rock route of some my fellow goners of the same age group. Back in the mid 70's most everybody listened to much the same thing at school. After high school I got my first decent (in retrospect it wasn't as good as I thought at the time) stereo. I was mired in prog rock, hard rock, and skinny tie music. I had one or two classical LP's almost as token representation. Zoom ahead twenty years and now at the age of 43 I still have some of the above excepting top 40, but lots of classical, blues, jazz, punk, heavy metal - really heavy, nu-metal, soft rock -if not too sleepy or whiny. So what does this mean? I've found that having a decent rig gets me listening to more music period! Now that I'm listening to more music I find I want more variety and am willing to give a listen to things I once would have dismissed arbitrarily. I wouldn't have changed this for anything in the world. I can be listening to the Melvins for one disc and then switch to say Mahler the next without blinking an eye and be quite moved by either. It isn't about the quality of the sound but the music itself and you would really believe this if you've ever heard a Melvin's recording. So if I'm listening to more music I can now justify spending more money on a better hi-fi. Of course this really becomes a chicken or egg kind of thing - do you start listening more then buy of buy then start listening more. I suspect a little of both. For me it was a matter of replacing a bunch of twenty odd year old equipment which had served me well with some new stuff for the next twenty years. I'm glad I did. Oh yes, Hell Yes.

No doubt. For me the reason is clear. There are some forms of music that were orginally intended to be heard live (and for the most part unamplified) such as Jazz, Classical, Opera, etc. When this type of music is played through some mass market garbage stereo it is simply not that involving. It sounds more like background music (speaking generally here) and just doesn't grab me. So much detail is present in those forms of music, but is lost in the translation. When played through something that removes boundaries (so to speak) and gets me closer to the music I find it very, very involving. While I do find more modern forms of music more involving when played through some quality gear, the difference is not as great.

YES,,,I have listened to a wide variety of music since I was a kid,Im 44 now.Since I finaly bought adecent system about a year ago my taste in music has really opened up to say the least,,mostly started to enjoy chamber music,some world,more jazz,electronica and much more.I hear beauty in music that I didnt hear when I did not have a good system,IM HOOKED

Well Not changed but definitely Widened...I still get raised eyebrows when I play Eagles, Clapton, Chris Rea or Sade at Audiophile "meetings". Butmust say have discovered Vocals & classical due to it...

Love to listen to Patricia, Rebecca Pidgeon, Natalie Cole,Norah jones etc as well these days :)

But would still go to raptures when listening to Floyd. or Deep purple..they are too finely ingrained in the soul to really go away !

Firstly, your tastes change dramatically with age. You no longer want to hear the same stuff over & over again. We all like a natural sound to be herd from our systems. Since high end emphaises the midrange (and so does human hearing) we will lean toward sounds in the 3-6Khz range because it sounds so good on our systems. This includes acoustic, vocals the, sax etc. With better equiptment you also want to expand your personal tastes, the more music you listen to the more use you get out of your system