Do speakers choose your music preference


I wonder if my preference for chamber music and jazz is driven by having replaced my older full-range KEF Ref. 107/2s with Ref.1 monitors and a pair of Velodyne HGS-15s -- I did find that resetting the crossover to the subs from 40 Hz to 80 Hz made the setup sound larger and large orchestrations more enjoyable. I replaced the 107/2s because I was sure the fully-balanced zero-feedback design of the Ayre preamp and amp would not tolerate inserting the KEF KUBE between them. Charles Hansen had warned me not to insert anything between them. Now I’m wondering if KEF Ref. 207/2s or Wilson Sophias might tilt my music preference back toward the symphonic venue.

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When I owned DeVore Gibbon 8 speakers, I found they were very unimpressive playing Rock, so for the 10 months I owned them I listened to Jazz only. That was their forte’.  It was a big mistake buying those speakers for the type of music I mostly listened to (Rock).  From then on in, I made sure the speakers I was looking at played the type of music I liked, well. To be honest, I bought them because the asking price was so low I just couldn’t pass them up.  Boy, was I sorry after I drove 800 miles (round trip)  to pick them up. 
Yep. other than the excellent bass the R107/2 was hanging on to the classic Brit sound.
There have been discussions on this forum that do indeed suggest that recordings of a full-scale symphony orchestra can be the hardest kind of recording to play back satisfactorily in a domestic setting.  If your speakers can't cope, you may well tend to favor small groups (quartets, etc.) or solo performances.  That stands to reason.  If you have a system that can do justice (or let's say, something close to justice) to a Mahler recording, then you're more likely to select that kind of music to play.
I definitely think there is something to this.  In my experience you need a decent sized woofer to give the right punch and energy above the deepest bass.  A pair of bookshelf speakers with a sub can sound almost indistinguishable from large floorstanders on small scale, unamplified music or relatively clean sounding pop.  I've never found that configuration satisfying on orchestral music or full-bodied rock, though.  It can't pull off the dynamics. 

I also think there are some tradeoffs between the ability to play loudly and the ability to sound right at lower volume.  Of all of the speakers I've had I've never had a pair that I thought really excelled at both.  I'm guessing that in order to play really loudly without distortion drivers need to be built more heavily, with more mass, and that extra mass doesn't respond as well at low volume as lower mass drivers do.  Whatever the cause this has been a tradeoff I've noticed consistently.
My ears hear a proper speaker as  one that simply produces good music, like an amp.

Genre specifc gear? Purely subjective.