Does Heavy Metal music benefit from a high end audio system?

@wturkey,

"Absolutely! Unfortunately, a percentage of this genre has marginal recording quality at best. For example, Iron Maiden, to me is rough on the ears. Still enjoyable albums!"



Agreed.
By some dastardly quirk of fate, or twiddle of a post production engineer’s knob, it would seem as if Heavy Metal (also Heavy Rock, Punk etc) seems to suffer more than other genres.

There just seems to be an inordinately amount of bad digital transfers that seem to go against the very ethos of the music they are supposed to serve.

In particular the use of compression/loudness for this type of music is hard to stomach.

When you think of all the poor digital Motorhead releases through the years, it’s pretty obvious that those doing the transferring could not have been fans.

At one thoughtless stroke, casually discarding all of the theoretical advantages that digital had over analogue.

First, I don't equate "high resolution" with price. The recording engineers certainly don't record on $100K speakers. Or even $10K speakers (although Genelecs come close).

Secondly, Led Zeppelin is not heavy metal. Black Sabbath is recognized as the start of metal (although a few would claim it's Blue Cheer). Thirdly, "heavy" metal is now a genre of "metal". "Metal" is the umbrella term.

Moving on. As someone who listens to metal 90% of the time, the answer is "Yes". If the sound is recorded it's obviously better to be able to hear it as recorded. Take Metallica's Sad But True as an example. Bob Rock put plywood on the walls to get a bigger drum sound. In my car I can't really tell. But I can on my system.

Rock, hip-hop and metal recording has been plagued by the Loudness War, which squashes the dynamic range. So there are only a few songs I'd use in a demo. Where I find some speakers fall apart with metal is on congested extreme (technical death) metal. There's just so much sound all at the same time the speaker puts out mush. One such song would be Hideous Divinty's The Servant's Speech (warning: this is not for the uninitiated).

Some other songs to hear what a good system can do on metal:

Exodus - Deathamphetamine (good drums)
Oceans of Slumber - The Banished Heart (superb female vocals)
Andromeda - The Words Unspoken (interesting guitar/synth coordination; precise lead guitar tone)
Metal Church - Metal Church (drums)
Deviant Process - Unconscious (well-defined bass)
Distant Dream - Sleeping Waves (reverb; imaging; guitar dynamics)
Sylosis - The Blackest Skyline (well-defined forward rhythm guitar)
Xanthochroid - In Deep and Wooded Forests of My Youth (a non-metal well-recorded song from a metal band, with superb vocals, flute, acoustic guitar and accordion)

Yes. 
Try “Nail” or “Hole” by Scraping Fetus Off the Wheel. 

@gochurchgo 

agree with you a trillion percent. A lot of audiophiles are not actually music lovers. Ignorant to assume? Maybe…do I believe it to be absolutely true? Yes. 
One of the things that makes metal so great nowadays is how well the production is. Makes you all warm in your tummy tum;)

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