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

I suppose since no system is perfect, I think you would need a uniquely tuned system for every different genre. I finally put together a system that I can say sounds fantastic with any genre....except heavy metal.  I'm talking new heavy metal and maybe only some.  Classics like zeppelin etc sound great, but I would call that metal, not heavy metal. 

My brother visited and wanted to hear some music that I never heard(heavy metal) and it sounded embarrassing.  My thought was my system is musical and resolving(maybe even laid back?) and the recording engineer for these songs wanted noise and peaks on the VU meter?

I am a fan of all music but in my reference system, the tracks we played sounded underwhelming and one dimensional, thin, no bass weight, fatiguing, etc.  All good cuts from tidal btw.  My system still shocks me on how good everything sounds because it has a truthful sound.

Don't intend to talk you out of buying high end gear, just the opposite, you can ALWAYS upgrade your sound system to your liking.  Just needs to be tailored to heavy metal to get the magic the same way someone would add a sub if they are listening to pipe organs, or a horn speaker for vocals, etc...My experience..

@aubbrin   

 Classics like zeppelin etc sound great, but I would call that metal, not heavy metal.

During their time, Led Zeppelin released 9 studio albums, or 10 if you  include Coda.  One was a double album.

Name 10 songs that any self respecting proponent of metal would regard as being "metal".  I'll accept perhaps less than 10 if that's 9 too many.

It should be obvious that any genre of *well recorded* music will benefit from a good sound system (even if it's great sounding music you don't enjoy).  But as mentioned previously, during the worst of the Loudness Wars, there were many excrementally mastered recordings compressed to near black hole levels. Sadly, I have a few of those that are really great (in my ears) *music*, and sound great in a noisy car, or via .wav file on half decent headphones, on a plane (as they were intended to). But on my main system where the lack of dynamic range in the recording is so glaringly apparent, there really is no benefit - more of a deficit in enjoyment in fact.

But, listen to Black Sabbath's eponymous album, or Rush's Caress of Steel where the recordings are good and the dynamic range is not squashed, and yes indeed, they really benefit from better playback gear with greater dynamic range capabilities.  And for Symphonic Metal (e.g. Epica, Nightwish, Evanescence, Within Temptation, etc.) which I listen too ~50% of the time, especially the live recordings with full symphonies backing, the better the playback system, the better they sound. YMMV of course.

@noske,

Quite right.

It would be equally wrong to deny that Led Zeppelin were not Heavy Metal as it would be to say they only played metal.

Clearly they were a multi faceted band with a wide range of influences from blues, folk to rock.

Yet it would be extremely pendatic to say that tracks such as Rock and Roll, How Many More Times, When the Levy Breaks were neither metal nor heavy, wouldn't it?

Heck, even the Beatles could be Heavy Metal at times.

Helter Skelter anyone?

Or how about the lovely guitar sound of Revolution?
https://youtu.be/BGLGzRXY5Bw


Hmm... maybe someone should start a thread on well recorded Heavy Rock and Metal albums available in the digital format?

Certainly not me, I just don't know of that many but I might check out some of the Sabbath suggestions above.

Must learn to love Ozzy, must learn to love Ozzy...

@cd318, pedantic is good. Heavy rock is just that. It may be loud, with lots of shrieking vocals and dominant electric guitar, boisterous and many other things of merit. That was a few Zep songs. Levee was very much blues, a country-blues song originally written and recorded by a couple of folk in 1929.

Just as with other examples some have provided which are clearly nowhere near metal, like AC/DC.

Metal enthusiasts would quite possibly take exception to instances where this distinction is blurred by people who don't know or don't care. Musicians find this important.

Dave Grohl quoted Lemmy (late of Motorhead) - "Lemmy’s the king of rock ’n’ roll—he told me he never considered Motörhead a metal band, he was quite adamant." {from Wiki}

Yeah, I found that slightly surprising, too - but quite understandable.

And importantly, since this is a thread about Heavy Metal, a sub-genre of Metal itself, we must be even more careful. Unlike politicians who are tutored in the art of deflection when asked a direct question, we have nothing to gain by not being focused.

Its only fair. Zeppelin didn't even come close. Ever.