Listening to music I don’t particularly like

Back in the seventies I used to argue with high end dealers that I don’t like or play the demo garbage they used in the showroom on my home system. When I did bring in records I liked and their products only magnified the bad recordings they became as silent as car salesmen when you bring up another brand. 

What is the problem here? You can listen to anything you want for whatever reason you can come up with. We like music for a multitude of reasons and that includes badly recorded music. Sometimes the bad recording is part of the charm. If you are listening to it there is something you like about it and that can legitimately  be anything. 

@mijostyn:

Hard to argue with that!  

Do you find yourself listing to music you don't particularly like because it sounds so good on your system? If I'm honest with myself I am an old dude who grew up with classic rock and really enjoy it but a lot of it was not well recorded. So I find myself listening more and more to other genres of music that I normally wouldn't  just because they sound so good on my system.

Robert Harley covers this in his book The Complete Guide to High End Audio. Music is different than other forms of communication in that the delivery is everything. Written words mean the same on paper, screen, or Morse Code. Music is performance art where timing, tone, volume, and more all carry meaning. Tchaikovsky heard on a iPhone is literally different music than in the concert hall, or high end system. 

Most of us will enjoy a far wider range of music performed well live than played back poorly. I dread classical in the car- the quiet parts drowned out, the crescendo too loud, everything in between all messed up. At home though or in a concert hall, wonderful.

I have one record that epitomizes this. Mickey Hart Rafos is a bunch of unusual percussion and string instruments. With hardly any discernible melody or rhythm it is more like some kind of audiophile test record than music. Might have played parts of it 3 times in 30 years, and not once in the last 15 for sure. 

Put it on the other night and at first was all, "Here we go again." But then within a few minutes it had drawn me in. What? First side done already? Side two! By the end I was shaking my head at how I had let this wonderful record languish on the shelf all these years.

Of course I knew the answer. It wasn't anything to do with making any particular recording sound good. It was my whole system is now so good it let me hear what the musicians were doing. I also enjoy jazz, blues, swing, big band, classical, everything a whole lot more now.

A good system is like a good telescope. If you want you can tell yourself all that big scope does is give you a crystal clear view of the pimples on your neighbor's butt. Or you can marvel at the rings of Saturn, lose yourself in the Milky Way.

A good system is like a good telescope. If you want you can tell yourself all that big scope does is give you a crystal clear view of the pimples on your neighbor's butt. Or you can marvel at the rings of Saturn, lose yourself in the Milky Way.

@millercarbon thanks for the humorous analogy