Selecting Analog Gear Based on Music Preference?

@sbank thanks - yes maybe it’s different with analogue. I found the sound of, say the Chord TT2 for example, versus the Naim NDX2 affected the genre of music I preferred listening to. The Chord DAC, being quite detailed and dynamic, I found myself listening to a lot of ECM recordings and acoustic bluegrass, etc. It sounded great but not my cup of tea. The Naim is better suited to my ears for louder, more punchy and rhythmic music. It cost me a whole lot of money to find that out, so I thought I’d ask before I jump on another gear carousel. Sounds like the turntable really doesn’t affect the sound that much.

@tablejockey thanks for the comment, I missed that email in 2021. I’m all set for 2022 though thanks to your head’s up.

Sounds like the turntable really doesn’t affect the sound that much.

I wasn't implying that AT ALL, quite the opposite. Better tables will give you more or what you seek with all genres. 

Understand your DAC examples; my suggestion for digital would be an R2R DAC which would give you more of the relaxed nature of the Naim with more details too, but perhaps in a less forward way...sort of THERE without calling too much attention to themselves. Denafrips, Soekris, AudioGD, plenty of options that most describe along those lines.  Pontus II does the trick for me, FWIW. Cheers,

Spencer

This may be similar to what you are saying, but here goes. My hearing is changing. Ok, so what I am trying to do to compensate is to use gear that supports the sound that I need to hear. For example, horn loaded speakers may be more forward sounding but they would be my preference now more than before.

  So this may go along the path that you are describing, i.e., what sounds best to you for a given genre of music, equipment wise. It is a valid point. Don't ask Magnapans to play hard rock.  

When a Digital System is put together what ever the price tag, if streaming is used, the access to the music files is unlimited and done 'off the cuff'.

It is not really possible to tell if a music file from one genre is a better than a file from another genre. The most noticeable element will be the quality of the recording.

This passes over to Vinyl as well, and some of your chosen artists, will be from a period when vinyl was very high quality and others from the Digital Breakthrough era, when the Vinyl LP spiralled down rapidly to a very low quality.

New mainstream Vinyl LP releases today are with the same fate, I have returned new purchases more than once to get a acceptable copy, but inferior to owned 40 Year OId LP's

My advice would be to buy some pristine albums from enjoyed artists with pressed LP's from the 70's, or a re-release pressing from a reputable pressing company. Use these on your present set up to get the feel for the presentation compared to your digital, even A/B compare the formats.

This will give a better grounding on where the deficiencies are being detected from the source.          

@pindac great insight and suggestion.