Selecting Analog Gear Based on Music Preference?

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.

I think there is better choices. Given the kind of music you listen to I would recommend a heavy unsprung turntable like a VPI. To me, the sound of a high quality massive unsprung table more effectively communicates the solidity of rock, pop and other bass heavy stuff.

While I now own a contemporary Linn LP12 which I really like… the analogy made to me between the two were VPI unsprung are like muscle cars and great quality sprung tables like the Linn are the Porche’s… agile and a bit more ethereal. I added a SRA platform to my Linn which gained back the missing solidity while keeping the liveliness of the Linn. While I can’t recommend either table too much… the VPI…. Or Walker… etc, sounds like your cup of tea.

The best equipment will play all genres. If I were to pick equipment that would be most likely genre specific it would be loudspeakers not turntables. Having said this there are definitely cartridges that are more dynamic than others and rock and rollers seem to be more sensitive to this than others. Until you get into very expensive MC systems high output cartridge systems tend to be more to much more dynamic. 

@ghdprentice , interesting analogy. I would say VPI turntables are like American Motors cars. the Linn like a 356 Porsche, the Sota a 911 and the Basis a Ferrari.

Turntables without isolation should not exist. None of them are worth looking at.