How can you evaluate a system with highly processed music?

But can you really evaluate a system by listening to highly processed, electric/electronic music? How do you know what that sounds like?

Early on, they thought photography would replace painting because it would be more "realistic." But it didn’t do that because people gradually learned that photographs also have perspective and interpretation. The notion that capturing "the moment" as it "really" was became harder to believe.

The notion that audio equipment is meant to "capture" what something sounds like "live" retains the naiveté which is no longer tenable in the photography/painting question. Most systems can deliver some reasonable level of simulacrum, but various systems will do this differently. (And there's no way to know which is the better one from a realism standpoint; you weren't there and even if you were, where were you sitting, etc.?) It’s those differences that matter and those same types of differences will also qualify different recordings of processed music.

Audio systems deliver qualitative experiences. Electronic or processed music sounds different as delivered by different systems. Live music also sounds different from different systems. The salient question is: how does it sound to you?

+1 @hilde45 "The salient question is: how does it sound to you?" Bingo!

Traveling back home today. First thing to do will be to warm up system and then listen and chill for a while. Not only does it sound nice and sooth but it's the tonic we are all after here.

@mglik  Each to their own sounds sounds in French. Chacun a' son gout. https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/2332197

I read the original question as "how can you use electronica to evaluate a system?" The posts afterwards are discussing how music is processed not only in the acts of the transducers in the recording studio, but in the choices one makes putting together systems.

I'd say if your system can do a decent job with piano and voice, and it plays your long time favorites well, then most all is right with the world. Play all the electronica you want after that, and then use that to tune the lowest bass content in your system(s). It does come back to preference, but now there are subwoofer systems that offer tuning/EQ of the lowest bass content.

You can not. You must use a “known sound”.. unprocessed acoustical to calibrate your system, then you can be sure that electronically and processed music is being reproduced with equal fidelity. 
 

For almost 50 years, I know what certain instruments sounds like because I have them or my band members had them. Sure a Marshall amp sounds different than a fender tube amp, a Rickenbacker sounds different than a Stratocaster or a Les Paul, and a zildjian sounds different than a Sabian (same size/type of course).

From the 70’s, I would take albums into stores with my favorite music that emphasized certain instruments and I would make most of my decision on how the system recreates that sound. Once it passes the 1st phase, then on to the other criteria. But if an instrument doesn’t sound like the real thing which I have access to, then it’s a waste of time to go forward with this gear