High End and Classical Music

I guess I'm the black sheep, I listen to Rock & Heavy Metal, yes that's Heavy Metal. But tis true that most good recordings are in the classical jazz genre. However, there is quite a few outstanding rock recordings, ie Alice & Chains(unplugged), Roger Waters(recent live release) Pearl Jam but unfortunately many sound terrible. It's like a crap shoot every time I buy a CD. Good question. I know I get tired of reading all the reviews in Stereophile etc. and it seems that all the reviewers listen to classical music. Long live Rock anyone else agree?

"The more one loves music, the more music one loves"

I am 90% classical.

My wife and I listen to classical of all periods, Heavy Metal, Middle Eastern (My wife also belly dances)and Art Techno. I agree with the general drift of the comments above. You're lucky if your favorite music is Baroque and early music since it is less costly to approach realism with an audiophile system. I listen to a lot of early music but my wife and my greatest love is late romantic music(which is psychologically fairly close to a fair amount of Metal). We've been to over 1000 professional performances and trying to reproduce the Mahler 8th,Turandot or Bruckner in your living room when you know what it sounds like live is a VERY expensive proposition. But a system that can is also jaw dropping on Metallica, Judas Priest etc. My one suggestion if you like your system is to spend some money on room treatment. Some ASC tube traps will really bring out the nuances of Baroque intonation that are probably being obscured by your listening room interactions.

I grew up listening to what is now referred to as "classic rock" courtesy of my Father and ended up getting into Punk during the first wave in 77. This turned into hardcore and then metal with all of its variations, etc... Getting back into "hi-end" audio has DRASTICALLY opened up my musical horizons and i'm quite glad of it. I am now a supporting member of a local classical station that sounds AMAZINGLY good for radio broadcasts and have purchased appr. 200 classical CD's and albums within the last year or so. While the purchase of a few blues based discs and quite a few female vocalists have been worked in, i have yet to find any modern jazz that strikes my fancy. One thing that i have noticed is that many of the "hi-fi" type recordings that are not classical based do sound good in terms of quality, but completely lack "soul" or "feeling" to the music. It's as if they are "sterile" by nature. On the other hand, classical only gets better and better with better recordings. Anyone else notice this too ? Sean >