How diverse is your musical taste?

Ditto. I am all over the place in the interest of hearing something new and different regularly in addition to my proven favorites. I am probably more forgiving of recording quality than many "audiophiles" though I always appreciate a nicely done recording. I can even enjoy many old 78 recordings for what they are, ie a monument to what recorded music sounded like years ago but now played back on a nice modern rig.

I have thousands of songs/tracks on my music server of all genres from the 20's through today. I spend many hours listening to these cued up randomly by my Squezzebox Touch. Motorhead may follow a vintage 78 from the 1920s followed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir followed by Eminem or Janis Ian or The Black Eyed Peas. I'm a yin/yang kinda person and love to hear a wide variety and balance of different kinds of music.

I like certain types of music more than others, and there is sooo much good music that I have yet to discover within those music types. So I don't feel the need to discover music within types I don't prefer. There's not enough time to discover and listen to all of it, so I stay with a few different types.
Having said that, when anyone outside of this hobby sees my music collection they almost always comment on its diversity. It's all relative.

Too many folks would say that I possess THE MOST diverse one they've ever known for.
Perhaps end of this thread will probably combine some small fraction of my musical tastes you will describe.
I don't even care how well it's recorded as long as it's creative and well performed.
I may say that I would subtract most of pop music out of my music library but that's just a small fraction out of the whole music that will be described bellow.

I'm also a fan of stylistic diversity in music. It seems more common here on Audiogon than in most places, which is one of the joys of this community. While the world seems to be moving inexorably toward catering to narrow tastes, many of the members here seem more likely to embrace the new and different.

As radio and internet station programming has generally (tho not always) gotten narrower over time to accommodate more efficient advertising economics, it's getting harder to find satisfying outlets that wander around genres. The diversety of the material is probably the main reason that I really like American Idol. Even if the performances are sometimes lacking, it's one of the few mass outlets that promotes stylistic diversity in music. In this age of narrowcasting, anything that features stylistic breadth is IMHO a good thing.

On another front, I'm a guitar student and my instructor laughs at some of the ground I've asked him to cover in the 4-5 years we've been doing this. We've touched on rock, blues, jazz, classical, fingerstyle, bluegrass, mainstream country, funk, rockabilly, western swing, etc. He came recommended by a friend who had also taken up the guitar at just about the same time. That student has rarely strayed from Metallica.

OTOH, that guy is a wildly successful hedge fund manager who has just built an insane 18,000 sq. ft. house that includes a performance stage w/PA and lighting in the back yard, a huge ornate theater room, a dedicated guitar room, a dedicated listening room, a video game-pinball room, and an amazing indoor/outdoor pool to go along with the full-blown observatory for computer tracked star-gazing. Hmmm, maybe I should re-focus exclusively on Metallica going forward. Upon reflection, I'm not so sure about this diversity thing after all....

Marty

I am like Marakanetz in that I admire originality more than anything. I tend to go through phases whether it be bluegrass, hard rock, reggae, classical,blues, jazz, or the various sub genres. The joy of having a large diverse physical collection is that you occasionally experience serendipity by playing an old piece you hadn't heard in awhile. It is kind of like revisiting on old friend. Last weekend I played "Seven" by the British group James. They never really took off in the U.S., but what a great band. Sometimes, the simple pleasures in life are the most rewarding.