Has your kit changed your choice?

Music
#1

I have always listened to a wide variety of rock, soul, alt country, folk and jazz

Over 30+ years I have upgraded from Musical Fidelity to Naim to dCS, Tannoy to Mission to ATC active, CD to server to Tidal

These days I listen mostly to well recorded jazz

Could be:

  1. current kit sounds best with jazz
  2. changing personal tastes
  3. lower tolerance for compressed low quality recordings (early CD)
  4. listening habits (alone late at night vs with family and friends)
  5. maturity (physiological or psychological)
  6. lockdown fever
  7. something else, or
  8. all of the above

Near-infinite access to streamed music has not broadened but narrowed and deepened my listening

Your own experience and/or interpretation?

#2

The opposite for me, Andy ā€” I listened to everything beforeā€¦but Iā€™ve since learned via Roon Radio that ā€œeverythingā€ is broader than I knew it to be :crazy_face:

What makes me really happy is that Iā€™ve got to a system where it all sounds good. There have been times in the past where some genres sounded fantastic, but certain old faves sounded like garbage. No longer!

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#3

Thatā€™s a great place to be Ben

Itā€™s not that other genres sound worse :thinking: I donā€™t think that is the cause

Maybe Iā€™m just going through a jazz phase :musical_keyboard: :saxophone: :drum: :trumpet:

it came on last year, no remedy required, but who knows how long it will last!

#4

The post title is an interesting question. My first, short, answer is that age
and experience have changed my music choices, mainly. Having said that, there is one example where kit has made a difference: until recently, recordings of solo harpsichord in large doses brought on a feeling of being slowly plucked to death, even when the music was great. The sound was hard to take after a while. Vivaldi (kit not composer) has changed that. One of the CDs I have, recorded in quite a reverbeant acoustic, sounded almost rich and sonorous. Not what one usually
associates with a harpsichord. Delightful.

Age and experience have brought me to jazz more than anything else, and latin/Brazilian to a lesser extent. Much - though not all - pop/rock just sounds too simple after being on a jazz diet for a long time. I try to get the best available recordings (XRCD, DCC [label not format], Mobile Fidelity, SACDs in general) but definitely donā€™t choose music by that criterion. Wouldnā€™t want to be thought an audiophile!

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#5

Heaven forbid! :scream:

#6

Does that mean I might start liking jazz as well?:laughing:

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#7

960Ɨ632 52.5 KB

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#8

:rofl:

Video of above justification of jazz:
https://youtu.be/bKwQ_zeRwEs

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#9

I donā€™t know if itā€™s necessarily my kit that caused it, but certainly my taste in music has evolved over the years, basically broadened a lot more than I would have expected during my growing years. When the wife came along, it evolved again.

One benefit of the lock-down has been all the additional ā€œfreeā€ time thats allowed me to re-explore stuff I listened to in my youth! :grin:

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#10

Well, age will certainly creep up on you whether you like it or not. As for experience: I donā€™t know you well enough to say! Seriously, though, for me age means that pop/rock/dance (and all their sub-genres) made by 20-somethings doesnā€™t say anything to me that I really want to hear, and experience means that I understand much more about more demanding/complex music than I once did. So I appreciate it more. Of course that is a gross simplification and, despite the understanding I think I have, Iā€™m still in awe of those who know jazz and other ā€˜seriousā€™ music in ways/depth I never will. And, yes, yes, jazz doesnā€™t have to be entirely serious. The size of my Marty Grosz collection rather undermines anything I have to say about a preference for ā€˜seriousā€™ music.

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#11

Anup are you finding that always enjoyable?

Sadly I have been a bit disappointed with some of my favourites from the 70s when I was a teenager, then again some of it remains timeless

#12

Mine was the '80s, golden era of new wave and the new romantics :grin:

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