Speakers and My Taste in Music

A discussion of how the quality of your media and speakers affect musical preference

I've gradually come to realize the importance of sound quality, and how it affects your musical taste. Vinnie Paul recently opined that rap music is popular because of modern, over-compressed production, and that if better production was the norm people wouldn't stand for it. I think it suits FM radio well, however, and for people who listen to a lo-fi format, well, maybe a one-dimensional experience is all they really want.

I've already documented on this site how I listened to a lot of mainstream metal while in high school. What I didn't mention then was that at one time, I got subwoofers in my car. In the late 90's, subwoofers were a big fad, at least where I grew up. It was cool to have Rockford Fosgate subs, and people were so proud of them that they put huge stickers in their back windows to declare that they had Rockfords. (Kind of like a huge sign that says two things: 1. I'm kind of a prick, and 2. Please break into my car to steal my stereo.)

Anyway, even then I had a slightly better ear for music (despite having no musical education to speak of), so I got Kenwood subs, and matching speakers. These things were powerful, and basically (no pun intended) doubled as an electric back massage upgrade for my seats. I soon stopped listening to the famously bass-less . . . And Justice for All (at least in my car) and started listening to more nu-metal. I even, for a brief period, owned a copy of Eminem's breakout album, the only rap album I ever owned, because I was so enthralled with the power of loud bass. The rap quickly lost my interest--at the time I didn't realize it was due to its one-dimensionality--but I still tended to look for music with more bass.

Fast forward about 6 or 7 years, and I was just discovering extreme metal. The speakers I used the most were (a) my built-in laptop speakers, (b) the earbuds that came with my original iPod, and (c) my car stereo. I got slightly better earbuds over time, and even some acceptable headphones, but the music I gravitated towards was very immediate, with a very modern production. I declared several times that technical death metal was my favorite subgenre. Death Magnetic was one of my top albums of 2008, even though it has terrible production. I couldn't tell, with my old headphones.

Then, I got a good set of headphones. I started to prefer doom and sludge, and the more atmospheric varieties of death metal. (Suffocation still floats to the top, since they have everything.) I even started to understand why people like drone. I've gone back and re-ripped several albums at higher bit rates. Now, I listen to older major-label albums (like Led Zeppelin) and realize that production on some of them was far better than what passes for quality today. But a discussion of production is best saved for another day.

I wonder, if I went all-out and got Bose headphones and listened to everything on vinyl, would I start to listen exclusively to Sunn O)))?