Mark me as someone who thinks that a good audio system ought to make any music sound great.
I have argued with friends that there should not be "Rock" systems or "classical" systems but "good" systems and "bad" systems.
Big "BUT"
I have a "Quickie" set up with Speco autoformers and Hammond plate chokes driving an older set of AKG 240m headphones. With CD reissues of Steeleye Span (Below the Salt), Yes (Fragile), Sonny Rollins (Way Out West) and the soundtrack of "Last of the Mohicans" things sound geat - "impactful", "immediate" and all the usual audiophile trish-trash. With classical music CDs however, the Telarc "Stokowsky Sound" and some Charles Dutoit conducting MSO on Decca, the sound is rather "blah". Not bad, but just Hi-Fi-ish okay. This all runs counter to several decades of my thinking...I do not think of myself as a "newbie".
So my question - what makes a piece of Hi-Fi gear "Pop/Rock/Jazz" or "Classical" balanced?...and why hasn't this punched me in the face before??
I have argued with friends that there should not be "Rock" systems or "classical" systems but "good" systems and "bad" systems.
Big "BUT"
I have a "Quickie" set up with Speco autoformers and Hammond plate chokes driving an older set of AKG 240m headphones. With CD reissues of Steeleye Span (Below the Salt), Yes (Fragile), Sonny Rollins (Way Out West) and the soundtrack of "Last of the Mohicans" things sound geat - "impactful", "immediate" and all the usual audiophile trish-trash. With classical music CDs however, the Telarc "Stokowsky Sound" and some Charles Dutoit conducting MSO on Decca, the sound is rather "blah". Not bad, but just Hi-Fi-ish okay. This all runs counter to several decades of my thinking...I do not think of myself as a "newbie".
So my question - what makes a piece of Hi-Fi gear "Pop/Rock/Jazz" or "Classical" balanced?...and why hasn't this punched me in the face before??