How much is about the recording

Better recordings/masterings have been more important to me than anything other than loudspeakers for about 15 years now.

The Steve Hoffman Music Forum was invaluable in this regard, even if the Beatles threads literally took weeks to read.

More recently superdeluxeedition.com has also been helpful.

https://superdeluxeedition.com/

Then there is also the dynamic range database of course. It’s still helpful as ever during this era of loud/compressed music.

https://dr.loudness-war.info/

Andrew from Parlogram on YouTube is also good.

There must plenty of other sites too.

@singintheblues

I was very briefly sucked in by hifi dealers who would switch my music for some whiney woman & it sounded great, but not music I ever want to listen to.

This is a common used but altogether highly misleading practice that needs to be challenged wherever it’s encountered.

In such instances the reluctance to vary the musical demonstration material seems almost palpable.

A fear of exposure?

In effect the demonstrators are themselves tacitly admitting that the recording is far more important than the equipment that it’s being played on.

Without actually saying so.

In the meantime the customer is being set up for one huge purchase disappointment.

It’s particularly disgusting to see seasoned reviewers using this same tactic, time and time again.

I don’t think I’ve yet seen a reviewer/ salesman who had similar musical tastes as myself. They either don’t like popular music or don’t like what it tells them about the equipment on review.

When was the last time you heard this at a show?