To my ears the more resolving the stereo is, the harder rock is to play at louder levels. Distorted guitars come off as grating in many recordings from the decades that rock and roll dominated the airwaves. In the 70s and 80s most of this music was recorded nearfield and optimized for auto radio play. This also caused poor bass recording. Some of the newer rock recordings have steered towards a more audiophile recording mentality. Examples... Nothing but Thieves / Broken Machine and Chevelle / Niratias. I use equalization in my system to add bass and smooth grating higher frequencies in many older rock recordings and bypass the e.q. when not needed.
