Rock and Roll Snobbery

In my opinion, a great system should -- I hope -- handle any type of music well. Such a system may require a great deal of clams. And, it is not so easy to find or build a decent system that can handle every type of music very well although it depends on your preference. The reality for most of people is that you are going to make a trade off. I want my Hard Rock and Metal to grab me by the foot and go slam bang on my head while Classical to be composed, intricate yet sometimes overwhelming with less forwardness, etc. I have not heard a system at reasonable price -- say, about 5K ~7K -- doing both as well as I expect it should. So, I made a trade-off in favor of classical. My system does reasonable well with Hard Rock; nevertheless, it is never able to attack with such ferocity and wallop as, say, a Krell with Paradigms could. If you include front end in the equation, accentuating certain aspects more prominently becomes quite substantial, which determines the trade-off. I am in a situation that I have to stay in CA for about six to 7 months. So, instead of subjecting my system to shipping back and forth, I chose to build an entry level HT system, which I do not have at home, with an Onkyo receiver and B&W's. It does not do well with classical by any means. Yet, relatively speaking, it does better with Rock. But, someone, a couple of days ago, said the opposite. Go figure...

I agree with other poster's thoughts that rock sounds better on a less revealing system. My reference system is great with quite a bit of music that I like, and I have found some older rock CD's that formerly were unlistenable that now sound great on it. I have a vintage a/d/s sytem in my home office with a good reel deck, and a collection of over 400 prerecorded reels. After my Honey crashes for the night it's my time to rock my world! I couldn't survive on one system! Paul

Sorry but I think most modern recordings (rock n'pop) sound great...I cannot think of a single release bought this year that is not well-recorded...could someone tell me what exact recordings we are talking about and what is wrong with them? Most artists take a great deal of time recording and effort perhaps I'm just used to "modern" recordings and they are overcompressed or whatever......one of the above post talks about Rush I think their re-masters sound well produced and recorded...some of the sounds may have dated but....... Regards, Ben

Ok,I remember when they did the review for Jadis JP80, a pre that costs 18,000 the reviewers said it did classical music better---figure that one out folks!!Not that long ago--last year or so.

Ben: It could be that many are comparing older vinyl to the CD version and come up dissapointed. In regard to the mention of Who's Next, I have purchased two copies and traded in both as I thought that there was something wrong with the first (they both sucked and I could not listen to either). I had the same thing happen with Clapton's Layla and finally settled on the MFSL version. But, anything that I have by Ry Cooder, Steve Windwood and a host of others are good recordings IMO. Just picked up The Eagles "Hell Freezes Over" CD and could not be happier. I do not own any "new" rock. The only new band CD's that I have purchased are The Cowboy Junkies and I like the recordings. I guess that it just depends on the artist and label. I have also noticed that old Elton John CD's are pretty rank when compared to the vinyl versions and Elton is a perfectionist, Guess he got sidetracked somewhere along the way.