Optimizing around your favorite music genre
Some music genres are more dependent on various kinds of musical fidelity more than they are other kinds. If one listens primarily to one, or just a few, genres one may be able to get away with a system that has less fidelity overall, and cost a lot less.
It is always true that the more fidelity the better, but these are tough times, and sometimes we gotta do what we gotta do. For example, two of the genres we talked about last time, Folk and Opera, to not need deep tight bass as much as most other genres.
This can be looked at from multiple angles. The post will take one approach. Please feel free to correct or augment.
< --- LESS important ---- MORE important --->
Folk
deep bass, tight bass, dynamics… resolution in the voice band, harmonic richness in the voice band
Reggae
high resolution, high frequencies… PRaT, harmonic richness in the voice band, dynamics and resolution in the percussive band,tight mid bass, deep very dynamic bass
New Age, Some Electronica
deep bass, dynamics, tight bass, …. harmonic richness, harmonic and frequency resolution
Rap
harmonic richness, harmonic and frequency resolution (just enough to make the snare drum listenable, or, conversely, roll off the frequencies in the snare drum region) … dynamics, deep tight bass.
Rock & Roll
[demands seem to be even across all audiophile attributes, however, uber fidelity in any attribute does not lend as much improvement as the uber fidelity would in several other genres – because the recording qualities are typically low]
Orchestra
Deep bass… [everything else is pretty important]
Choral
Deep bass, dynamics… harmonic and frequency resolution [love when the voices resolve into individual voices]
Organ Music
Frequency resolution… harmonic resolution, deep bass
Jazz Fusion
Deep bass, tight bass… dynamic, harmonic and frequency resolution [Jazz fusion can easily become a mish mash without enough resolution]
3 or 4-piece Jazz, Simple Pop
[everything] … harmonic resolution.
By harmonic resolution we mean tonal richness and accuracy – approaching the Real.
By frequency resolution we mean loudness accuracy
By dynamic resolution we mean that notes reach their loudness level in a realistic, true-to-life fashion.
The idea then is to say, well, I am on a budget and I mostly play New Age , so I do not *need* deep tight bass, so I can get smaller speakers, smaller amps, a high-resolution amp [as opposed to a beefy one], clear sounding cables and sources [as opposed to those that are designed to hide, smother atrocities in other parts of the system].
