Title pretty much says it all. For me I’m a music fan first and an audiophile second. Sometimes I’m in a car without a great system or using an inexpensive Bluetooth speaker and I still want to enjoy music. I often listen to very different music.
When it comes to newer albums I have been enjoying Sandy Denny’s home recordings and the new collection of Sylvester piano demos. I like everything from abba to 80s and 90s dance music. This is a bit of an oddball answer, but I also love listening to MFSL audiophile masters to stretch the legs of a mediocre system. It’s kind of amazing listening to the MFSL version of the nirvana or pixies albums in my base Honda fit’s stereo or Tapestry by Carole King if I have boomers in the car.
I’m curious what everyone else listens to on cheap consumer systems.
Why would the music choice be any different?
Many of the MTV Unplugged shows were recorded to sound good no matter what the medium.
That’s a great one. I love listening to 10,000 maniacs unplugged in cars or even just on my cellphone.
Anything where the fine details of the song don’t matter a lot. For me that would be the following bands (for the most part)
A Perfect Circle Incubus Red Hot Chili Peppers Literally any hip hop/rap Audioslave Linkin Park
Nothing quite claps like classic Rick out of a cheap car stereo system. Or Hip Hop. Takes me back to the days of driving hoopties.
Good recordings are good recordings.
Tapestry is a good call. Well-produced '70s soft rock with “hydraulic” drum recording was kind of made for such systems – can sound a little synthetic on a super-revealing setup, but smooth out nicely on a mid-range system. See also James Taylor, Little River Band (actually I think there are some MFSL discs of their stuff), Linda Ronstadt, America, etc. etc.
Try giving up on “imaging” and putting your speakers in corners or some other spot in the room, this can open up very interesting aspects of records.
Same ones
The midbass hump usually does rap a lot of favours.
Creedence Clearwater Revival.
I don’t think it matters. After all you listen to the music because you like it.
Listen to it all and whatever gets you. Screw the herd thinking. There’s always something better. Enjoy what you have :)
Do we? Because I listen to music that I enjoy on my system. I don’t care about if it’s been recorded to the “highest standard” for these audiophiles. If a system can’t sound great with Lamb of God, then it’s definitely overpriced for what it is. A good system should sound great with every genre, not specific genres and instruments and it can only sound good with the highest quality recording. I don’t let a system dictate what I listen to.
A good recording is far more important then if it’s an lossy and not lossless. So listen to and gear your system to what you enjoy.
generally I listen to recordings of music I like. Sometimes I listen to recordings of music I don’t like as well, but not as often as I listen to recordings of music I do like.
Motown was mixed to sound great in a car.
Phil spector’s wall of sound was engineered to sound loud on AM radio and jukeboxes.