I was watching a Youtube video yesterday evening by J. R. Boisclair of WAM Engineering on using massed strings as a listening test. This caught my attention because using massed strings to test equipment and evaluate system / turntable setup is excellent advice that I’ve only heard from one person, Tom Port, and I was intrigued to hear someone else in the industry offering similar guidance.

However, J.R. doesn’t spend all that much time on his chosen topic. Shortly into the video he introduces a different one altogether. He isn’t happy with his speakers.

Why isn’t he happy with his speakers? Well, J.R. explains this in a somewhat indirect way that does relate to his first topic. He says he used to listen to a lot of classical music, mostly classical music in fact, and he’s realized of late that he’s not been listening to much classical music at all. Instead, he’s been listening to mostly “small jazz ensemble” and “female vocal” music, and he thinks that’s because of his speakers.

Now, I also enjoy listening to small jazz ensembles and female vocalists, but I consider both genres to be the low hanging fruit of audiophile listening. That is, they often feature recordings that are relatively easy to reproduce with most speakers and most systems, with some notable exceptions I’ve written about here and here.

Meanwhile I do listen to a lot of classical music, orchestral music in particular, which often features “massed strings” and is in a category of recording that’s much tougher to play and have sound right.

At this point in the video J.R. points out something that is dead on correct. If we audiophiles find ourselves playing a lot of a certain type of music, it may be telling us something important about our system.

And that something is that our system plays that type of music well, which is why we’re playing a lot of it.

It also means we may likely be avoiding playing other types of music because our system doesn’t play those other types of music very well. Perhaps even rather poorly.

Here’s a scenario. We put on one record and it sounds great to us, so the next time we go looking for a record to play, we favor that record, or other records that sounded great the last time we played them.

Meanwhile, we also remember that the last time we played that other record our system sounded like garbage. So maybe we just take a pass on that other record going forward.

But here’s the thing. Did our system sound terrible playing that other record because it’s not a good sounding record? Maybe.

Or maybe it actually is good sounding but happens to be one our system doesn’t play well. And if that’s the case, that other record exposes problems in our system that we now have an opportunity to address.

IOW, we can’t fix it ’til we know it’s broke.

In fact, I would argue that that other record might very well be a record we should be playing more often, because that’s the record that will demonstrate for us which changes we make are the right ones.

Now, I suppose you might say “Hey! Wait a minute. I don’t really like classical music all that much. Why do I need my system to play it?” To which I would say, fair enough, but not only you are missing out on hearing some of the most astonishing recordings ever pressed onto vinyl, you are also missing out on an opportunity to hear the music you do like sound its best.

That’s because classical music is the best test for any system, and any system that can pass that test will be much more likely to deliver the best account of any record you play on it, regardless of genre.

Want your small jazz ensemble records to sound beyond amazing? Get some great sounding classical records and get them to sound great.

Want to hear a female vocalist sounds so present and alive it leaves you speechless? Learning to play classical recordings can make that happen.

Want to have a Zeppelin record ROCK YOUR WORLD like never before?

Well, you get the idea.

And at the risk of pointing out the obvious, maybe you’re not all that into classical music because you’ve never really heard it reproduced in all its majestic glory. Not many audiophiles have.

In any case, the next time you put on a record, think about why you chose it. Maybe there is an unconscious bias operating that you haven’t been aware of.

And should you discover such a bias, it could very well mark the start of a journey to a whole new world of dramatically better sound.