So about a week and a half ago, I went to visit family and friends in Indiana. Since the drive there was about 11 hours, I decided to bring all of my Linkin Park CDs in case I felt like listening to any of them on the way there. Now, I had never listened to Living Things in the car I was in beforehand, but I knew it had terrible speakers. They were stock speakers from the mid-90s, and I'd assume they'd been blown out sometime in the past, as when the bass was on, it sounded completely awful and drowned out the rest of any song you'd listen to. As a result, I was forced to turn the bass off to be able to "enjoy" Living Things. Now, this wouldn't be so bad if the sound quality of the speakers wasn't mediocre at best overall anyway. So as a result, the hard-hitting sound of LITE became dull, the moody, atmospheric sounds of COG all but vanished, and that intense bass drop in Powerless was completely gone. Overall, the whole album sounded flat, lost its ambiance, and was pretty much bass-less throughout. I ended up listening to the album again on the ride back, and it sounded equally as awful even with some adjustments, as I had expected. I really need to listen to LT again on decent speakers soon, because those two listens of it in that car really left a bad taste in my mouth. The worst part is that I had listened to the album 7 times beforehand on headphones and enjoyed it immensely, yet those two listens still put a damper on things. I guess that just goes to show how much sound quality can affect how enjoyable music is.
Well, of course, but this album in particular sounded distinctly bad on those speakers - though I think that may in part be because I had listened to it in high quality several times beforehand.
I used to listen to all my music to crappy speakers (like, really crappy, no bass + some saturation + ...) Then I bought a good sound system 2 years ago. I felt like I was discovering all my music library again, and this was a really good feeling!
Good speakers are the Alpha and Omega when you listen to music in my opinion. Otherwise the song losts his 'real' sound. I speak from experience
This. When I got my new car a little over a year ago, I was overwhelmed with how much better everything sounded. The after market speakers I had in my old car sounded like hot garbage on a high humidity mid-summer's day. Now that I know what good sounds like, I won't be able to stand listening to music on a shitty set anymore.