To find out what I'm listening to, check out my last.fm profile. You can even listen to a selection of my favorite tracks directly, in mixes I uploaded to 8tracks.
But I also do some hobby research on scientific music theory. What characteristics of sound do we need to recognize different instruments, animals or human voices? Why do we have white and black keys on a piano? Why can't you play (consonant) chords with church bells? There are good answers to many of these questions. I'm also interested in the applications of this science to (digital) sound synthesis and composition. Some excellent resources to get you started:
Music in micro- and macrotonal scales is my favorite area of experimentation right now. All this unknown territory is a great opportunity to develop a new (unbiased) music theory. The Bohlen-Pierce scale is my first object of study and there's already some material on this site. There is a friendly community, the Xenharmonic Alliance
To experiment with sound synthesis, I completely rely on (free) software. An incredible amount of high-quality programs are available for GNU/Linux systems, too, all inter-connected with the JACK audio and MIDI server. A small selection:
While some synthesizers are capable of retuning, notably ZynAddSubFX and AlsaModularSynth (via Scala files), most just support the usual 12 tone equal temperament. To use microtonal scales with other synths, I use fishnpitch, that supports JACK MIDI and Scala files.
At the same time, I'm thinking about proper interfacing. The standard keyboard from a piano might be convenient, but isn't easy to handle for untrained musicians. The relative keyboard proposes an alternative interpretation,