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| "I like all types music, I guess!" |
My problem - which is also my solution - is that it's all lost on me. I'm not a wine-taster or a foodie or a hi-fi nut. Not any more, anyway. I used to care about all that nuance [subtlety - Ed.] and exquisiteness of sensation an' shit. Now I just dig music, like I used to dig it back when I first dug it. It didn't occur to me as a spotty teen, listening to pirate radio on my transistor radio [early-type telephone - Ed.] through a deaf-aid earpiece that it was compressed to fuck and the soundstage was narrower than a lady flea's vagina. I just thought the music was fantastic.
So when I see something I want that he's labored over to enshrine forever at museum-grade quality, I stomp it down to @192 (because @128 looks cheap) using a catering-grade sausage grinder. Then I listen to it on household electrical items I bought from a supermarket that would make the good Professor throw up his pale hands in horror. It still sounds fantastic to me.
Which is all by way of an introduction to what will be a regular series, wherein Kreemé [19 my ass - Ed.] will keep us abreast - no jokes please - of the latest developments in hi-fi technology! Step up to the mic, gal!!
Kreemé: Hi, guys!
lol
ReplyDeleteTo qualify for this Bounty O' Beat Music, state by how many times The Who are better than The Beatles. OG thinks they were 101 times better. Excellent.
ReplyDeleteI didn't request that you don't make breast jokes. I asked you not to make jokes. I'm not discriminating against chest puppies.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure the exact quantitty, but it's surely a High Number.
ReplyDelete(Long live the Prof, may he be Stoned immaculate.)
You could do Shakespeare off those balconies.
ReplyDeleteFGW is a Renaissance man. A student of arts AND science: a scholar of literature, anatomy and architecture.
DeleteFor me, the question of Beatles vs Who is like asking whether the view is better appreciated from balcony left or balcony right.
Absolutely jonder! It's like having your head caught between two weather balloons in a hurricane when she's on top.
Delete3 times less (whatever that means).
ReplyDeleteMarc
Good to see a Beatles fan here!
DeleteI could not agree more.... the music I (and I think you) listen to was mixed to be played on tinny radios etc. That's how it's supposed to sound. I bought a modest "hi fi" set up some years back (mainly for volume) and was laughing when discussing the speakers as I pointed out that everything I listen to was compressed to hell and meant to sound crappy.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I'm saying I prefer a worse-sounding recording. I genuinely can't hear anything wrong or harsh or whatever in the @192 mp3 files I have. If I had a high-end set-up to compare, as I used to, I probably could, but I'm not sure it would mean that much. The quality I listen at today is much, much better than anything I had in maybe my first decade of buying records and listening to the radio.
DeleteAs the vitality and innovation of the music diminished, the stress on quality of reproduction increased, to the point where some listeners will be more alert to the presence of "artefacts" than what is actually happening in the music. The sound of the music (and its supporting text) has become more important than the music.
Quite. When I were a lad I listened to my records on (in order) a Dansette, a Stereogram-on-spindly-legs and a Music Centre. All sounded good to me.
DeleteThese days I listen thru a thing called tinnitus which has buggered up everything but I still love music and do my best. The only thing I can't listen to is silence.
Cheers, Peanuts Molloy.
yeah probably not the best worded comment - "As the vitality and innovation of the music diminished, the stress on quality of reproduction increased" is very well put. "Worse" is subjective. But the music was not mixed to be picked apart in super hi-fidelity, it was mixed to be a bit blurred and heard "whole" on low fi...
Delete... and nobody thought (at least I didn't) that our music wouldn't continue in an endless stream. We were always looking forward to the next album, getting better all the time. Nobody expected to be listening to (say) Aoxomoxoa fifty years down the line. They were just records, part of something happening, part of life. I can remember the unearthly thrill of hearing Strawberry Fields for the first time, absolutely uncompromised by the primitive equipment I was hearing it through. The magic in pop is real magic, and technology only gives it a space to work.
Delete"The magic in pop" is sadly rarely heard these days - to my tired ears at any rate. I still hear it in random 50's r&b collections, or other such basically spontaneous for the hell of it music making, but nothing contemporary. My absolute pet hate is autotune - it's like artificial sweetener in that it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, and I can detect a single molecule. I have an ongoing "Joke" with my daughter, which is that every time I hear something she is playing with it on I say "Sparky" in a magic piano imitation - which is exactly what it reminds me of
DeleteI don't know how many times, but they were better (you bet).
ReplyDeleteI feel seasick
ReplyDeleteMy advice - try to draw your eyes away from the horizon. Try to find something else in the composition to focus on.
DeleteFarq, I do the very same thing with audiophile rips: put them through a digital sausage grinder to produce an inferior bitrate that (to my unsophisticated ears) sounds just as good but is more portable. Defying the file sharers commandment: "Thou shalt not sully my pristine FLAC with your vile lossy formats".
ReplyDeleteMy factory-grade car stereo is my preferred listening room, so I burn CD's and hit the road. It's the polar opposite of how folks like Prof. Stoned and PBTHAL want their work to be appreciated. It's not that I don't respect their labors, and I shouldn't poke fun at them. But my ears are unsophisticated organs that can't appreciate the difference, and I don't have the money for the high-end hardware. I'm in it for the enjoyment of the music, not the fidelity of its capture.
https://pbthal-archive.blogspot.com/
I do my best listening in the car. I only use it maybe once a week, to a town less than an hour away, but there's something about driving (as long as you're not traffic) that's conducive to listening. At home I'm always distracted or doing something else. In the car I sit and listen.
DeleteAll kidding aside, mostly, I happen to like my favorite tracks from
ReplyDeletethe Who even more than my favorite tracks from the Beatles. But
math tends to confuse me, with the result that I cannot say, on
balance, whose output I prefer by how much. As for audio quality,
I would privilege access over fidelity anytime. I do, of course,
have standards, and my gold standard for listenability remains that
particular level of goodness which Cub Koda so famously associated
with The Rekkid. Back when everything was analog, I used to listen
by way of pretty much any medium well represented at the thrift
store, albeit with a certain animus against the 8-track. (Note:
while Apple Inc. continues to piss me off, I still bow down in
gratitude for my three iPods, which I love individually and
collectively.) For me, internecine clashes over bit rates, etc.,
can be entertaining for as long as a minute or two, what with my
own digital collection including so many files at, like, 24 kbps.
So nobody wants this? Snobs.
ReplyDeleteZero times, they are both first among equals
ReplyDelete∑n=0∞(−1)n2n+1
ReplyDeleteAre you for convergence or divergence?
Delete"The note that began all can also destroy"
Delete"When the mode of music changes The walls of the city shake" - The Fugs [sic - Ed.]
Delete
ReplyDeleteReturn of the Stealth Link!!!!!!!?!!!!!
I think I had enough, you know religion, it's tough
ReplyDeleteIt's a state of mind I don't need it!
I'm sending a letter
To my mother
I need some loving
Send it to me
I lost my lover
Unfaithful lover
I need some money
Send it to me
I need consoling
Your boy's feeling lonely
Describe her for me
Send it to me
Send it to me
Send it to me
Send it to me
Send it to me
If she can't travel
I can take the mule train
I can take the aeroplane
Send it to me
So here I'm begging you
Begging you, begging you
Down on my knees
Baby, please, please, please
You, you, you got to send it
Send it, send it, send it to me
Send her, oh, send her to me
You got to send her
Send her to me
Send her to me
Send her to me
The single edit of "Won't Get Fooled Again" is a lot of fun, I hope the Prof is looking for a mint copy of that 45.
ReplyDeleteWho-What-When-Where-Which...
DeleteA lot hear to digest. Lemme try (reading?! wot the funk, are we in a lockdown kwaran-Kreemé er sumthin'?!) Meanswhiles...
Anyhow, for whatever reason, that reference to The Who-The-F-Are-You Group's 45 butchery job of "Won't Git Foolish..." reminded me of a "clip job" once (OK, it may have been twice..) aired on a weekly L.A. (public... Ooooo...) radio show.. 'Twas a "compendium" of all sorts of Fab4(no -or-5)(Sorry Murray the K) "Screams" all done up in the one "clip" which ran about 1 minute or so. So, ya know, ya hear Paul's "Long Tall Sally" holler, then a "AHHHH!" from "I'm Down," maybe a "Whoo!" or whatnot from "I Saw Her Hand Sanitizing There," and a bunch more (lots from "Bad Boy" Johnny boy's remakes of Larry Williams numbers...)
I guess ya had to Be There.
- B.(ack to you, Vic and Art..!)
Didn't they just add the instrumental coda to "Won't Get Fooled Again" to make an album verion rather than have a long album version they had to cut/edit down?
DeleteWho knows...
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ReplyDelete