When Sound Quality Just Doesn't Matter

That's an interesting way of thinking.<br />

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On the other hand, "popular" music is very much determined by the time it is created in. Popular music in the 18th century is usually considered classical music today. Frank Sinatra was every bit as "popular" in the 1940's as whatever the superstar of today is. (Usher? Tim McGraw?) Fifties Jazz and early R&R was every bit as edgy in the 50s as say, Green Day or Rammestien (sp?) is today. <br />

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I personally do not believe there is such a thing as "audiophile" music. Audiophile <i>recordings</i>, yes. But <i>music</i>? <br />

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I probably do not fit the mold of what you consider "audiophile," and so should drop out of this conversation before I say something that inadvertantly insults anyone else.<br />

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I will say that another of my hobbies is the ReefKeeping, and there are a number of people in the hobby who get so enthralled with the tech, they totally miss the marvel of having a living reef in their living room or den. They will typically spend 10's of thousands of dollars to get gear that is best described as "on the fringe" and yet, they sometimes derive less enjoyment than the guy with a micro-reef in a 10 gallon tank. Worse, in reefkeeping, that kind of fanaticism can often lead to short miserable lives for the critters they keep. In the audio world, there is no bio-ethical questions involved at least! <br />

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Not saying anyone here is the equivalent of that in the audio world, and even if there were, they have the right to be whatever they want to be. I just tend to avoid fanaticism in any form, at least as much as I can. <br />

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That <i>is</i> just my opinion though. <br />

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-Paul<br />

Good point about popular music. Yes it does depend on time. <br />

But I feel popular music now is less about music and more about<br />

profits. If you understand the theory behind making music? You <br />

will notice popular music Less and less musical. Fewer instruments,<br />

simpler beats (4 beats) and less complex patterns. It's designed to<br />

have a simple hook, played repeatedly to the audience and with sex to <br />

attract attention. Additionally, recorded without regard to quality and<br />

to focus on distribution and sales . It's almost like making music in your bedroom. But ithank the few artists and producers who still believe in music first.<br />

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HI Paul - Not to change the subject, but I've always envied beautiful reefs and thought of trying it myself. The flow of water over some of the "wavy" reef inhabitants is so relaxing. I can imagine watching a reef with a little old school jazz on at the same time. Lovely :~)

Composed by Stephen Danker. I lost touch with Steve, but this was done around 1990, and it is- transcendental - when in front of your own little reef. The critters even seem to like it, though I am sure that is anthropomorphism. No way crabs, shrimp, anemones and other critters could really sway to the beat!

But I think it is just part of the cycle. There is a lot of really good music being made still, a lot of which is in the "indie" scene, a lot of good R&B stuff too. <br />

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Think of how the Beatles started, and then moved on to complex heavily layered stuff, then after the split, back to rather simple stuff. <br />

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I think a lot of the fun of being alive today is we have access to a great deal of the enormous library of work already out there, so patterns like that all seem obvious to us with just a minimum bit of study. <br />

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Also the reason to make digital music sound as good as possible. As you point out, that is not an easy task with a lot of the material put out today. <br />

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-Paul

ajay556 commented... <em>"I know everyone here seems to be cheering for enjoying music for its content. But let's not forget it's the quality that has taken a dive since the 1960's. If you look at a real audiophiles collection of LPs, it's not new music, but primarily old collection like miles davis, Lee Morgan, Ella and Louis, etc. Because new music has been stripped out of true enjoyment of music."</em><br />

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Well outside the debate of weather "modern music is rubbish", surely the fact that we have all these great artists from the 50s and 60s (and great classical music from before) doesn't preclude the fact that there was also just as much rubbish produced in the past that was either (a) not recorded or (b) has been lost in the interveening times.<br />

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In fact if you look at most Time Warner "Classics from the 50s" 92 CD sets and there is ALOT of rubbish in amongst the classics.<br />

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Eloise

Great Story in fact.<br />

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I have sinned myself more than a few times worrying too much about my equipment only to realize that it's not as much fun if it's not about the music.<br />

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By the way, I'm now in the process of digitilizing all of my content (CDs mostly). The reason? Just that! All of my mysic at my finger tips for immediate enjoyment so I can forget about the equipment and just have fun!<br />

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Congratulations Chris on a great site and post.

My point is if you where to rate Sonics and Performance on the music....there would be a larger selection of higher ratings available in the older music. If you think otherwise, I would suggest listening to older LPs. You will quickly realize how beautiful music is after playing Lee Morgan, Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, et. I personally was raised to and love 80's music. But after listening to the likes of Lee Morgan on ClearAudio player (150k)...i realized i was missing out on much better music. My final point... For me the euphoria of listening to uncompressed acoustic instruments on a 100k+ system is unmatched.<br />

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A good story that reminds us that good music can be enjoyed on a wide range of audio systems and even transcend poor ones, as long as you can recognize lyrics and melody, and tap your foot to the rhythm. In this case, the limiting factor was the loudspeakers, which is often the case.<br />

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Regarding Gordon Holt's inverse rule: I think the performance and sound quality of music has gotten worse ( Did you watch the recent Grammy broadcast? ) Most music today is so dynamically compressed that the increased dynamic range (24 bit) and bandwidth (96 kHz) is wasted. However, there are always exceptions to the rule, and there are many good recording engineers/producers (e.g. George Massenburg and Al Schmitt) who resist the temptation to squash the dynamics for the sake of being the loudest recording.<br />

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One recording I've been enjoying this past week is Dawn Langstroth's HighWire recording engineered and co-produced by George Massenburg. I downloaded the 24/96k Flac version but it's available at lower CD and MP3 resolutions as well. http://www.linnrecords.com/recording-highwire.aspx<br />

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Prior to this week, I had never heard of her.<br />

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The quality of the recording is exceptional. I happen to think the songs and musicianship are excellent too, but that is always a matter of personal taste. It serves as a reminder that there are exceptions to the Gordon Holt inverse rule, and thank God for that!<br />

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Nice article! I think the best music is the little played gem you find at a yard sale for a dollar...and find out that's it's worth $100 in the price guide. But if it's something you really love, you will never sell it.

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as a former musician and avid attendant to many live shows in the bay area in the sixties and seventies, i witnessed the birth of the concert sound we're all so accustomed to..bands like the grateful dead, steely dan, pink floyd, the tubes and more all not only improved on their tune structure from a 4 minute radio tune to an adventure that rarely made it to vinyl because you could only get so much music on one side of an lp. so you had to attend a concert to find out just what the bands were all about...but to the point, the sound quality improved so much with the advent of a sound board with an audience sound system and the band with their own stage monitors...a far cry from a backdrop of fenders or marshalls all individually controlled..hit a show with more than two bands and you had to expect a few hours of equipment changes and glitches and finally the test test 1,2,3,4 test test...i do miss those days but not the miss balance between players although a live show is, if you like the band a good show no matter what..when the lp's, cassettes, 4 and 8 track cartridges and finally cd's got bought by us because of those great concerts we attended finally got home and played, you never knew if this was an lp with 2 to 4 good tracks or a one hit wonder...for me it's the music and how it takes me in or leaves me flat...i love that live sound and if the band goes for audiophile level quality like the dead...it changes you for a little while at least..<br />

for me it's all about the sound experience...one of my favorite concert memories was robin trower and the bridge of sighs tune..that tune was so good that it was used as an inbetweener between bands for so many shows i went attended but to this day i've yet to hear a good vinyl version that gives me that concert feeling..i spent decades saving my money and upgrading my gear to where now i have a system that takes me to the reality of a good show..bose type gear doesn't cut it in this realm...compressed cd's and bad engineering no matter how nostalgic the tune just don't cut it...my system cost a ton but like my home...it's really worth nothing as i'm keeping it and my lp's no matter how valuable according to some value book are also of no value unless they give me that live sound...the adventure for me has and will always be finding that recording that takes you to the show...i'm a brand new member on this site and appreciate all of you as fellow audiodudes that appreciate good music...cheers dusty akers bc canada

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Nice comments. Unfortunately not all bands playing have control over, or seem to care all that much about their live sound these days (as with everything, there are exceptions). It is interesting that you note the live sound of the Grateful Dead. They are one band that always strived to have the best possible live sound, and applied audiophile type values to all their equipment. Legendary audio designer John Curl designed and custom built a lot of specialised gear for the GD, as they were unsatisified with the quality of stock pro sound gear.