Is Technology Robbing Music s Soul
Sony isn't a company I normally associate with high-end audio, but it will be at the show demonstrating its award-winning SS-AR1 speaker. VPI turntables will be giving away a Scout turntable worth $1,800, with a handmade Soundsmith phono cartridge. Local dealers Audio Doctor, Sound by Singer, and Innovative Audio/Video will be on hand and they are promising lots of new gear presentations.
Better yet, buy a new phono cartridge, like the inexpensive Shure SC35C DJ cartridge that just received a rave review in Stereophile magazine. This cartridge is also rugged, so the stylus can survive a fair amount of abuse and still sound great, this one is highly recommended.
There will also be a full slate of seminars, including "Ask the Editors," hosted by Stereophile magazine's John Atkinson with panelists Michael Fremer (Stereophile), Alan Taffel (The Absolute Sound), Alan Sircom (Hi-Fi+), Jeff Dorgay (Tone Audio), Stephen Mejias (Stereophile), Art Dudley (Stereophile), and Grant Clauser (Electronic House).
With in-ear headphones the same logic applies, so take the same course and order new ear tips for your headphones. If the original tips never provided a really good seal, you might be better off investing a few bucks in aftermarket replacement tips from another manufacturer. The difference in sound quality and noise isolation tight sealing tips provide are substantial, and tips are cheap!
Have you ever really thought about the difference between the way older and present-day recordings affect you? I'm not so much talking about sound quality; older recordings have a very different feel. They have more juice, more soul, stereo truth more life, and that's why they connect with people in a completely different way than hyperprocessed contemporary music does.
Today, for example, Auto-Tuned vocals are so ubiquitous that my friend, mastering engineer Dave McNair, exclaimed, "The only way to know for sure a vocal hasn't been Auto-Tuned, is an out of tune vocal." So once a new technology is available, the engineers can't resist using it. This isn't so much about analog versus digital recording formats. No, it's the way recordings are made. Too many are assembled out of bits and pieces of sound to create technically perfect, but soulless music. It's not that great music can't be made with computers, but it's sure less likely to get my mojo workin'.
Listen at close to or at realistic sound levels for the type of music you play, if your speakers or headphones can handle high volume without distorting. Experiment with playing music louder and see if it sounds better to you. Definitely apply common sense and avoid playing music so loud it disturbs other people, or endangers your hearing. In any case, avoid listening at high volume levels for more than 30 minutes at a time.
As I said in my recent article about distortion for Stereophile magazine, "Harshness isn't just a byproduct of compression, it's an integral part of the sound of today's music." And that will remain true for as long as the vast majority of listeners -- teenagers, commuters, doctors, teachers, garbage men, musicians, etc. -- don't have home audio systems, and listen only in their cars, or on crap headphones, or via plastic computer or Bluetooth speakers. Music is background sound for almost everyone, most of the time, and heavily compressed, and even harsh music is a plus when you want the sound to remain at a constant volume level.
If you use your full-size headphones a lot and they are more than two years old, there's a good chance their ear pads are worn out or lost their cushy feel. Check if the manufacturer sells user-replaceable pads for your headphones. New pads do a better job sealing out external noise, and the headphones' bass will be optimized with fresh pads.
Of course, distortion means different things to different people, but this is the definition I'm working with: Distortion is a change, twist, or exaggeration that makes something appear different from the way it really is.
Recorded music has its own aesthetic, and for quite some time music has been heavily compressed, meaning the naturally quieter parts are pushed up louder, and the loudest parts are reduced, so a whisper is as loud as a scream. In real life, a softly strummed acoustic guitar would never be heard over the drums except by altering the dynamic range of both instruments, distorting the relative sound from what the guitar and drums originally sounded like. In the hands of a skilled engineer, they sound good -- really good. To be clear about this, I'm referring to dynamic range compression, not the sort of lossy data compression used in MP3 files.
That's not just my opinion. Daptone Records founder Gabe Roth said, "You used to have people together in a room playing a song; now they make records that try to sound like people together playing a song." Drummer/producer Steve Jordan is very much aware of the problem that plagues so many contemporary recordings, and he said, "When you're spending too much time 'perfecting' the music, you're probably going to lose the feel. Human beings' heart rates aren't steady, they go up and down, but that's exactly what's being extracted from a lot of today's music."