The Skating Force Phenomenon
At the beginning of last month's As We See It, I wrote that I've lately been focused on "analog things." I proceeded to write about refurbishing and modding my old McIntosh tuner. That's "analog thing" #1. So, what other analog things have I been focused on? Here's #2...
The Soul of a New Medium
Successful new prerecorded audio media emerge, on average, every two decades—one human generation. The LP made its debut in 1948, 21 years after the introduction of electrical recording ended the adolescence of the record industry and the acoustic 78rpm disc. This was almost coincidental with Jack Mullin's retrieval of analog tape technology from the wreckage of post-WWII Germany and its subsequent commercialization by Bing Crosby's Ampex company (footnote 1). The compact cassette made its appearance in 1963, followed almost 20 years later by the CD, in 1982. And now, as I mentioned in the October issue's "As We See It," we have Sony and Philips' Super Audio CD and the DVD Forum's DVD-Audio to contend with (not forgetting MP3 and the Internet).
The Sound and the Image
It's not surprising that many people, like me, love nice cameras and good stereo gear. In my worse moments, I attribute this to mere consumerism: We love expensive stuff and the thrill of buying something new, whether for reproducing music or creating visual images. In my better moments, it's clear to me that there's more than that to this common taste for audio and photography, and more to the hobby of so-called perfectionist audio.
The Sound Of Music
"Most people really don't like music—they just like the way it sounds"
The Sound of the Human Heart
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.William Bruce Cameron, Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking (1963)
I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite meanings.Walt Whitman, "That Music Always Round Me," from Leaves of Grass
These two statements, to me, express the core perspective shared by Stereophile's contributors. When I encountered both of them within a span of 30 days, they spoke so strongly that I felt impelled to hook up the biggest, baddest loudspeakers I could find and broadcast them to the world, without distortion. Failing in that quest, and having not yet attained the status of the Edward R. Murrows and Walter Cronkites of eras past, I share them here.
The Spaces Between the Notes
"Check it out." Music editor Robert Baird handed me a CD. "He's 70 years old, it's his 13th album, he got Don Was to produce it, and it's his best yet."
The Spaces Between the Notes
At the beginning of the 2022 novel Checkout 19, by Claire-Louise Bennett, I encountered some ideas that resonate in interesting ways with my recent experience of recorded music. . .
I've been bringing home too many records from the record store, or too many CDs from the CD shop, for decadesso many that it's difficult to focus on just one, to listen to it again and again, to give it the attention it deserves. In the era of streamingof having a sizeable fraction of the history of recorded music at your fingertips for $10$20/monththe temptation is especially acute. It's too easy to move among favorite bits of our favorite musicespecially when, as is too often true of audiophiles, we're so eager to hear how a favorite moment in this or that piece of music sounds on our system, now that we've added in that new component.
The Stereo Soundstage
What is the angular separation of your loudspeakers as viewed from your favorite chair? Whatever your answer, it's wrong. Of course I don't mean that it's a factually incorrect answer, just that any single value of subtended angle cannot be ideal for all recordings.
The Tiger Wags Its Tail
This is the story of the tiger wagging its tail. It is also the story of a tail trying to wag its tiger...
The Tin-Eared Americans
How would you feel after paying $2000 for super-stereo system, you learned that genuinely high-fidelity recordings of many excellent classical musical performances were not available to you? Could you excuse it with a shrug and the philosophical observation that nothing's perfect but things will get better as the state of the recording art improves? Okay then, what if you learned that truly high-fidelity recordings of these performances, that would sound very much like the real thing if reproduced through your super system, are available to millions of other people but not to you? Would you begin to feel just a little bit slighted, or maybe even irritated?