Is hi fi dead?

[NeilGabriel]

http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/42662987

This links to an understandable article about digital music v. traditiona "hi-fi." As an above average stereo junky, I have never believed that digital files and miniature sound cards could play the quality of a decent stereo system. Still, I have been so tempted to just convert all the CDs to digital and play them through my amp with an mp3 player. Thoughts from the audio and sound engineers here?

Mike

[phipiper10]

Do both, convert them all for convenience and keep loving the hi-fi too!

There is no sin in having 5000 albums to pick from in your next roadtrip!

[sucks2beme]

http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/42662987

This links to an understandable article about digital music v. traditiona "hi-fi." As an above average stereo junky, I have never believed that digital files and miniature sound cards could play the quality of a decent stereo system. Still, I have been so tempted to just convert all the CDs to digital and play them through my amp with an mp3 player. Thoughts from the audio and sound engineers here?

Mike

If you look over at head-fi, you'll see there is a large interest in better sound, and being portable. External mini amps, better quality headphones and earbuds, and lossless compression are all subjects of conversation.
I believe the end result will be a better and portable systems.
Tweeter and CC were results of bad business models. Neither carried much
in the way of higher end stuff. What Tweeter carried in the way of better stuff wasn't set up to display well, or priced to compete.
Typical article. Poorly researched with less than well thought out conclusions.
The bulk of people out there will never know or care about high end audio.

[Schwingding]

Traditional media is definitely on the way out the door. Sadly for many this means that music quality is also on the way out the door, and the door is about to slam shut. It started rolling out the door with the advent of the CD and has gone downhill since.

It doesn't have to be this way. As storage becomes cheaper and more robust, you'll be able to store all of your music in lossless formats in those tiny little USB type devices, and plug them into your system where they'll sound just as good as your original sources.

I'm considering adding a music server to my system at present, but haven't really begun any serious thinking on the specifics. It'll have to at least put out the same sound quality as my SACD player or there's no reason to go there. But mouseclick access to my entire library - sounds awesome.. (no pun intended)

[shack]

Hi-Fi as a mass market format probably is at least in its dying years. My guess is that it has many years left as a "mature" format. Until they have the ability to address the compression issue, MP3 and all the variations will be like fingernails on a blackboard to many. Maybe a better analogy (NOT from personal experience mind you!) would be like having sex with a blowup doll....it's still sex I suppose...but not like the real thing cause something is missing.

It's interesting that the "high end" audio marketplace is doing just fine. Vinyl is making a resurgence and Hi-rez still has its place. Digitized portable music may be the source for the masses and will have its place maybe even with audiophiles....but Hi-Fi will be around for a long time for those who want the "real" experience.

[mulveling]

A computer jukebox can be part of an excellent high-end system...but to avoid compromises you've need to encode in a lossless format, not MP3, and use a high quality external DAC. Something that's completely jitter immune like a Chord 64 DAC would be ideal; though for many systems the jitter attenuation found in a good $700+ DACs will be sufficient. Of course measures should also be taken to reduce noise from the computer fans.

MP3's are always going to be a compromise...perhaps less extreme than some would claim (a good 192kbs encoding does sound pretty damn good)...but still a compromise. With the size of hard drives these days (even in portables), there's no excuse for audiophiles to not use lossless encodings on their collections. If you go to the effort to clean your vinyl you can also make the extra effort to store lossless :p :D

Likewise, using the analog outputs from a DAP is going to be a compromise, too much of a compromise for a high end system. The really good DACs, power supply, analog output section, and jitter reduction methods just won't fit into that little case, not to mention the push to reduce costs. Not to mention the voltage output level of these DAPs is much lower than the typical CD player, which can make things harder on your preamp.

Now the thing that scares is whether the availablility of uncompressed music will diminish in the future. What if all they offer for sale is MP3? Ugh. Game over man!

[dorokusai]

I sure hope so.

[mulveling]

If you look over at head-fi, you'll see there is a large interest in better sound, and being portable. External mini amps, better quality headphones and earbuds, and lossless compression are all subjects of conversation.
I believe the end result will be a better and portable systems.
Tweeter and CC were results of bad business models. Neither carried much
in the way of higher end stuff. What Tweeter carried in the way of better stuff wasn't set up to display well, or priced to compete.
Typical article. Poorly researched with less than well thought out conclusions.
The bulk of people out there will never know or care about high end audio.
Some of the portable systems available today are quite good (actually surprisingly good), but still not high-end. The few headphone rigs that are truly high end all use heavy, stationary headphone amps and traditional high-end sources. Still, the areas of portable-fi & head-fi will make crucial contributions to preserving the high-end IMO. They'll do a lot (and are already doing a lot) to bring young people into the fold of interest in high quality audio reproduction; some of these guys will go from there to hifi 2ch, vinyl, etc. In return they'll demand lossless media. As long as we got young folks getting into the hobby, all sould be OK :D

[zombie boy 2000]

I sure hope so.

Too funny, yet my sentiments exactly.

[RuSsMaN]

I couldn't agree more Shack. It may not be mainstream, but there are always niche markets - and as you said, vinyl is huge, tubes are back AND affordable (the transistor / integrated circuit was supposed to be end of the tube, remember?).

The problem with the digital movement is there is no movement. There is a mechanicalness (is that a word?) to audio. That's why it's mainly a mans hobby, just like hotrods, fishing, woodworking etc.

You open your cd case, place the cd in the tray, press play, hear it spin up, remove and read through liner and production notes,etc. Pull the record from it's sleeve, blow on it, look at it, set it on the platter and let it spin, run the brush back and forth on it, drop the needle, etc etc.

Wheels are turning, things are happening, you can SEE it happen and be in control of it. Right clicking, or thumbing over a selection just isn't the same.

There is a romance of sorts, an involvement a listener has in the experience. The digital world cannot offer that, and that's why it will NEVER completely wipe out media formats like vinyl and cd. You don't need to even mention sound quality. HiFi is here to stay.

Cheers,
Russ

[NeilGabriel]

I have never had the money to be into really high end equipment and have lacked the patience to understand as much about the electronics as I would like. I have read a lot about lossless compression formats and download music that way from time to time. I just added a 250gig external hard drive to store music on and have been exploring the various ways to wireless connect with my audio system. My son, who is 17, thinks music/stereo is all about playing his digitized music on his computer. We both use Napster and that has been fun for us (he doesnt live with me). But, I just gave him a bunch of vintage components including some Polk 5 jrs and 7s and a Yamaha int. amp so he could appreciate med fi/hi fi. He seems impressed.

[MLZ]

I think the fact that Sterophile Magazine http://www.stereophile.com/computeraudio/http://www.stereophile.com/computeraudio/ has been reviewing network players (Slim Device's Squeeze Box, Roku's SoundBridge, etc.) to play music ripped to "music servers" shows that these devices are coming of age for both quality of sound and usability.

FYI: I am quite satisfied with the sound quality, love the way I can organize my music collection and that I boxed up my 500+ CDs and put them in a closet.

The main problem I see is one now has to now understand networking, computer operating systems, pros and cons of music formats to be ripped to, etc.

[Ricardo]

Is hi fi dead?

No.

[sucks2beme]

Now they have to worry about a virus wiping out their music library!

[jakelm]

Is there a difference in Mp3's? I have seen many times Mp3 in 128, 190, up to 320. When ripping my CD's to Mp3, I try to go with the highest bitrate. Am I wasting my time? I am not familiar with FLAC that I hear time and time again. If comparing Mp3 with FLAC, what are some differences? I understand that FLAC does take up much more space than Mp3 (at a low bitrate). I know iPod has lossless compresion, where you can still get pretty close to original and able to play it from an iPod, but what about a high bitrate Mp3, or what would some of you do to copy songs for Mp3 and not loose "alot" of Sq?

I appologize if I'm highjacking this thread and the stupid questions, but with the subject of Hi-Fi brought up and myself just stepping in the lossless digital world, I thought this would be a good place to ask.

[madmax]

I think archiving music in anything less than lossless is silly. A friend and I sat down one evening and figured out we could put his whole CD collection of 300 CD's on 6 DVD's in the lossless format. At todays prices you could put it all on a hard drive, re-copy at a reduced rate (for very low memory players or whatever) and also copy to DVD as a backup for less than $100.
madmax

[mhardy6647]

Wheels are turning, things are happening, you can SEE it happen and be in control of it. Right clicking, or thumbing over a selection just isn't the same.
Not to mention... not owing a physical copy of the content you've paid for just isn't the same, either.

[treitz3]

As long as there are HI-FI fanatics [like me] out there, no, HI-FI is not dead. IMO it will revive, but it may take twenty or thirty years to make a real comback.:eek:

I am not alone.

[steveinaz]

I've had sex with a blow-up doll, Shack is right, it ain't the same as the real thing.

[cfrizz]

As long as there is music, hi fi will not die. Change yes, but die no.

[madmax]

I've had sex with a blow-up doll, Shack is right, it ain't the same as the real thing.

ABX comparison at the next polkfest? :D
madmax

[fatchowmein]

If you own CD's, why not archive them in lossless format? Fry's been advertising 400 and 500GB drives for $99-$120. Buy 2 and mirror them. Do not load the operating system on them and you "should" be fine most of the time.

I currently have a raid 5 setup with four 400GB drives. My music is ripped using EAC but as wave files instead of mp3. With .wav I can always throw in a cd and burn a cd copy instead of having to search through a large box of archived music cd's.

I use MediaMonkey to tag. It's free except when you want to use it to convert to mp3. If you want to do that there's a bunch of sofware out there. I like razerlame. It's free.

If you don't like the size of wave files, you could use flac or ape or have itunes convert the songs to Apple Lossless even though I dislike proprietory formats. I use wave files because it's universal and I can pipe it out to my Xbox 360 and directly to my system using the optical cable. One day, when I stop pouring money into my computers, I may have some change left to buy a good DAC.

Of course, since I'm using wave files and an Xbox 360, everything has to go through Windows Media Player 11 meaning I have to make sure the tags are updating correctly even after I've used MediaMonkey.

Is it all a big pain in the rear (time consuming)? You bet! But it's beautiful when my wife can search cd covers and find what she wants to play.

There's still alot that can be improved when it comes to digital music recording, playback, and storage but things have improved so no, I don't think hi-fi is dead.

Just please let's get the masses off 128bit mp3's and get rid of DRM so I can rip a cd, sacd, dvd-a to a future cell phone/portable music player/blackberry that I can attach to my car audio system.

[fatchowmein]

Sorry, that was a rambling, hodge-podge of drivel I wrote. My point is as convenience becomes easily affordable and attainable to the masses without jumping through hoops and tweaking to the nth degree (like my system), the masses will then go for quality as it becomes affordable.

[hearingimpared]

All this is very interesting and I believe that Hi-Fi is alive and well the problem is what it is morphing into. My son bought me the LP set of Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Stadium Arcadium." This is great music but the music is so compressed even on the LPs that it looses that excitement that I get from great music.

My son was here a couple of weeks ago and I was demonstrating how emotion provoking vinyl can be with numberous recordings. When we got to the RHCPs he, the guy who has an 80Gb iPod in his ears all the time, said that it sounded flat and compressed. That is a huge dilema in my opinion.

[George Grand]

Dead as a doornail. Has been for years. The tiny fraction of music listeners that actually SIT DOWN AND LISTEN (not to be confused with the people who buy cost-no-object-systems and then walk around doing other things while the music is playing), and the even tinier fraction of the worlds population that even cares remotely about something even close to accurate reproduction, do not constitute life. Maybe more like a body that is being kept alive by machines, than actual life. Maybe even something like a vegetative state. Not really life again.

I have enough spares to last me the rest of my life. They'll have to discontinue the use of electricity or something before I have to get worried. As for promoting it (accurate sound and SITTING DOWN AND LISTENING TO IT), why should I give a rats ass if anybody else does it or not? It's my hobby, and if I wanted to share it, there'd be two chairs in my listening room. There isn't.

[schwarcw]

Oh George, look at history. Everything is cyclical. As soon as the IPod generation becomes 40 or 50 with some disposable income the world of Hi Fi will open up their ears to all that they have been missing. It will become a whirlwind of demand for high quality electronics. Shit, this happended to our own generation. What was your first music source? A transistor radio? It was for me! I battery operated Motorola 7 transistor with an ear plug. I loved that thing. I listened to it in bed, I fell in love with the Righteous Brothers sining you lost that Loving Feeling, Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, Ronny and the Daytona's the 4 tops, Supremes, Mavelettes, on and on. It was for ten years that i realized to benefits of sterophonic sound from two speakers, a separate amp and turntable. The world of sound opened up for me. I will go on record and venture to say that our IPod kids will experience a similiar hi fi mutation. Different music, different equipment, different formats, but definately high fi sound, better than we know it now!

[markmarc]

HiFi isn't dead, but it is evolving, much of it for the worse because it is pandering to the lowest sonic standard. This trend can be reversed, starting with the end of DRM. Secondly, the return of sanity to the final mastering in limiting the compression and the volume boosting to distortion levels. Third, the demise of big box shops, which will continue and the march to internet-direct model, and quite possibly the reincarnation of mom and pop shops in large markets.

[treitz3]

As an above average stereo junky, I have never believed that digital files and miniature sound cards could play the quality of a decent stereo system.

You have just graduated in my book.;)

[cfrizz]

You got it Carl! Right now the kids want to take their music with them while they are on the go. Once they start slowing down, have more money & time, they will still want their music with them in the house...Audio shopping time!!!


Oh George, look at history. Everything is cyclical. As soon as the IPod generation becomes 40 or 50 with some disposable income the world of Hi Fi will open up their ears to all that they have been missing. It will become a whirlwind of demand for high quality electronics. Shit, this happended to our own generation. What was your first music source? A transistor radio? It was for me! I battery operated Motorola 7 transistor with an ear plug. I loved that thing. I listened to it in bed, I fell in love with the Righteous Brothers sining you lost that Loving Feeling, Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, Ronny and the Daytona's the 4 tops, Supremes, Mavelettes, on and on. It was for ten years that i realized to benefits of sterophonic sound from two speakers, a separate amp and turntable. The world of sound opened up for me. I will go on record and venture to say that our IPod kids will experience a similiar hi fi mutation. Different music, different equipment, different formats, but definately high fi sound, better than we know it now!

[TroyD]

Well, it really depends on what you consider hifi.

The high end is probably as healthy, if not moreso, than ever.

The fact is, the general population couldn't give a rats ass about what we would consider high fidelity. The kicker is, they never have.

Sure, year ago, everyone had LP's and a turntable, but that wasn't hifi. It was the iPod of today. Go to a thrift or good will and look at the LP's. The vast majority are monuments to the ignorance of how to care for an LP. Then people migrated to the cassette, because it was EASIER and more convenient. Which is also why the CD caught on. The supposed 'perfect sound forever' thing was ancilliary. Even more convenient than casette.

The market that IS shrinking is the midfi stereo crowd. The crowd that would buy a decent stereo receiver or entry level separates. A decent (technics, garrard, dual) turntable and a good pair of speakers (think Polk Monitor 7's, 10's)

THIS is the market I see in decline. HT has taken it's bite and lower cost alternatives (everything to iPods to the lack of decent hifi shops) have seductively lured this crowd away.

However, OUR particular flavor of hifi (upper midfi) from a software stand point is as healthy as ever. The availability of good recordings is probably as good now as ever. There is a glaring lack of new material worthy of good recording but that's another subject.

From a hardware standpoint, we are in pretty good shape too. Quality turntables are probably as cheap as they ever have been. There is decent gear available and it's reasonably priced. There is GREAT (ASL, Rogue etc) tube gear that is VERY reasonable.

Fear not lasses and lads, we are doing ok.

BDT

[zombie boy 2000]

There is a glaring lack of new material worthy of good recording but that's another subject.
BDT

I think this only seems to be the case simply because so many great musicians have been leaning toward a lo-fi aesthetic for quite some time. Sonic Youth comes off as a perfect example. Whether or not this was in response to the overly produced bombast of many artists in the late '70's or simply a lack of funds in the studio is up for debate.... I personally think it's a combination of the two.

The material is out there in spades. But it is hindered by DIY marketing and the general population's inability to know a well-crafted song when they hear one.

But as you said.... another subject for another day.

[TroyD]

Of course the end of the discussion is if you enjoy it, than so much the better.

I also agree that sitting in a chair listening to music is not (edit, sorry) the only way to appreciate music. Hell, I've always got music on pretty much all the time.

However, for me, rather than watching TV (which I do little of) I would rather spend that time parked in front of my stereo. That being the case, while I can deal with mp3 on my iPod jogging, I can't deal with the huge sacrifice in sound quality. I want to extract as much possible information out of the medium and reproduce it as faithfully as I can. To me, that's hifi.

While I would agree that there IS a lot of great material out there, mainstream material continues to get worse and worse and worse. While classical has always been the predominantly the domain of older people, I suppose, many local symphonies are struggling to make ends meet. It's too bad because if younger people were actually exposed (my liberal plug for music education) to decent material, most of them will appreciate and enjoy it.

BDT

[steveinaz]

Of course another angle on this...if you're that preoccupied with the equipment, are really listening to the music?

[TroyD]

I'm not going to lie, I DIG the gear angle. It's probably a 70/30 split for me in favor of the music.

BDT

[engtaz]

steve
That's true but funny.

engtaz

[zombie boy 2000]

Troy...
I suppose I confused your assertion concerning mainstream music with music in general. In regards to mainstream music, I feel you are 100% right. I give it twenty years before Casey Kasem is counting down the top 20 sounds of grunts and hitting two sticks together. Who knows? Maybe the mainstream outlets are right and they're simply attempting to achieve Enlightenment by concentrating on the sound of one drum machine clapping.

Sona...
if it ain't got that swing and so forth. It's hard to make a case for the average audiophile's love of music with forehead creased, Swamiesque concentration, a barely susceptible cringe at a decrease soundstage.
Can ya feel the love there? Yet my wife and her boombox are always in the right place at the right time.

[TroyD]

Sona,

I really enjoy your posts, actually. It's cool to hear the opinions of others who don't exactly have the same audio bent that we do.

Glad you like the signature line, although it wasn't directed at you...glad you enjoyed it!

I'm just saying that the Cheeze-whiz factor has always been present in mainstream music. However, lately it seems to have taken it over and relegated real artists to an almost insignifigant level. My wife is an American Idol freak and all I can think is that Jimi Hendrix and SRV are rolling over in thier graves.

BDT

[zombie boy 2000]

Please, oh please...
Sona don't get me wrong as I should have been more clear -- music snobbery be damned.

Independent labels and their associated bands are alive and well. And nearly everything I listen to is pulled from this well. I find it odd that in a day and age when mass information is so readily available that the underground keeps digging its way to China.

"World of mouth" will always rule the day when it comes to this scene. Irrespective of the British hype machine, the Rolling Stone/Spin tall-tales, etc. etc. There is a nearly endless supply of unbelievable music being spun in the here and now. It's just not gettin' its day in court.

[shack]

"World of mouth" will always rule the day when it comes to this scene. Irrespective of the British hype machine, the Rolling Stone/Spin tall-tales, etc. etc. There is a nearly endless supply of unbelievable music being spun in the here and now. It's just not gettin' its day in court.

IF it is as good as you think...chances are it would be discovered and become mainstream...it always has...always will. Probably what it comes down to what YOU think is unbelievable music might be crap to me and vise versa.

My contention is there is lots of undiscovered tallent but not a lot of undiscovered music. A performer getting dicovered and making it mainstream is more luck than tallent. The are thousands of tallented performers waiting tables, loading trucks, landscaping, flippin' burgers, etc...waiting to get their break...which will never come.

There is a reason there are so many covers of music though... Great songs, great music, great lyrics are hard to come by. EVERY artist is looking for that great piece of music. Producers, agents music company executives are constantly searching for it as well. Not much gets overlooked.

I don't have a great desire to scour the net for the independent underground venues to find something... cause generally...what I have heard, I don't care for.

I have enough music in my current library to last the rest of my life. If I catch a bit of something that sounds good I might pursue it, see if it has been published and maybe buy a copy. For a while I was buying lots of stuff...then realized that I had a lot of albums that I hadn't listened to in a long time. I was more of a collector than a listener. That has changed. Now I buy something new from an artist I already have an interest in or to fill out a catalog. I have a list of stuff I would like to have...if I can find it.

But this is just me ...YMMV.

[steveinaz]

I don't think the recent rash of digital availability really means anything. Those who are into the equipment, will always be; and you'll always have a new crop of audiophiles who get into high-end, regardless of how they were introduced to the "music." Audio is a tinkerers hobby---we're wowed by how accurately our equipment can portray music, that's where the real appeal lies, or we'd all have boomboxes.

Just like younger generations of past, some are into cars, some into computers, some into gaming---everybody has their hobby. Audiophiles are the same. Let's face it, "hi-fi" has always been a niche in the first place, how many local friends do you know with hi-fi? Of our group of friends, Bev & I are the only ones with a component stereo.

Just my 2 cents.

[zombie boy 2000]

Shack...
I think you make some very valid points. Most notably in making the distinction between music and artist/performer. Moreover, I hope I haven't conveyed an alliance between the notions of "independent" and "garage rock".
What I was trying to define were artists who traditionally make music for the sake of making music -- irrespective of financial gain (which is more often than not, nowhere in sight).

That is not to say that a popular artist does not pursue this ideal. It is just a bit easier to rise to the top (and consequently make more money) when a particular model is followed. IMO this model is a simplified one. A catch, hook, and a chorus. And while I agree to an extent that this may very well be the hardest song to write in the end, there are many bands who choose to go the other direction and attempt to create pieces of art -- often complex, sonic tapestries that require almost as much of the listener as of the artist themselves.

In much the same way that many of us think that the average listener is unwilling to critically listen to their rig, I think the average listener is just as unwilling to critically listen to the work of art itself.

Again, please don't think that just because I speak of "lo-fi" that I'm necessarily referring to fuzzy, out of tune guitars, and off-key screeching. I'm speaking of music that doesn't really have the money to back it up in the recording studio, and so is more often than not, low fidelity. Of course, this in no way detracts from the artistic ambition of the artist.

[shack]

What I was trying to define were artists who traditionally make music for the sake of making music -- irrespective of financial gain (which is more often than not, nowhere in sight).

These artists are unemployed musicians who more that likely would "sell out" at the drop of a hat to be a STAR.

That is until they become a multimillionaire and the tell the music label that they have to be loyal to the music and follow their heart...which is code for "I have enough money and drugs right now and I want to sit on my ass and party instead of going to the studio to record".

[zombie boy 2000]

Well if that's the truth, than why do so many bands start out making music so clearly inaccessible to the masses? Why not just commit the band to a "verse, chorus, verse, chorus, guitar solo, chorus x2" format from the get-go?

However, I do agree that a great many bands that consider themselves outside of the industry would gladly sell out for stardom, money, and more importantly... women:D

[bknauss]

Very well put, Carl. Here are my thoughts to go along with that:

We, America as a whole, enjoy convenience first and quality second. We want our phones smaller and more portable, our cars packed with more gagdets for less money, and our music mediums to become smaller and smaller. Let's look back a couple years at the boom of Napster. If you had MP3s encoded at 128kbps, the files weren't too big, so you could either transfer a ton of songs if you were on a high speed line or get a couple songs on dialup. People also had (trying to remember my freshman year of college) maybe 50GB on their computer and a crappy set of computer speakers. You weren't overly worried about sound quality and needed a small sized file so you had room for a lot of songs along with your other programs and files. The iPod comes out in small sizes (5/10 GB) during the fall of the online file sharing. Along with it comes iTunes. Hey! Great! Even more convenience! I get the music with a click of a button and can take it everywhere. Oh wait, I'm tied down by a small hard drive... oops! Now let's fast forward to now. Most people who want high speed internet have it. 50GB+ MP3 players are readily available and can decode lossless formats. And hard drives for computers are cheap for a ton of memory, so you've got a central databse if you have too many songs. Personally, I've got my entire CD library ripped in Apple lossless onto an external 500GB hard drive. Its great. I love it. And I've only used about 100GB of the hard drive. Plenty of space for videos or more music when I buy it.

Now what do we have to look forward to? You have the option, in some areas, to get super duper high speed internet. Hard drives are becoming smaller yet have higher capacity. Other A/V mediums are able to store more information into the same area. New audio formats are coming out allowing more bandwidth for info. All of these things point toward bigger and better things for audio in the future. Look at the boom TVs had over the past handful of years. Everyone and their mother is buying an HDTV with much higher picture quality. Now if those dang engineers at the studios weren't told to talk up the gains all the way and compress the hell out of the sound..................





Oh George, look at history. Everything is cyclical. As soon as the IPod generation becomes 40 or 50 with some disposable income the world of Hi Fi will open up their ears to all that they have been missing. It will become a whirlwind of demand for high quality electronics. Shit, this happended to our own generation. What was your first music source? A transistor radio? It was for me! I battery operated Motorola 7 transistor with an ear plug. I loved that thing. I listened to it in bed, I fell in love with the Righteous Brothers sining you lost that Loving Feeling, Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, Ronny and the Daytona's the 4 tops, Supremes, Mavelettes, on and on. It was for ten years that i realized to benefits of sterophonic sound from two speakers, a separate amp and turntable. The world of sound opened up for me. I will go on record and venture to say that our IPod kids will experience a similiar hi fi mutation. Different music, different equipment, different formats, but definately high fi sound, better than we know it now!

[shack]

Well if that's the truth, than why do so many bands start out making music so clearly inaccessible to the masses?

It's not that they want to be inaccessible to the masses....it's because they have no avenue to to masses. The masses don't know....don't want them. The net, my space, facebook, etc...may be their only way to get discovered. Either that or do it the old fashion way playing in places that pay nothing, before small crowds night after night. Or maybe like the commerical where the Krystal lets a band play in front of the resaurant when their gig gets cancelled.

[zombie boy 2000]

It's not that they want to be inaccessible to the masses....it's because they have no avenue to to masses.

Excellent point.

[hearingimpared]

Anybody read April's Stereophile? The very last page the Aural Robert column by Robert Baird is called, "Ry's Apple Ayes." It is about Ry Cooder's latest offering, "My Name is Buddy." Very very interesting read. In a nutshell he was tired of all the BS involved with creating the master.
"As soon as you do that, you encounter such horrible things as D-to-A converters. I hate these things. Other testures are introduced, and you diaphanous little soundscape is disrutped and you can't get it back."

He then goes on to describe what caused him to start using iTunes for his mastering because, "It's soft. It feels like a 33 record and LP."

See it really is the old timers who find ways to get this technology to sound right and can pass on to the newer generation of artists the necessary ways so music can please the ear. I think Sona made mention of something along these lines except the listeners were who were being talked about.

PS: this article is very interesting. Stereophile April 2007 Page 210, I tried to locate it on the Stereophile website but couldn't, perhaps someone more search savy can find it.

[WilliamM2]

So when he uses iTunes there are no A/D or D/A converters needed?

[NeilGabriel]

Thanks for all the interesting and often over my head comments on this post. As to steveinaz, I'll send you my Sony boombox for all that equipment listed under your name (smile)<---I refuse to do smiley faces). I wondered if the forum could use a section on digital music. I have tried to teach myself about lossless formats and have downloaded it and done conversions to mp3. The concept of burning to DVDs is new to me and the best way to wirelessly send my digitized music to the home audio center is still a mystery filled with tradeoffs. I do remember the days of getting the new vinyl home and tearing the plastic cover off which had usually shrunk and warped the record...of putting a penny on the arm of the turntable to stop it from skipping...yup, that was me.

[hearingimpared]

I do remember the days of getting the new vinyl home and tearing the plastic cover off which had usually shrunk and warped the record...of putting a penny on the arm of the turntable to stop it from skipping...yup, that was me.

Penny my butt I had to use a nickel!!!!:D :p I think in this day and age and nickel makes a good anti-skating mechanism.:D