Most people do not hear what they think they hear when they listen to a record. Subsequent to my post on what I’m hearing, I’ve been reading Jay Hodgson’s book Understanding Records: A Field Guide to Recording Practice (2019) in which the first sentence is that statement. He wrote it to clarify what it is […]
I’ve shifted away from reading audiophile accounts of high-fidelity audio gear performance, realising that music recordings much more determine sound quality and music listening experience. Well-performing devices – low distortion, low noise, balanced frequency response, etc. – get out of the way, rendering fidelity is high, and it’s the recording that matters. I’ve been looking […]
… music as a discrete entity to be bought, sold, and possessed, has been displaced by something more fluid, seemingly more in line with music’s status as a paradigmatically temporal art form. Streaming Music, Streaming Capital – Eric Drott, 2024 Ownership of a distribution disc has been superceded by licensed access to a remote database […]
Why would I set up a home hi-fi system to add high levels of distortion to rendered music recordings? So the pretentious intentional or mindless mimicking vocal fry that is so common among those who believe that their every action has to be a performance to an audience is, for me, an unnecessary irritation. I […]
With the continued arrival of state-of-the-art performance at very attractive prices, I feel like I’ve stepped out of the hi-fi audio land of make-believe into reasonable territory, where “trust me, I’m a hi-fi seller” doesn’t apply. Since the marketers took over, many product offerings are firmly fairy tale stories. Now, Aiyima, Fosi, SMSL, Topping, WiiM, and […]
The latest musing from Archimago about snake oil hi-fi presentations focused my thinking, and I realised that such talk resembles closely the ‘talent’ TV show situation in which people perform for an audience. In this case, poetic (or otherwise) talk about expensive ‘bling’ products. http://archimago.blogspot.com/2024/04/as-we-hear-it-audiophile-cable-truths.html I read and watch Herb Reichert’s work, and usually find […]
“So”, when all things ordinary and typical, mundane and mediocre even, and as expected day-to-day, are described as, “like”, amazing, fantastic, awesome, unbelievable, genius, incredible, and absolutely stunning, where do we go linguistically to appropriately express our extreme response to them when they truly are of fantasy, beyond belief, or the work of genius? When said […]
The review of the WiiM Pro Plus streamer on the T3 consumer lifestyle products site is quite something. This part describes sound quality, apparently ….. … the Pro Plus serves up music with good integration and a proper sensation of ‘performance’. Above there, there’s authentic bite and substance to the top of the frequency range, […]
A couple of comments in a recent piece from John Darko led me to realise that I’ve put my room ahead of my system. Or, rather, I haven’t! … no room is perfect and all untreated rooms have reverberation issues above 100 – 200Hz (the Schröder Frequency) and bass modes below it. Many acoustically treated […]
A reviewer of Mark Knopfler’s new album One Deep River wrote that he’s again delivered well on his formula. As I listen, I agree that it’s another album of excellent song recordings. But I don’t hear evidence of any strategic prescription. Authentic musickers don’t create to a pre-determined pattern. They don’t need to, as their […]
I saw this insider viewpoint from musician Ian McNabb: Let’s kill this myth. As a practitioner I have been into the minutiae of this well-debated subject a hundred times. I have lived with a song from its inception to its release into the world. The original mix, either on tape or digital, gets mastered before […]
By phenomenal I mean perceptual experience. The very essence of listening to music. We get hooked on gathering stuff and things. More than tools, they become extensions of our selves, used to signal to ourselves, and others, who we want to be and where we want to belong. We attach objects to our selves. Materialism […]
Michael Lavorgna has an engaging way of expressing thought-provoking critique, and here’s his list of ….. “Signs You Own A Bad HiFi“ Your hifi makes you want to… …listen to “Jazz at the Pawnshop”.…measure it.…clean out the garage.…upgrade.…spend time on forums arguing about hifi. Best when your system makes listening to great music the number […]
Yesterday I sold about two-thirds of my LP record collection. Today, as I listen to some newly found albums, I’m reflecting on my shift in focus from disc-based recordings to on-demand streaming. No matter how far I ranged across New Zealand, I would not have found any of these albums. Instead, I’ve been reading some […]
Music & Hi-fi Appreciations 