hi-fidelity...aka: as long as we're re reminiscing

[Brian of the Clan Plush]

In another thread, there was a discussion about the dying form of "albums" (as opposed to mp3 singles). Someone talked about sitting and listening to an album for hours while carefully studying the album artwork. It resonated with another related topic I've been thinking about - the dying (dead) concept of "hi-fidelity". I remember when music wasn't portable and involved sitting in front of the giant console stereo with a pair of 20 pound fisher audiophile headphones, and hearing every minute detail of the song - whispers and breaths and obscure percussion instruments and artificially added ambient sounds. It seems to me that alot of the detail that goes into (many) songs is completely lost on the general listener because of the medium - car stereos, comsumer quality home stereos, even iPods don't convey the hi-fidelity of the past - either because the earbuds don't have the capacity or, more importantly, the listener isn't in a conducive environment. As a kid, I actually had a cool little cube that my parents built in my room where I could go inside and put on the headphones and drift away. Anyway, it just seems that alot of the rich detail in many songs simply goes unnoticed.

[tornandfrayed]

I agree 100%! I think that most of our society "hears" music rather then "listens" to music. The MP3 could be the death of the Audiophile industry. Those thimngs are ragged. IPOD's and the like are killing the Hi Fidelity industry.

I sit a lot and listen to CD's ( Vinyl ) whenever I get a chance, I have pretty good speakers and a pretty good amp setup and the sound is enought to really let you drift away. Sometimes for hours...

[Banned]

I used to have a Marantz tube power reciever and stacked Advent speakers. In the 70's that was considered pretty good. The best were the Bose 901 speakers, Marantz power amp with a B.& O. direct drive turntable.

Listening to early Pink Floyd, ELP, King Crimson or Yes albums with these set ups was an artform.

We were audiophile snobs. ha ha

[bassist_25]

I think that most of our society "hears" music rather then "listens" to music.

Good point.

When I listen to music, I'm what I would call "actively" listening to music. I make it a point listen to what's going on in the music. That's partly because I'm a musician, but also partly because I'm a music lover (obviously). I don't use music as background noise. If I'm working on the computer, I'm not listening to music. If I'm doing homework, I'm not listening to music. When I listen to music, that's usually the only thing I'm doing. Though I do listen to music in my car. That's one of the few exceptions where I'll multi-task while listening to music.

I'm a huge fan of good production, and I like to hear all of the little details that the band/producer puts in. I can't pick out all of that if I'm too busy doing something else.

But this is a great thread, all around.

[Bag]

Anyone else get pissed when playing tunes while driving and the other person(s) talk the whole friggin time!

I agree with Bassist_25 for the most part. When I have tunes on, I'm LISTENING to them.

[rickw]

I really liked the comment about studying the album art. The artwork was usually extremely well done and probably a competitive artform back in the day. This thread seems to bring that whole analogue vs digital thing to the front again. Is there anyone out there with both an audiophile quality analogue stereo system including vinyl and an Ipod or some such thing? I'd be curious to hear what the sound differences would be on something like "Dark Side of the Moon".

[tornandfrayed]

Oooooops!

SACD and DVD Audio, you gotta try them out!

[tornandfrayed]

I love "Dark Side" and I have a pretty decent system to listen on. One of the things that I have been going back and forth on is the quality of SACD and DVD -Audio. These are both "high Quality" (96 khz) recording formats and neither supports the other. Well I have listened to both and I am really at a draw. I have the "Dark Side of the Moon" SACD disk and it rocks, but I also have some DVD Audio disks that are very good.. The one thing about DVD Audio that is cool is the graphic content that is included. It makes it fun to look through.

As far as MP3 to Analog Album's, the album wins. The CD wins. Anything wins when it comes to listening to MP3's. When you get them on a good system they really do show their weakness's.

I rip alot of my music to PC and then play it through my Xbox on my stereo in my living room and some are much woprse then others. I try to rip stuff at 192 k and it seems to be more consistent.

I have been listening to an SACD copy of Dave Brubeck's "Time Out" and it just blows me away. Between that and the new In Flames......

Also Joe amazingly enough "Bose 901's" are still pretty good speakers at this very moment. My Uncle worked with Dr Omar Bose in bringing Bose to America in the early 60's so I ahve always had Bose speakers. I still love them!

[Banned]

Anyone else get pissed when playing tunes while driving and the other person(s) talk the whole friggin time!

Absolutely, or when you're driving with someone who keeps the volume so low it's just background noise. There's a sweet spot with the volume where you can hear all the details.

Not to mention the way car stereos are voiced these days. I drive sort of a tuner car, and the factory system is obviously pimped for teens who drive tuner cars - it's all bass. I can't for the life of me dial enough bass out of it. It's the musical equivalent of a busload of fat chicks stampeding an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet.

Anyone still have a quadrophonic stereo tucked away in their basement? Rumor has it that hearing Dark Side of the Moon in quad is a religious experience, but I haven't had the pleasure of trying it.

[Ronnyd]

How about the first boston record!
Blue Oyster Cult! Oh I could think of hundreds of albums that blew me away -start to finish.
Fleetwood -Mac Rumours.Wow !
I' a metal head ,But what a great textured album.

[Jim Price]

Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon was the first album I really listened to when I was a kid, going over it again and again to pick up on all the little stuff; the voices during "Us and Them," all the stuff going on during "On The Run." A great headphone album.

I agree, as the concept of the total album seems to be a dying art form, so is "the headphone album." A few bands still create them from time to time (Tool and Porcupine Tree are recent examples that come to mind), but they're becoming fewer and farther between.

And on the local level of course, The Grimm's Resurruption had a lot of interesting things happening between the speakers.

[drums=life]

The good old days You guys need to quit, you are making me feel old, lol

Kiss - Destroyer on LP was the first one the took me "away" and the art was fuckin awsome. God of Thunder and rock and roll. that song still gives me the chills, all the cool background sounds of kids playing, fuckin awsome.

I cant say anything like that about the way stuff comes out today, dont get me wrong , still is awsome stuff. Just sitting here writing this i cant think of a cd exept "operation mindcrime" that has that appeal to it. The front to back concept

[bassist_25]

I think a modern band that has all of those little goodies that made AOR great is Spock's Beard. If you're into Yes-style prog rock, I highly recommend picking up a Spock's Beard album.

[songsmith]

One of these days, I'm going to make an acoustic "headphone album," recorded, mixed, and mastered completely on headphones, and meant to listened to on headphones. I want to pay special attention to the complex texture of a high-end acoustic guitar, and to record in interesting-sounding rooms, so you can hear the recording environment. No outboard reverbs, compressors (at least 'til mastering) and very little EQ... all mic placement and a set of good cans. Like they did it at Sun Records, or RCA, except with cleaner technology and a 70's artsy approach.
I probably miss album art more than actual vinyl, altough there was something organic about the background needle-noise, and putting the needle in the groove... very comforting... my parents and grandparents did the same thing.
I remember sitting with the Foghat Live record art, studying each live pic closely and daydreaming rockstar daydreams... it made it really memorable when we actually opened for Foghat a number of years later. And Kiss always had badass stuff tweener boys liked... those albums are pure commercial art. ELO had cool covers, too.
I miss it.----------->JMS

[redawg]

I ripped all of my Tool cd's at 192K a couple of years ago because that's all Windows Media Player will let you rip at. Windows Media Player sux ass. It will only let you burn cd's at 128K. After I got Winamp Pro, I reripped all my Tool, my other cd's and my Kiss box set at 320K. Winamp Pro will burn at high quality too. Even at 320K, the songs are still compressed.

Store bought cd's usually read 1440K or higher when played in Winamp. I wonder how big the files would be if you ripped them at that figure, maybe a hundred megs a song

I don't want to even listen to a song if it's at 128K. 128K songs are pure shit. I've seen alot of legal pay to download sites that will give you songs at 128K There is not one song in my lap top or any of my external hard drives below 192K unless it's a rare live or demo song of some kind. Damn, I hate 128K music

[tornandfrayed]

For those of you into it (redawg) there are a number of "lossless compression" schemes and programs being used and tested. You might want to check them out.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data_compression

The FLAC program is awesome and you can get almost anything at A.B.sounds.lossless . For those of you who really burn and listen to alot of music it might be a good alternative.

[Staceman]

Re: quadraphonic albums, 8-tracks...

I've never had the pleasure of hearing these, but I've read that there are things in the mix on them that you won't hear elsewhere.

For instance, on the 25th anniversary release of Deep Purple's Machine Head, they restored some of the things that were only previously available on the quad versions.

The only album in my collection that I know of that is quadraphonic, is BTO's "Not Fragile", but like I said, I never heard it on a quad system, I just remember seeing it mentioned on the back cover.

[Gallowglass]

Even though other albums had made a serious impact on me, the first two that really stand out to me as "headphone" albums are Hendrix's "Electric Lady Land" and Santana's "Caravanserai". There was like a 6 month period when I would come home from working 3rd shift, put one of those albums on w/ headphones, lie back and float away. The panning of all those textural nuances on "Electric Lady" is simply amazing. I was lucky enough to find a quad copy of "Caravanserai" at Arboria in great shape, and had older cousins that donated their old quad system to me when they moved away from home (unfortunately it has since become dysfunctional). It was religious. I also remember really enjoyng the song "Orion" from "Master of Puppets" as a great headphone experience.

[bassist_25]

Word on the Hendrix album. Eddie Kramer is a highly underrated recording engineer.

Let's not also forget a lot of the recordings by the Doors. LA Woman had some cool hidden production gems like the intentional lo-fi quality of Cars Hiss by my Window and the rain storm that is occurs during the entire lenght of Riders on the Storm (complete with thunder clasps at just the right times). I think they did a good job with transferring the Doors albums to CD, because even though they still aren't vinyl, my Doors cds still have that very warm and organic quality to them.

[Banned]

The quad experience makes me remember two concerts in quad, Pink Floyd in 1973 and ELP in 1975. Both had huge speakers set up in quad, for the Floyd show in the Philly Spectrum, they were suspended from the ceiling. The soundwould just go all around you. You almost would fall over, the circling effect was so powerful ( and this was the Dark Side of the Moon tour).

For the ELP concert, which was outside in Rich stadium in Buffalo, NY, it was not as encompassing as it was inside, but still wonderful, and it was ELP, with the James Gang opening.

I never had a quad system but many of my friends/ roomates had them and it was always fun to work the joystick, balancing the perfect sound for the room you were in. It seemed to work even if the album was not recorded in quad. Quadraphenia in quad was the shit.

[redawg]

Cool programs torn The thought of ripping all of my Tool cd's at that quality gives me a woody Great thread

[bsaller]

I used to have a Marantz tube power reciever and stacked Advent speakers. In the 70's that was considered pretty good. The best were the Bose 901 speakers, Marantz power amp with a B.& O. direct drive turntable.

Listening to early Pink Floyd, ELP, King Crimson or Yes albums with these set ups was an artform.

We were audiophile snobs. ha ha

Not to forget Uriah Heep (July Morning) and Grateful Dead (Morning Dew and Viola Lee Blues)! With a little help from Timothy Leary.

[tornandfrayed]

For those of you missing quad the SACD 5.1 medium is very much available today. Dark side is the showpiece but there are a lot more available. Has anyone else done anythign with SACD, DVD Audio or DTS recordings?

DTS recordings have great depth and there is a good library available.

[HurricaneBob]

The guy i bought my first drumset from had a quad setup, blacklights, velvet posters all around and big sacks of maryjane.

We would party and listen to Kraftwërk, Autobahn and Floyd.

Crazy stuff!

[SpellboundByMetal]

gotta love big sacks of cheeba. well, atleast i do.
MP3 is fine for me, BTW.