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Much younger, I used to listen to music without ever thinking about sound quality. It simply didn’t dawn on me that a better sound quality could translate into more elevated musical experiences. My younger self was purely a music lover and unaware of the importance of sound quality. As they say, you don’t know what…
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One of the leading music business stories of the 21st century is the continued discovery, sonic restoration, and release of previously unknown recordings—either from the studio or the stage. As the constant advance in digital technology has reclaimed live tapes once thought to be sonically inferior, and refreshed forgotten or leftover studio recordings, record labels,…
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Barely in my teens, I listened to the very first albums I ever owned on a wide, floor-model stereo console placed prominently in the living room of my home on Chicago’s South Side. My oldest sister gave it to my mother as a birthday gift in September, 1971. It cost five hundred bucks and was…
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It all started with… the Beat. That rhythm inside us that keeps us alive, that reminds us… We Are Alive! It races when we’re excited to meet someone new. Its pounding pulse is primal.
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The shifting of the Earth’s tectonic plates often causes disturbances or, in worse case scenarios, natural disasters like tsunamis or volcanic eruptions. In my first column, I mentioned that the digital world is changing rapidly, well, until now I didn’t know to what extent. Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon recently announced their commitment to gradually…
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As music lovers, we strive for the best possible sound quality. They say all roads lead to Rome, but we still need to contend with our needs, our path, our budget, and the time available to us to get there. Across my next columns, like a travel guide, I will try to recommend memorable places for…
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With our trip canceled due to the pandemic, what to do at home with the money we saved? Build a basement studio, of course! We have two rooms that were storage spaces, recently emptied, because we had time to clean them! We also made a playroom for the little one. He got the big room,…
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The High-Fidelity Scene Recording technology revolutionized how music is produced, played, and experienced. From the perspective of experiencing it, to the old model of attending a live concert was added the option of listening to a recorded performance. In this new model, the listener’s role and situation were profoundly transformed; with recordings, listening has been…
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Listening to music is akin to a religious ceremony. For one, it invokes the spirits of the past, and every recording ever made is about the past. Secondly, it involves rituals. This is especially true when it comes to listening to music on my big rig downstairs. When I say big, I don’t mean too…
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More than 30 years ago, the tabling of the Brundtland report introduced the concept of sustainable development, of which there are three pillars: economic, social, and environmental. This begat fair trade, at the time considered avant-garde, which instituted a set of policies that spanned the world and forever altered the standards we use to buy…
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The human voice is an amazing thing. I can think of no other instrument that moves our emotions and soul as powerfully. The examples are endless: Freddie Mercury, Beyoncé, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby McFerrin, Luciano Pavarotti, Ariana Grande… Just take your pick. And it’s not just singers’ voices that we respond strongly to. How about the…
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We all know about music’s power to change a life, but can it literally save one, to make the difference between life and death? According to a Nashville FOX 17 report, that’s exactly what Johnny Cash’s grandson, Thomas Gabriel, says music was for him — a determining factor in keeping him alive. After spending eight…
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Just as listening to bad music is no fun, it’s no fun listening to bad audio, so knowing what to listen for when auditioning a component is important. “Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?” is a series dedicated to recognizing aspects of good and bad sound reproduction. Once you’ve settled on what features you want your…
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A Terminator drunk on cheap motor oil once told me that he’d take bad audio over good any day of the week. Not surprising, I guess, coming from a killing machine that prefers the sound of terrified screams to music. I didn’t tell him, but try as I might to find common ground with the…