[lbo-talk] Re: Say BYE BYE to VINYL!

[Joseph Wanzala]

I agree with you essentially, but doesn't your point really apply only to 
purely acoustic music played live with no amplification? Otherwise, isn't 
live music once amplified in an arena or auditorium dependent on the same 
technical vagaries as reproduction? I've been to many live performances that 
sounded awful (frustratingly so because this had nothing to do with the 
performance itself which was usually stellar) and many indeed that were 
sublime, but all this was a function of the acoustics, the sound engineers, 
the equipment and so on and so forth. Like many others on this thread 
apparently I am something of an audiofile, (albeit a sometimes gullible one) 
and I am constantly tinkering with different combinations of analog/digital 
set ups, ultimately I think the choices we make are subjective but I think 
the debates about what constitutes 'good sound' are facsinating, even 
ruinous when you consider how much some of the better equipment can cost.

Joe W.


>From: Jon Johanning <zenner41 at mac.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: Say BYE BYE to VINYL!
>Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 09:28:56 -0500
>
>My view of the digital/analog quarrel in music reproduction is that one has 
>to start by admitting that all reproductions are greatly inferior to the 
>actual experience of music as human beings experienced it for almost all of 
>our history -- a direct meeting between performer and listener. The best 
>experience of music, I think, is that of the performer (which is why even 
>people who do not believe they have musical talent love to sing in the 
>shower or whistle), followed by that of the (live) listener.
>
>Once you get into reproduction, your experience is determined by so many 
>factors -- all of the technical factors the techies love to discuss, the 
>kind of playback equipment you have, the room you are listening in or the 
>headphones you are using, etc. -- that it is very difficult to make any 
>generalizations. Also, it eventually comes down to personal aesthetic 
>preferences. Granted that vinyl might have a "warmer" sound, or whatever, 
>in general, some might prefer that sound and others might not. So I don't 
>think there is really any point in trying to lay down general laws. All 
>methods of reproduction are distortions and diminishments; we simply choose 
>the ones we prefer.
>
>I would say that it is too bad, in a way, that sound reproduction was ever 
>invented, because in the nineteenth century, for example, many more people 
>learned to play instruments and sing and thus had the pleasure of making 
>music themselves. Today, a lot of people who might have discovered their 
>musical abilities if they had lived then just plug iPod buds in their ears 
>and accept what they hear as music.
>
>(Of course, there is the advantage that one can hear much more music in a 
>lifetime than before reproduction and broadcasting. I think of folks 
>laboriously traveling from one town to another to hear a relative handful 
>of works. But they did pretty darn well, even so! Perhaps increasing 
>quantity is not necessarily an advantage.)
>
>Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
>__________________________
>When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit,
>'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet;
>Nor ever ever shall, until that I die,
>For the longer I live the more fool am I.
>-- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk