If you want to get lost in an internet rabbit hole of technology v. perception v. socioeconomic class, try finding the "definitive" recording of a given artist or a given album. So it was when I had a spare moment's thought to somehow identify and acquire the best edition of "Heroes" by David Bowie. (To get an idea of how detailed this analysis can be, go here and prepare to be amazed.)
First, as a preamble, it's important to remember that in the days of sheet music, a live performance was considered the definitive article. When Thomas Edison was promoting his wax cylinder recording technology a century ago, he tried to convince his audience that the recording was just as valid and engaging as the live performance, and to a great extent, he succeeded. Somewhere along the winding roads of history -- most likely when "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys and "Tomorrow Never Knows" by the Beatles captured the public imagination -- the recorded version of a song, with energy and verve captured in a studio for historical posterity and artistic consideration, settled into the pole position of representation. But, as always, I digress.
A few months back, a box set of Bowie's mid-to-late '70s output -- including "Heroes," Bowie's second album from 1977 -- was released to quite a bit of carping and bitching. Of course, some of this kvetching was justified, especially when listening to the title track of "Heroes" and hearing an output reduction about three minutes in that was clearly present and obviously different from the versions and versions that had come before. But a good chunk of the complaining stemmed from unrealistic expectations that unsurprisingly hadn't been met by this (or any) release.
First, there are perceptual hurdles in the listener to overcome. How is an album recorded four decades ago, on fragile tapes under the aggressive assaults of time and repeated usage, supposed to be represented in 2017? Should it be a flat transfer of the original content, with no nod to technological advances? Should it reflect the current trends of general waveform compression and lower frequency boosting? And can the majority of humans even consciously tell the difference, unless your audio receptors have been rated by psychophysics researchers as falling in the 1% of the 1%?
Should it simply be, to paraphrase the late film critic Roger Ebert, a collection of three-minute empathy machines, no matter the delivery system or circumstances of consumption?
When I am surrounded by quiet, I hear the telltale whooshing sounds of tinnitus, the permanent destruction of audio receptors elicited by decades of concert going and DJ'ing with inferior ear protection. And given my financial status, I don't have the best quality equipment for audio reproduction, although my primary system is pretty damn sweet. So given those biological and financial limitations, I tend to downshift to affect regulation instead. In other words, I use music to adjust my moment-to-moment emotional state, and live with the realities of my environment, both internal and external.
And when it comes down to it, does it make you feel something that can temporarily allow you to not feel all the other things? Can you try to sing along but get so choked up in the process that your throat and nose go all sideways? Instead of Dynamic Range values and zero-vibration turntables, should the focus instead be on the subjective, and knowing that even within your life, that subjective experience will change, that being heroes just for one day will be different from one day to the next?
I'll let you know when those thousand-dollar headphones arrive.
First, as a preamble, it's important to remember that in the days of sheet music, a live performance was considered the definitive article. When Thomas Edison was promoting his wax cylinder recording technology a century ago, he tried to convince his audience that the recording was just as valid and engaging as the live performance, and to a great extent, he succeeded. Somewhere along the winding roads of history -- most likely when "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys and "Tomorrow Never Knows" by the Beatles captured the public imagination -- the recorded version of a song, with energy and verve captured in a studio for historical posterity and artistic consideration, settled into the pole position of representation. But, as always, I digress.
A few months back, a box set of Bowie's mid-to-late '70s output -- including "Heroes," Bowie's second album from 1977 -- was released to quite a bit of carping and bitching. Of course, some of this kvetching was justified, especially when listening to the title track of "Heroes" and hearing an output reduction about three minutes in that was clearly present and obviously different from the versions and versions that had come before. But a good chunk of the complaining stemmed from unrealistic expectations that unsurprisingly hadn't been met by this (or any) release.
First, there are perceptual hurdles in the listener to overcome. How is an album recorded four decades ago, on fragile tapes under the aggressive assaults of time and repeated usage, supposed to be represented in 2017? Should it be a flat transfer of the original content, with no nod to technological advances? Should it reflect the current trends of general waveform compression and lower frequency boosting? And can the majority of humans even consciously tell the difference, unless your audio receptors have been rated by psychophysics researchers as falling in the 1% of the 1%?
Should it simply be, to paraphrase the late film critic Roger Ebert, a collection of three-minute empathy machines, no matter the delivery system or circumstances of consumption?
When I am surrounded by quiet, I hear the telltale whooshing sounds of tinnitus, the permanent destruction of audio receptors elicited by decades of concert going and DJ'ing with inferior ear protection. And given my financial status, I don't have the best quality equipment for audio reproduction, although my primary system is pretty damn sweet. So given those biological and financial limitations, I tend to downshift to affect regulation instead. In other words, I use music to adjust my moment-to-moment emotional state, and live with the realities of my environment, both internal and external.
And when it comes down to it, does it make you feel something that can temporarily allow you to not feel all the other things? Can you try to sing along but get so choked up in the process that your throat and nose go all sideways? Instead of Dynamic Range values and zero-vibration turntables, should the focus instead be on the subjective, and knowing that even within your life, that subjective experience will change, that being heroes just for one day will be different from one day to the next?
I'll let you know when those thousand-dollar headphones arrive.
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