Listening to music

[popeyespappy]

Yeah, I don't think my ears would notice the difference.

What would make a difference, though, given that I've moved my computer so that it's no longer directly in front of my A/V speakers, is to buy a pair of switchable studio monitors for the computer.  I'm also looking at upgrading my graphics card, but while I wait for prices to come down or be on-sale at the end of the year, the speakers might be a good idea.  I'm just starting to look, but my initial gander suggests something from Klipsch or Edifier in the $300 range.  I don't know much about Edifier, but apparently they're a Chinese firm that is producing some real good shit.

Of course, first I have to commit to my new seating location, which will depend upon whether I can figure out how to clamp my Racing Wheel to my old desk, and other issues which aren't fully settled.

In that price range you should look at a pair of JBL Professional 306P MKII monitors. They only take balanced inputs so you would probably need to a unbalanced to balanced cable somewhere between your source and the monitors, but that won't be an issue.

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=4...nkQAvD_BwE

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I'm going to say some things that will be unpopular and get lots of hate, but here goes.  The only "real" music is live music, hard stop.  If you aren't listening to live music, you are not hearing anywhere near the total sound quality.  That said, I've experienced music in a range of systems including vinyl, reel to reel, 8 track, cassettes, CD's, mp3's, OGG.  Of those, reel to reel is superior to all the others.  Digital recordings on CD are indistinguishable from vinyl unless the producer made some mistakes in production, and they have the advantage of having no ticks and scratches, and you don't have to clean them if you want to keep them from scratching.  Ripping from CD's to mp3's does lose some sound quality, but here's where for me the issue becomes subjective.  I rarely sit and focus only on the music.  I listen to music as a background while I'm engaging in other activities, so if the sound quality is slightly inferior, it makes no difference.  The only time I'm truly focused on the music is during a live performance.

Now, where music has been getting far worse in recent years (like the last 20) is not in the medium or equipment at all, but rather in the mixing/production.  Producers have been destroying music by engaging in compression of the dynamic range, or reducing the difference between different tracks in the music.  So soft sounds like a high hat are just as loud as a guitar solo, which robs music of subtle moods and textures.  I don't buy much new music nowadays, but when I hear current songs, they sound offensive to me, and not just because the songs suck.  It's like everything on the song is turned up to 11.  I generally only listen to pretty old music and not remasters because they often do this on remasters, too.  One note, this may not be as much a problem with jazz and classical music, as I rarely listen to those genres recorded.  But anything from pop to rock to country, all of those are guilty as hell.  Not really sure why they do this.

1. I disagree with the real music statement. The last time I went to live show the acoustics were shit, and the music sounded terrible compared to what I am used to listening to at home. I admit things might have been different if the Stones had been playing Carnegie Hall instead of Soldier Field and Mick and the rest of the band were 26 instead of 76, but they weren't. The show in question received pretty good reviews, BTW.

2. My office at work right now.



Reel to reel tape machines work well. The one above is a 45ish year old Pioneer RT-909. We paid about $1200 for it 5 years ago then another $1000 having it rebuilt with fresh caps and transistors and properly biased. It isn't a 16-track 2" Studer A80, but most people don't listen to studio grade equipment at home. It sounds good, but I doubt you or anyone else could tell the difference between the copy of Dark Side of the Moon I recorded from vinyl on this machine and and the 24 bit 192 kHz FLAC file I ripped from the same album in a blind test.