There’s an enthusiasm crisis. As in there is none. No excitement, no defense, to a great degree an ostracization. How are you supposed to win hearts and minds this way? YOU CAN’T!

From before he took office, the right has defined Biden as old, doddering and senile. And the left wing defense? NONEXISTENT! To the point where Biden is now discounted, seen as a placeholder who has no effect.

Now everybody has weighed in on Trump’s tweetmania. They thought it was about Trump, but in truth it’s about the changing world we live in. The Democrats are still living in the twentieth century, whereas the Republicans are living in the twenty first, at least when it comes to communications, getting the word out. All the headlines are about Fox News, but that’s a blip on the radar compared to the online assault, not only the “Daily Caller” and its ilk, but the acolytes posting ad infinitum, shoring up the base, feeding people with outrageous information, frequently false, but the base is rallied. Who is rallying the base on the left? NO ONE!

As a matter of fact, it’s internecine warfare on the left. With AOC and her squad on the left, and the usual suspects demanding that they be silenced and the party hew to an antique paradigm that lost its power long ago.

Now let me see… The Republicans won by running ever further to the right. But on the left, this paradigm is dismissed. You see it’s about exciting people. And no one is excited about Biden, NO ONE! You’ve got to light a fire under those who vote and will possibly vote. And you can only do that by owning the twenty first century, by playing by modern rules.

So time keeps on passing. It’s amazing. People born in the year 2000 have now graduated from college. Yet the Democrats keep operating like it’s still the nineties, maybe even the seventies. What applied in 2016 no longer applies. What applied in 2020 no longer applies. The thought was we run Biden to beat Trump and end the chaos. But then what? NOTHING!

Oh, there was some progress, especially in the first six months of his term, but then he focused on building consensus, which is impossible in Congress, and legislation was stalled. And he appeared neutered, powerless. So even those who gave him the benefit of the doubt soured on him.

Let’s be clear, Biden can’t run in 2024. No way. We don’t need a placeholder, we need a person of action, who will move this country forward, who people can rally around, who will foment change.

In all honesty, I’d be behind Biden resigning. The Pope did, he was too old, lost control, wasn’t up to the challenge, they brought in new blood. After the midterms, Biden could resign and Kamala Harris could take his place. Oh, don’t give me the negative talk, speak of her ineffectuality up to this point, after all, what does a VP do other than wait for the President to die or become incapacitated? Don’t tell me about her likability. Don’t buy into all the right wing blowback. Harris doesn’t have to be elected, SHE ALREADY HAS BEEN!

What do we know about Kamala Harris?

She’s a fighter, she knows how to stand up to people, how to bite back, SHE KNOWS HOW TO MAKE NEWS! And that’s what it’s about here folks, making news, building enthusiasm. Trump may be off Twitter but that does not mean the game changed. From now on, you have to have your name in the news every damn day, YOU have to control the narrative, not your opponents, not the press. I’m not saying you have to spread falsehoods like Trump, I’m just saying you have to communicate constantly.

Like social media stars, which Trump was. Social media runs our country, but you’d never know it by the efforts, or lack thereof, of the Democrats.

Who bitches about social media? THE OLDSTERS! Does it have an inhibiting effect, does it decrease the numbers of participants? OF COURSE NOT! The youngsters rule online, they leave television and newspapers to the oldsters. The two of which have ever less effect.

It’s the oldster musicians who bitch about having to post on social media, YouTube, keeping their name alive. Youngsters don’t, they know this is the game, this is what you have to do. If you’re not posting constantly, you’re dead.

Like those writing books. I’m talking nonfiction here, not fiction. Let’s see, you take years to write the book, the publisher delays publication to fit the release schedule and then needs time to drum up support and then the book is released and despite the ink, almost no one reads it! If your goal is to write a book, give up now. You’ve got to dive in online, and write each and every day. Those are the people who are moving the needle, not the academics and long in the tooth analysts and politicians functioning in a dead tree world. Hell, one of the other pet peeves of the book business is digitization. Let’s see… The authors write on computers, they send the file to publishers on computers, they’re edited on computers, BUT THE BOOK MUST COME OUT IN PHYSICAL FORM! Everybody reads online, by taking this rearguard position the book business is preventing itself from growing, reducing its influence and illustrating that it is out of touch with the younger generations who’ve been reading online since kindergarten. It’d be like musical acts sending CDs… Oh, that trope still exists. Someone can’t feel good about themselves unless there’s a physical copy which they can send to people even though today’s computers don’t even have disk drives.

You’ve got to live in the future, at least the now.

So the Democratic party is run by boomers, people like Biden who are older than boomers. How can younger generations relate? THEY CAN’T! What’s end game? Rule as long as you can and then fold the party? That’s what it looks like. I don’t know any young people who are excited about the Democratic party. I know tons who are excited about the Republican party, but not the reverse. This has to be addressed.

And you’ve got to speak to the issues that young people are concerned with. Debt, the minimum wage, income inequality. To be born knowing it’s nearly impossible to make it? Why even bother to vote? No one is helping you, no one is addressing your issues. I mean where else are you gonna go, you’re never gonna go right. End result, YOU GO NOWHERE!

So when Harris takes over it’s not about her automatically getting the nomination in 2024, anything but. Her reign is about shoring up the party, putting things in motion. But the primaries? Open to all. Shall the best person win. If it’s Harris, so be it. But right now, it appears to be Newsom.

Don’t tell me about Pritzker. Can you imagine the governor of Illinois winning? Not only was Pritzker born rich, a bad look on the left, but he rules in a state that the right has been vilifying for years. Yes, Chicago is in Illinois, and even though Pritzker is not the mayor, he’s tarred with the crime rate in that city. The right will make hay.

I’ve met Newsom. He’s slick and good-looking. Am I sure he’s not an empty suit? No. He’s no Jerry Brown. But Jerry Brown is in his eighties.

And Newsom has misstepped. But the truth doesn’t matter. They say he broke the law by taking his family to Montana when this was untrue. He, unlike most of the wimps on the left, pushed back hard. Which is what you have to do about falsehoods. But it’s only Newsom who is being aggressive, taking the right to task.

You should read this story:

“Newsom slams red state governors on D.C. trip, stoking speculation about his future”: https://lat.ms/3uK2Le0

Some relevant excerpts:

“Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’s frustrated with Republicans and Democrats.

He’s tired of conservatives criticizing California and rolling back rights. And he’s irked that his own national party isn’t fighting harder in the culture war.

If they won’t, he said, he will. He pushed back in a recent television ad in Florida. In an interview Monday. And in a speech in Washington, D.C., Wednesday as he accepted an education award on behalf of the state he governs — while stoking speculation about his possible presidential ambitions.

‘This is someone very proud of the state, that’s sick and tired of the state getting bashed 24/7 by the right wing,” Newsom told The Times before heading east. “I can’t take it.

‘I’m not going to just sit back and watch these guys dominate that narrative.'”

And:

“‘I’m not looking to fill a void, be the guy,’ Newsom told The Times. ‘But I’m also not going to regret not expressing myself at this moment. I’d rather take the hits from pundits. I’ll accept all that. But what I can’t accept is being absent in this national debate when democracy is quite literally in peril, when the rights revolution is being rolled back in real time.'”

He’s not pussyfooting, not fearful of offending people, he’s speaking the truth and reading this article today I got excited, and I haven’t been excited by the left in a very long time. Hell, the star of the January 6th committee is Liz Cheney, a Republican, whose voting record is atrocious, she’s a new national hero. I mean good for her for standing up for the truth, but no one on the left can carry the torch?

Yes, we need a turnover. The old guard must go. Biden first.

And we have to take risk. Speak to the people who are going to own the future, live with climate change, and not a theoretical center. God, if the center was so powerful you’d think there would be people hewing that line with a profile, but mostly we’ve got crickets. It’s no longer politics as usual, speak to the OUTRAGE!

And don’t own the woke badge, so some kids at college are out of control, as well as some nincompoops in San Francisco, but most of what young people want MOST people want. Not only the aforementioned climate issue, but a higher minimum wage, higher taxes on the rich and corporations, more OPPORTUNITY!

The problem is that those who have don’t want to lose anything, don’t want to sacrifice. Now a lot of America was disrupted by technology. This is happening in politics right now. The Democrats are the major labels, who sued their customers to try to ensure a past that was never coming back. Not only do you own the present, you delve into the future, you get AHEAD of your constituents. That’s the essence of Spotify. Most people didn’t want it, didn’t understand it, but now streaming owns music, despite the loud voices talking about vinyl and the labels with their irrelevant charts based on physical. The public knows the truth, and the public is streaming.

Time to throw the long ball. We are definitely in the fourth quarter. There’s not enough time to employ the ground game, we’ve got to air it out, play for victory.

Biden is not playing for victory. Neither are Pelosi and Schumer. I’ll give Pelosi credit, she barks back at the right, she refuses to be labeled, but she’s just too damn old. I don’t care if she’s got all her marbles, she’s got more than one foot in the past, as opposed to Bernie Sanders, who has both feet in the future, which is why young people rally around him. And the point isn’t that Sanders didn’t get the nomination the past two times, but that he came so CLOSE!

And this is not about Sanders himself, but what he represents. Hillary Clinton said no one likes him, no one wants to work with him, which is exactly why so many people love him. He’s not seen as inured to the game, he’s not seen as a member of the old boy network. He’s looking out for his constituents, THE PEOPLE! Not the corporations.

Now maybe there will be a complete disruption. Like Napster, like streaming television. Could be coming, because the game is broken.

Like that self-righteous idiot Andrew Sullivan saying if you don’t like what is going on vote. Sure, in Texas, where gerrymandering has made your vote irrelevant?

“Gerrymander, U.S.A. – In Texas’ new political map, the 13th Congressional District stretches about 450 miles from Denton, a fast-growing, multiracial city near Dallas, to sparsely populated rural towns along the western border of the state’s panhandle.”: https://nyti.ms/3IHwc6b

Or how about Wisconsin. Where the popular vote is Democratic, yet the state legislature is overwhelmingly Republican!

We could see spontaneous conflagration. Not only from the left, but the right too. The political landscape is just that heated.

But shy of that, before that happens, the Democrats have to plan and play for the future. They’ve already decided to abandon Biden, you don’t see anybody voicing support, defending him, it’s like he’s got a contagious disease.

So far, the left has only been excited negatively. Turned somnambulant by the Democrats’ failure to stand up to the right wing assault on their rights, their books, democracy itself. Do I expect the usual suspects to take action and make a difference? No. They’ve had two years and the Republicans still control the debate. Yes, conventional right wing wisdom is pandemic payments were too high. Do you see any Democrats standing up and saying the opposite? Saying sure, some people abused the system, but the average citizen was kept from financial ruin by government payments? Even when the left does something right it doesn’t trumpet its success and build upon it.

So what we need is enthusiasm.

James Carville had it right, it’s always about the economy, stupid. Focus there first. Stop telling us inflation is worldwide, that nothing can be done about gas prices and so much more. I mean it would be one thing if Democrats had taken that position and amplified it, instead they’ve abdicated and let the right run with public pain.

Speak truth. Proffer a path. Give people HOPE!

It’s the only way to get out of this mess.

Tune in today, July 12th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive

1

All my old records are new again.

I’m not sure the younger generations have the same relationship, the same experience with music. First and foremost they’re multitasking, doing other stuff while listening, but also they have so many other ways to interact with artists, whereas we only had the music. Sure, there were some magazines, we were hungry for info, when they reviewed a concert or record in the paper we were thrilled, but the music itself was primary, and we were always trying to get closer to it. 

We started off with mono, there was double inventory, with stereo albums a dollar more, never mind that at that point many people were just buying singles. Then the manufacturers decided to raise the price of mono to that of stereo and mono disappeared nearly instantly. The funny thing was we’d heard that playing a stereo record with a mono needle would ruin it, but once mono disappeared they said just the opposite. Who do you trust?

So we started off with all-in-one record player boxes. And as the sixties progressed we cashiered those for something with detachable speakers, and then maybe even separates, and by the seventies there was an entire stereo industry. Think of it like today’s mattress industry on steroids. That’s right, you can’t avoid advertising for online mattress companies, and you could not avoid advertising for stereo equipment back then. And just like with automobiles previously, we became experts, we were familiar with terms like Total Harmonic Distortion, referenced as THD, and we mixed and matched cartridges with turntables and amplifiers and speakers to get the best sound. And the irony is the stereos of yore produced a better response than almost all of the systems people are employing to listen to music today. Sure, you can get good headphones, but that’s a different listening experience. There’s nothing like turning up the music in a confined space, your bedroom, living room, even your car, and luxuriating in the sound.

It sounded like music. Too much of today’s “music” does not. What people love about vinyl is the analog sound, which most experts will tell you can be achieved with Pro Tools today, but after forty years of digital the idea of the thin, crisp, high-end, inferior digital sound is baked-in. Even worse, those who make the music reinforce this notion. The music is compressed, it’s made to play back in headphones. The bottom is emphasized. The key is to make the music POP, whereas back then the music itself was enough.

Which is all to say for the last day and a half I’ve had the experience of yore.

First and foremost I’ve got my Genelec system, superior to what most people had in the seventies. I’ve been inundated with e-mail from people asking exactly what it is.

Well, it’s a three-way system.

All of the speakers are “Active,” as in self-powered, as in they contain their own amplifiers.

So my two satellites are G Ones: https://www.genelec.com/g-one

The G One is readily available. They cost $350 each. Good luck getting a discount, you can’t.

My subwoofer is the F One: https://www.genelec.com/f-one

The F One is easily purchased, it costs $825.

So if you buy the complete system, you’ll end up spending $1525.

You can see the complete system here: https://www.genelec.com/home-listening/g-one-f-one-stereo-system

Genelec is a professional product, as in designed primarily for studios. But the products in my system are designed for home audio specifically.

Now to make it just a bit more confusing…

There are five models in the G series, the G One through the G Five.

Also, there’s another subwoofer, the F Two.

Now prices jump considerably as you go up the line. The G Five is $1795. Apiece! The F Two subwoofer is $1,495.

However, the G Two is $525.

Bottom line… If you’re looking for computer speakers, anything beyond the G One/F One system is overkill.

And they’ll play quite loud. But if you’re looking to have your three-way system be your primary stereo in a pretty large room, you might want to buy G Twos or…

To get the complete picture go here and scroll down: https://www.genelec.com/home-speakers

As it says atop the page, “our G and F Series speakers and subwoofers finally bring professional audio quality into the home. For music, movies and gaming, nothing matches Genelec’s purity of sound, unique minimalistic design, total reliability and ease of use.”

In other words, are you ready for a professional, studio quality experience in your home? That’s what these Genelec deliver.

And I was blown away with them. Still am. But now with the DragonFly Cobalt the music has been brought to a whole new level, as I said yesterday, it’s ASTOUNDING!

2

So I can’t tear myself away from my computer. I skipped lunch, didn’t ultimately eat until five, when I finally had to take a pee or explode. Do you remember the experience of yore? Being so into the music you can’t tear yourself away, listening is the only thing you want to do? THAT’S IT!

And let’s be clear, I’m listening to music BETTER THAN CD QUALITY!

Now on Amazon Music you can search on “Ultra HD.” Then scroll down to Playlists and you’ll find twenty two of them, broken down by genre.

I started off with Folk, because I felt the improvement in sound quality would be most noticeable there.

I played Joni Mitchell’s “River”…and let me tell you I don’t think you could get closer unless you were with Joni playing in her living room.

And after sampling a few other songs, by John Prine and Neil Young, I went to the Ultra HD Classic Rock playlist.

Tracks that I rarely pull up, like ZZ Top’s “La Grange”… It was like Billy Gibbons was right in front of me, telling me the story of that shack out on the range. There was a bite in the guitar, I’m smiling writing and listening now, because you can only hear that edge live these days.

Stunningly, the burned-in-my-brain “Gimme All Your Lovin'” revealed nuances I’d missed even though I know it by heart. LISTEN TO THE GUITAR!

Then there was “Free Fallin’.”

“And it’s a long day livin’ in Reseda

There’s a freeway runnin’ through the yard”

That’s the second best part of the song, other than the chorus, because it’s personalized, that’s what I loved about those Frank Zappa albums, all the references to Southern California locales, like El Monte Legion Stadium. Not so special, but part of everyday life. And the drums…sounded like real drums.

Which is all to say you should hear “Paradise City,” my favorite track from “Appetite For Destruction.” That’s the first thing you notice, that I noticed, the drums, like Steven Adler was banging on cardboard boxes with a lot of echo. And you could hear the separation in the vocals, they didn’t all run together like they normally do. You probably don’t even know there are multiple voices in the verses!

And another song I never have to play, because it’s always on the radio… “Behind Blue Eyes,” I was even closer. Those fingers on the acoustic, whew!

And “Sweet Emotion.” That bass, there was a real person playing it, it wasn’t just a sound!

And “Dreams,” although my favorite track on that Fleetwood Mac album is “Over My Head.” I looked up the album, it was released on July 11, 1975. The band opened for Loggins & Messina and Rod Stewart and the Faces on August 31st, the songs from that album were already well known, they played “Over My Head.”

And then “Kashmir”…

Now if a song is on the Ultra HD playlist, that means the whole album is in Ultra HD. So…

I went back to those early Zeppelin albums.

After playing “Good Times Bad Times” I clicked on “Dazed and Confused,” the song I sing to myself most from the first album. And it sounded so great I let the record continue to play, to the second side opener “Your Time Is Gonna Come” and then…

“Black Mountain Side,” which seems a mere segue on the album, not a throwaway, but not essential. Oh, don’t argue with me, you know what I mean. But today, TODAY! All the instruments were separated, I can see Jimmy Page playing as I listen right now, I SWEAR! My brain got so deep into the song that I truly got it for the first time ever, fifty three years later, I bought that album in ’69.

And “Dancing Days.” Many people think “Houses of the Holy” is the best album, I don’t agree, but I love “Dancing Days.” The magic here is in Robert’s vocals, all the rough edges, all the nuances are suddenly there, the record stops being iconic and reverts to music, it’s new again.

And after playing some of “III,” I went to “II,” an album I couldn’t listen to for years, I’d played it that much, it was EVERYWHERE! And I’m not gonna play “Whole Lotta Love,” I start with “Ramble On.” John Paul Jones’s bass is rounded and fat. As for Jimmy’s guitar, it rehabilitates his rep instantly. Too many people crap on Jimmy today, for ripping off old bluesmen, but in truth everybody has roots, there are only so many notes in the scale. Here Jimmy’s just a guitar player, he’s not a writer, not a producer, he’s just part of the sauce, and you can TASTE HIM!

“What Is and What Should Never Be”… Almost like listening to it the first time.

I mean the DragonFly sharpens the sound and I hear bass that I never do, making me wonder sometimes if the subwoofer is connected.

And I needed to hear “Going to California” and “The Battle of Evermore,” and, of course, after the latter, comes…

“Stairway to Heaven.”

Which I wasn’t going to play. But now the instruments were all separated, it was like the music was being played in a meadow and only me and the band members were there. It sounded so good, I let it play through. And I learned all over again why it’s the #1 FM classic rock track. There’s a magic there, embedded in the sound, it’s all flat and packed together on the radio, but here…it was almost like I’d never heard it before, I couldn’t turn it off. It’s so AMAZING, I wish you were here right now so you could hear it with me, you’d be smiling, looking at me with a magical look of disbelief.

And then the Doobie Brothers. I played all my favorites. And at the end I went back to “Toulouse Street” to hear the title track once again, and while I was there…

I decided to play “Listen to the Music.” The experience was similar to that of listening to “Stairway to Heaven,” a stone cold overplayed classic was stripped down to its essence, or should I say the tracks were cleaned and, once again, it was instantly clear it would be a smash. I mean this is the sound the Doobies heard in the studio, did they know what they had here?

3

Now in truth, I was hooked on Apple Music last night. And it was great, but so many of the albums I wanted to listen to were not in Hi-Res Lossless, just Lossless, and it makes a difference, believe me, I compared the two. (Don’t ask me why so many albums, even the same album are in Ultra HD on Amazon, but not Hi-Res Lossless on Apple Music.)

And I’m thinking of what I love, that resonates, that I lived with and… I decided to play “Face Value.”

You have to know at that point, Phil Collins was almost unknown, the drummer for Genesis who’d become the lead singer, this was before the MTV mania.

And my favorite song on “Face Value” is “You Know What I Mean.”

But halfway through that, I realized I had to play the iconic “In the Air Tonight.”

Now I bought this album when it came out, not long after I’d stopped living with my girlfriend, it was personal, it spoke to me, I could own it.

“In the Air Tonight” was known by no one, no one talked about its drums, no one sampled it. I’m listening again now, I can’t take it off, I can’t let it go, remember when the track had to finish before you could leave the house?

And after “You Know What I Mean” comes “Thunder and “Lightning.” You have the loss and the rebirth, that’s the highlight of the LP for me. And the funny thing is that neither has a Wikipedia page, even though so many of the other tracks do. Am I the only one who feels this way?

Yes, listening to “Face Value” I had to go to the Wikipedia page. Oh, I know so much, nearly everything. But I had to relive it, I had to look for new crumbs. Some of the album was cut at the Village Recorder, not far from my house, to think that all that music was being created there and I didn’t know, if only I’d been there!

But listening to the albums now I feel like I am.

And yes, these are old albums, “classic rock.” But that’s why they call it “classic.” And listening yesterday and today I realized that it won’t be long before classic rock is like the blues, where people study it, are immersed in it. Turns out rock and roll really never will die.

But it was a point in time. A few decades in fact. These acts spent so much time in the studio trying to get it right, knowing we’d break the shrink wrap and drop the needle on our stereos and dive in, we’d have jumped into the speakers if we could, anything to get closer.

Today all of that is a lost art. The music made sounds good on AirPods, lousy systems, why take all that time, spend all that money to make it so honest and real?

Some of these records are fifty years old. They should sound dated, out of time, but if you can reproduce them in full fidelity they sound more modern than what’s in the Spotify Top 50, they sound more HUMAN! I’m not anti-machine, but at some point in music the machines took over from the people. You could not only create sounds, you could fix them, to the point where all the edges were smoothed off, there was no humanity left.

I know you think I’m full of it, that the experience I’m having can’t be this good. BUT IT IS! Like I said above, I can’t tear myself away from my computer, there’s so much more I want to hear.

And you should too.

https://bit.ly/3PkyJWf

This thing is ASTOUNDING!

I mean it’s tinier than a pack of gum, MUCH smaller, yet it packs an AMAZING PUNCH!

You see I wanted a DAC so I could listen to hi-res music on my Mac. I’ve got an external DAC/Amplifier, the ALO International, that’s about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but it needs power, as in having to plug it in, and when I unplug it from my Mac it goes crazy, as in the screen starts flashing in and out and…

I’d been reading about these DragonFlys for years, but how could something so tiny make that big a difference?

Now I’m not the average guy, I’m not even sure I’m a jealous guy, but John Lennon would have loved the DragonFly Cobalt, anybody with a passion for music would!

So what I’m starting with here is an iMac 5k. And in order to get a DAC that plays a sample rate up to 96kHz you have to have a Mac notebook introduced in 2021 or later, or one of those new Mac Studios that are supposedly on back order. (Meanwhile I was lamenting the inclusion of legacy USB-A ports, Steve Jobs would have excised them, but the DragonFly comes with such, although a cable for the modern standard, USB-C is included.) And needless to say my iMac 5k doesn’t qualify, even the new iMac doesn’t qualify!

So what is a DAC?

It’s a digital to analog converter. Yes, today music is digital. Unless you’re playing vinyl, or maybe cassettes or some other antique format. And in order to hear it, it has to be converted to analog. And your device has a DAC built-in, at least my devices have one, but…

This is what I say about cars. If you’re willing to spend six figures you can get state of the art. Is a hundred thousand dollar car worth twice what a fifty thousand dollar car costs? Absolutely not. But in order to meet a price point, they have to cut corners on the fifty thousand dollar car. And they’re cutting corners on just about all the computer equipment you have, your smartphone too. They’ll turn digital into analog, but at a low resolution, and if you try to play “High Resolution Lossless (ALAC up to 24-bit/192 kHz)” in Apple Music you’ll get the following message:

“To play content in Hi-Res Lossless at full resolution, you will need an external digital-to-analog converter.”

Ergo, the DragonFly.

Not that the AudioQuest DragonFly is the only DAC available. (Also, here I must also say there’s an amplifier included, which can’t be a typical one, the device is so small, but I’ll save investigation for later.) Hell, if you want to drop some bread it’s easy to spend thousands. It reminds me of the stereo mania of the seventies, we didn’t only hang out at record stores. Remember when you searched for the ultimate sound? I do.

Now there are three DragonFlys. They range from the $119.95 Black to the $229.95 Red to the $329.95 Cobalt. I’m listening through the Cobalt.

Now I want to check it out with my iPhone, but it turns out I need a USB 3 Camera Adapter, which I do not have. But I have an iPad Pro with a USB-C port and I’ll try that out with headphones later, but right now I’m MESMERIZED listening to the sound coming out of my Genelecs.

Oh, that’s another thing, most people use awful computer speakers. Maybe they even use the built-in speakers. And if they have externals, they have stuff that’s cheap and sounds like it. I’ll use my car analogy above. Sure, it sounds like the song, but to hear it the way it was meant to be listened to, you’ve got to pony up. Think about the speakers in your car as opposed to what you can purchase in the aftermarket, even though car speakers are better than they used to be, when you went to the BMW dealer and could get a replacement for fifteen bucks.

Now with the subwoofer this three-way Genelec package retails for about $1,500, so I don’t expect your system to be in that range, but having said that… If you buy this Genelec system you won’t need any other stereo, and for $1,500 that’s cheap.

So I was wondering if I’d hear the difference. I figured it would have to be subtle, I’d have to A-B endlessly. But I plugged in the DragonFly Cobalt and…

I went to Amazon Music for hi-res. I decided to listen to Boston’s “Foreplay/Long Time,” since I know it so well, and if you pooh-pooh it you’re a punk. And from the very first note…IT SOUNDED LIKE MUSIC!

You could almost see the fingers roaming the keyboard.

And honestly, “Foreplay” is not my favorite part of the song, but when it segues into “Long Time,” that’s PRICELESS! The track slows down, as if someone jammed on the brakes, the instruments rise to a fever pitch and then it gets quiet, it’s like a summer evening, and then, AND THEN…the bass drum pounds and the guitar starts to WAIL! Darting around the sky, doing loops, you can’t take your eyes off it, or in this case ears.

So I was blown away. I’d been planning to spend an hour or two trying to hear the difference, but it was IMMEDIATE! It’s like the music was suddenly in focus and with more punch. It’s like there was nothing left out. This was the sound we yearned to attain back in that seventies heyday with our big rigs.

So then I removed the DragonFly from the chain. The punch was gone, the sound was tinny.

This thing really shouldn’t make that much difference, BUT IT DOES!