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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.Â
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!
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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?
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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.
