Vinyl is our HD.<\/p>\n
I was just sitting on the toilet, perusing the newspapers before I left the house for a doctor’s appointment, and I came across an ad for Panasonic Viera HDTVs.\u00c2\u00a0 And I started to wonder.\u00c2\u00a0 As the image gets better and better, why does the sound get worse and worse?<\/p>\n
Do we blame portability.\u00c2\u00a0 Did the iPod kill good sound?<\/p>\n
Or did 5.1 make the new high quality audio formats nonstarters?\u00c2\u00a0 You had to buy a plethora of equipment, sit in one place. it was all too complicated and not too useful.<\/p>\n
Then I’m thinking how HD started out exclusive.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember going to Jake’s house in T.O. where we watched the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on his plasma set.\u00c2\u00a0 We’d watch anything.\u00c2\u00a0 Just to see those incredible images.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like we used to go to stereo shops and listen to the lame records they had in stock, just to experience the richness, the clarity.<\/p>\n
Maybe the price was too high.\u00c2\u00a0 You had to not only buy the equipment for SACD and DVD-A, you also had to buy all new software.\u00c2\u00a0 At an exorbitant price.\u00c2\u00a0 This is one reason Blu-Ray’s going to be a nonstarter.\u00c2\u00a0 Unless disc prices drop dramatically.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that people don’t want good images, but what they’ve got is good enough.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t need Blu-Ray if you’ve got DVD, the jump just isn’t that big.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, you can watch it on your computer monitor, which is…actually, in my case, HD.\u00c2\u00a0 So, there’s still a high quality solution.\u00c2\u00a0 I love watching movies on my computer.<\/p>\n
But there’s YouTube, that’s not high quality.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like the home demos in the music business didn’t used to compare with the expensive major label productions.\u00c2\u00a0 When major label productions were indecipherable from the home-brewed stuff, when everything was compressed and playing through earbuds, the playing field was leveled.\u00c2\u00a0 And for the engineers trying to justify their jobs, I’ll say that "Satisfaction" isn’t a work of audio art, but when you heard it pounding out of the speakers…<\/p>\n
And that’s when it hit me.\u00c2\u00a0 Vinyl was our HD.\u00c2\u00a0 It was perfect in its original form.\u00c2\u00a0 It was warm, the sound penetrated you like at a live concert.\u00c2\u00a0 You spent a fortune trying to get closer to the original sound.\u00c2\u00a0 You invited all your friends over just to listen.\u00c2\u00a0 And then the industry killed it.\u00c2\u00a0 By replacing it with the low quality cassette and then the brittle CD.\u00c2\u00a0 If everybody could have perfect sound, why did they need a big stereo rig?\u00c2\u00a0 You no longer needed a quality system to get close the music, and when you did get close, you didn’t like what you heard.\u00c2\u00a0 The only stuff that sounded good on CD was the bass-heavy tracks on Top Forty.\u00c2\u00a0 Singer-songwriters, expansive prog rock, even extended jams…what we loved on our stereo systems, sounded positively awful on CD.\u00c2\u00a0 Over time, improvements in mastering were made, after we purchased inferior discs and then had to repurchase them ad infinitum, every few years, when the label said they were better.\u00c2\u00a0 Which they were, but only marginally.\u00c2\u00a0 And never as good as the original vinyl records.\u00c2\u00a0 They could be that good if we went to SACD, but after being burned so many times, the great middle that eventually jumped on the HDTV bandwagon when the sets dropped in price, weren’t interested.\u00c2\u00a0 As for DVD-A, who wants to listen to a record through one’s video system?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like the merger of television and the computer, which still hasn’t happened.<\/p>\n
Funny how live music is burgeoning.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the only place you can truly hear it!<\/p>\n
It’s not about record company economics, big box retail or files.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about sound.\u00c2\u00a0 No one cared about the sound.\u00c2\u00a0 Except for audiophiles and kids, who’ve snapped up vinyl.<\/p>\n
Vinyl’s not coming back.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s too fragile.<\/p>\n
But people do want good sound.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s going to lead the charge?\u00c2\u00a0 Show the electronics industry money can be made?\u00c2\u00a0 Issue software at a reasonable price?\u00c2\u00a0 Get the public hooked on aural greatness?<\/p>\n
It’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of when.<\/p>\n
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