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... As in sound media... not the biased media, the fake-news media, nor anything to do with the 4th Estate at all, actually
With Long-Suffering Partner off to the first of 4 night shifts & with the house to myself (& Bella!), I decided to conduct a little experiment with one of my favourite albums - Wishbone Ash 'New England'... Having lent my old vinyl LP of the album to my guitar student a while back & retrieving it a short time ago, it's been sitting here in the (Waiting)Man Cave, leaning against the shelves I keep my records on, but not yet filed away. So, every time I look around & see it, the opening guitar riff of 'Mother Of Pearl' plays in my head & tonight, I decided to deal with this persistent, yet pleasant, ear-worm by seeing if it, & the rest of the album, sounded better on vinyl, or CD (it's also on my iPod as a wav. file, but let's not complicate matters...). So, the turntable fired up & the needle drops on side 1 track 1
A few crackles... then this... sounding just the way I remember hearing it for the first time, in a singer's bedsit flat back in the mid 80s. He pretty much said "You're gonna love this...", then dropped the needle on side 1. He was right!!! It still sounds good on my record player too, though given the 4 speakers are from the 70s & 80s, placed about 4-8 metres apart in every corner of the room & all rather large, virtually anything sounds pretty good when you stand in the middle of the loungeroom & play air-guitar. I was even starting to come around to the viewpoint that some things just sound better on vinyl, when the needle got stuck in the groove right at the start of the guitar solo in 'Lorelei'... the age-old curse of the record player... especially when combined with a well-loved album (especially one you've lent to a teenager?!?! Probably not fair, as he treats records with a reverence I certainly never felt, nor exhibited). Anyway, after recording the unintentional loop onto my phone for possible use as a rhythm track in some future recording... someday, I lifted the needle, shut down the turntable & got out my CD copy...
And, sorry to all the 'purists' out there, but there's just no comparison. There are also no crackles, pops (or snaps) & no getting stuck in the groove - in a bad way, I mean... It probably helps that, again, my speakers qualify as 'vintage', even if the BluRay/CD player, 5.1 amplifier & active subwoofer are most definitely not, so there's a nice mix of digital clarity & analogue warmth going on. It probably also helps that my CD of 'New England' is pretty much a straight-to-CD copy of the original album - no remix, no remaster, so it retains the analogue mindset of the final mix & there has been no digital meddling to 'improve' the sound
The CD has just finished while I've been writing this... I may go & play the album again on my iPod, through the sound system, just to be thorough...
With Long-Suffering Partner off to the first of 4 night shifts & with the house to myself (& Bella!), I decided to conduct a little experiment with one of my favourite albums - Wishbone Ash 'New England'... Having lent my old vinyl LP of the album to my guitar student a while back & retrieving it a short time ago, it's been sitting here in the (Waiting)Man Cave, leaning against the shelves I keep my records on, but not yet filed away. So, every time I look around & see it, the opening guitar riff of 'Mother Of Pearl' plays in my head & tonight, I decided to deal with this persistent, yet pleasant, ear-worm by seeing if it, & the rest of the album, sounded better on vinyl, or CD (it's also on my iPod as a wav. file, but let's not complicate matters...). So, the turntable fired up & the needle drops on side 1 track 1
A few crackles... then this... sounding just the way I remember hearing it for the first time, in a singer's bedsit flat back in the mid 80s. He pretty much said "You're gonna love this...", then dropped the needle on side 1. He was right!!! It still sounds good on my record player too, though given the 4 speakers are from the 70s & 80s, placed about 4-8 metres apart in every corner of the room & all rather large, virtually anything sounds pretty good when you stand in the middle of the loungeroom & play air-guitar. I was even starting to come around to the viewpoint that some things just sound better on vinyl, when the needle got stuck in the groove right at the start of the guitar solo in 'Lorelei'... the age-old curse of the record player... especially when combined with a well-loved album (especially one you've lent to a teenager?!?! Probably not fair, as he treats records with a reverence I certainly never felt, nor exhibited). Anyway, after recording the unintentional loop onto my phone for possible use as a rhythm track in some future recording... someday, I lifted the needle, shut down the turntable & got out my CD copy...
And, sorry to all the 'purists' out there, but there's just no comparison. There are also no crackles, pops (or snaps) & no getting stuck in the groove - in a bad way, I mean... It probably helps that, again, my speakers qualify as 'vintage', even if the BluRay/CD player, 5.1 amplifier & active subwoofer are most definitely not, so there's a nice mix of digital clarity & analogue warmth going on. It probably also helps that my CD of 'New England' is pretty much a straight-to-CD copy of the original album - no remix, no remaster, so it retains the analogue mindset of the final mix & there has been no digital meddling to 'improve' the sound
The CD has just finished while I've been writing this... I may go & play the album again on my iPod, through the sound system, just to be thorough...
