hi-def listening

[Zygomorph]

Whenever possible, I've been doing digital downloads from hdtracks.com and let me tell you, it's MINDBLOWING to listen to classic records like this.

One thing that has me super-excited is how fresh, open, and dynamic so much of it sounds. Like, the way stuff sounds on first playback. And before you start worrying about how to make it sound like a mastered CD by compressing and coloring it.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. ;o)

But srsly, just like the remastered Beatles recordings show us how how recording technology hasn't really significantly advanced so much as PLAYBACK technology, listening to your favorite records in hi-def formats may help you realize that even the most modest equipment nowadays is AWESOME and we should be worrying more about musicianship, interesting ideas, and yup, mic placement.

So, for example:

the engineering on Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories" is gorgeously unpretentious, super natural, which may be surprising to some given their whole cybernetic, vocoder-y thing. I personally would have been fine with a little less limiting overall, but they strike a good balance between that and super-phat, forward bass.

Paul Simon's "Graceland" - the "sound" of early digital technology is in evidence here!(they went back and forth between digital and analog multitrack a few times; oh, and the reverb.) But the music and performances are so awesome, and it's still amazingly produced/engineered, you're a sad sucker if you can't hear past it. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the fretless bass is totally uncompressed on certain tracks.

[vvv]

[Zygomorph]

Just to be clear, I mean like, higher-than-CD-quality, with your audio interface running at the same clock speed. I dunno, in theory it should be closer-to-the-studio sounding than the days of yore (vinyl, tapes, and yea, even CDs wrangled into existence with early digital technology...)

Vinyl's still nice though. I find it hard to believe that passing along recordings in a convenient, stable, non-catastrophically-deteriorating package to my friends/children/next-of-kin will ever be as easy as with vinyl.