On the playback/recording medium's effect, etc.

[vvv]

This thread got me thinking some:

I keep meaning to say when the questions of the medium's influence comes up, there might be some insight gleaned in listening to re-masters.

And I don't just mean big-budget stuff like Exile ... or Back in Black.

Get a hold of a old crappy Yardbirds CD, and then a later Rhino one.

Actually, a lot of the Rhino "Best ofs" might work.

Check out Excitable Boy or even (not Rhino) Kinda Blue.

The Dream Syndicate stuff is cool to really hear those 80's verbs.

It seems to me that there are perceptible qualities what might be attributable to tape vs. digital, to older mic's, amps, FX, and mebbe especially to "older" techniques, if only derived from the limitations of the medium and equipment, as well as the era's taste.

[Anthony Caruso]

Yeah it's a weird thing to think about because on one hand, it is what it is. No matter why the recordings turned out the way they did, that is the way they came out, and that is the sonic fingerprint of the era. I think I probably have a similar imagined sound as a lot of people if someone were to say "I want it to sound like something from the late 60's/early 70's".

On the other hand...

It would be like if no one had ever seen a Monet original. People had only ever seen posters of it, and the posters were all meant to be 24" x 12" big, even though everyone now is making all their posters 48" x 24", with no change to the master poster. Then slightly different versions of the poster (due to what era the poster was created in, the aesthetic of the target audience etc) are visually broadcast for decades in a medium that constricts the range of color due to bandwidth limitations. Then a bunch of people are like, "Here's how to paint like Monet", and they are including the effects of decades of poster making and resizing and inconsistencies in printing factories and inks used, as well as personal memory distortions, maybe related to their first exposure to Monet which was in their grandma's living room above the bowl of hard candies being beaten on by the sun for the last quarter century.

Then one day they see a fucking Monet.

[vvv]

Yep, that's my impression, too.

[Snarl 12/8]

I don't know if this relates.

The other day it struck me that the idea of fidelity has flipped. In the old days, say, the Beatles era, the live show would sound terrible and you'd get the record to really hear what the band was "saying".

Now, with everyone listening to 128kbps MP3's out of $0.50 converters and crappy earbuds, with background noise, everyone's personal fidelity is compromised, but you can go to a show and hear world-class audio in a lot of cases.

I read a quote from Frank Zappa a long time ago that surprised me where he said he vastly preferred playing live because he could control the sound quality, vs. records which would be played back on god knows what. That surprised me back then, because that wasn't my experience, but I think he may have been ahead of time on that, and a lot of other things.

Like in the 60's-70's the LP embodied the real artistic expression and/or the real money to be made and now it's more the live show (at least the merch, for the dough).

Anyone agree, I never went to a concert in the 60's, so I'm going on hearsay.

[vvv]

The English had Clapton for a god, we had Zappa.

He may very well have been the most intelligent musician of his era.

Mebbe including to the present.

That said, I agree with what you say, tho' I've only heard recordings of 60's concerts.

I keep telling myself to stop with less than the 320kps *.mp3's, anywhat, but soundclick and such is so convenient.

But bandcamp is far superior.

And yet, the cabinetpin.com "20th of the month challenge" CD's are rendered from 128kps *.mp3 and the damn CD's often sound great.

But I bet they damn sure sound different than if they was cassette tapes ...