Spotify is Fly, but not HIFI
Let me 1st say, that even though I'm
an American, one of my favorite publications is Britain's own
"WHAT-HIFI? Sound & Vision Magazine", because I'm so into this
A/V "hobby". I have over ten years of experience selling A/V gear,
and I really enjoyed this article, and just wanted to chime in here.
During the 1980's & 90's, no Stereo Rack System would ever be considered complete
if it didn't have a Turntable, double cassette deck and a CD (or later, a
5,6,25, or 100 disc) player, so I'm a fan of each format, with all their pro's
and con's. As far as cassette playing "second fiddle", while I'll
agree that the prerecorded material certainly was, for sure, and therefore took
a back seat to the LP and CD, for those of us who had higher end tape decks,
however, and bought the right blank cassettes (like the Maxell XLII-S, or Sony
HX-Pro, or Metal SR) the recordings we could make from those sources still
sounded
better
than the vast majority of today's MP3 downloads and streaming services.
I, of course, grew up "on" and with records, and always enjoyed
listening to my parents collection of older 60's and 70's albums, ( still have
an Technics SL-7 turntable) as well as the thrill of going to the record store
( something my children, ages 12 and 16, will never know or experience, even
though they will more than likely look back on GameStop with the same
fondness) to buy that new album and get home after working at the local
drive-in movie theatre and taking that LP for a spin, and listening to those
big tower speakers sing away through out the night. (Both my Father's 1980 MCS
Series (Technics) speakers and Scott’s vintage Radio Shack Realistic Optimus T-120's come to
mind.) As far as The Brennan is concerned, Microsoft developed this thing
over 10 years ago that had most of those features, and you could just plug it
in with an Optical cable to the back of your surround receiver. It was called
an XBOX. "Party on Wayne." "Party on Garth."
Furthermore, there was just something about having the album. Maybe it's the cover art, maybe it's sound. (although if you don't keep the vinyl in perfect shape, the sound quality is easily damaged. One scratch left through the tracks can ruin the playback experience.) Maybe it's the fact the analog just had greater volume differences between the softest and loudest sounds on the recording (so much compression seems to be used today). Sometimes though I think that it is the fact you can't find certain versions of a song in the digital streaming world. For Example, back in the day before the artists started releasing these insane all in one 122 song remastered box sets from hell, you had to track down the "single" 45 in order to get "B-side" songs, that in many cases, were not on the Master album itself. That's where some of the rare gems were hidden. Another "concept" that seems to have been lost is finding that "perfect album side." Feedback anybody? (pun intended.)
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