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This is news?

Posted by Bruce from DC (B) on May 16, 2006 at 06:20:46

In Reply to: Re: CNET article on higher-rez downloads posted by sacdsucker on May 15, 2006 at 10:58:28:

Wasn't the whole premise of cassettes or -- gasp! -- 8-track cartridges the idea of convenience and portability vis-a-vis a vinyl record? Can there be any serious dispute that these formats offered lower (in the case of 8-track, much lower) fidelity than records, even with the equipment available at the time?

I think not, and I was there . . . and that was almost 35 years ago.

So, my point is that the market for truly high fidelity has always been very small, and even the hifi industry has made only small strides in increasing the capabilities of the "average" (i.e. purchased by many, many people) system.

Let's see. The KLH folks managed to move the mass market out of really cheesy console stereos into the various KLH Compact systems, consisting of a turntable with integrated electronics, including a tuner and two separate loudspeaker systems. But the various KLH Compact systems were hardly state of the art for their time. And let's see what they offered the buyer: well, you can get rid of that 6-foot long hunk of furniture that you bought at a department store and put these three components on a shelf or, the turntable/electronics unit on the shelf and the speakers on the floor in the corners (which is what people did). So, we have a higher SAF for this than for the big console. Happily, it also sounded better.

What was the driver that led Ed Villchur to develop the "acoustic suspension" woofer? A desire to get bass reproduction out of a smaller box, for SAF purposes, than was possible from a vented system or a folded horn system like the Klipschorn. With the advent of stereo, which required two speakers in the room, not one, this became a much more important consideration.

And now, with the advent of 5.1 multichannel systems, the size of teh box becomes even more important. The preference for convenience and unobtrusiveness continues today with the various "Lifestyle" systems marketed by Bose and others. Is it close to state of the art sonically? Certainly not.

If there's one thing to wring our hands about it is the fact that, in the heyday of the vinyl era, most (but not all) records were made far better than the equipment that they were to be played on. So, if we manage to find one of these records at a yard sale and play it on a pretty good system, we're astounded. The question for today is whether recordings today will be made with the same care.

But again, most of those "goldie oldie" recordings are classical and jazz recordings, not pop recordings. And all of the Columbia classical records that I have from the 1960s are sonic disappointments. They're just "flat" sounding. Most of the Deutsche Grammopone classical records that I have must have been mixed by an engineer who had cotton stuffed in his ears or monitor speakers with no tweeters -- the treble is cranked way up.

There is a huge amount of pop crap that is (deservedly) forgotten, for artistic reasons. Some of the stuff that remains that is worth keeping is well recorded; and some isn't. For example, one of my all-time favorite pop/rock recordings is Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It's a mess, sonically.

But I think today classical recordings and jazz recordings are still going to be made with a great deal of care.

Today's MP3 customer is the descendant of the 8-track or cassette customer of the 1970s, or the 45 rpm 7-inch record customer of the 1950s and early to mid 1960s.

I don't think the situation has fundamentally changed all that much. The highest quality is a concern of the minority. Everyone else wants convenience.

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The Cable Cooker

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