The first
time I heard that bit of lyric it was forcing its way from the grooves of a
Kweskin Jug Band 33 &1/3 RPM vinyl album (a record) through the tone arm of
a turn table, through a barely functional pre-amp, into an even more decrepit amplifier/tuner,
and out of a set of salvaged speakers that were producing more buzz and hum
than music.
In my youth,
most college students couldn’t afford much in the way of electronic
entertainment hardware. The double E students
would sometimes cobble something up using “radio Shack” parts, pieces, and
components. Most of us had, if we were
lucky, a cheap turntable/amplifier/radio/ with truly horrid speakers the size
of shoeboxes.
The quality
of audio reproduction has improved over the last several decades. Speakers have become more responsive and more
accurate. High-end electronics components provide a cleaner, more vital sound
than ever before.
That is, if
one is speaking about vinyl storage media.
If one is speaking about analog tape, digital compact disks, mini-disks
and music saved and stored as MP3s. Each
of these storage media methods degrades the original audio file. Analog tapes, I have several hundreds still
capable of being played, are notorious for their hiss and hum, just as vinyl is
known to have its clicks and pops. These
defects become problematic only if the originals are copied.
Digital storage
uses lots of media storage space. Engineers, more worried about storage
capacity than about audio replay quality have applied various compression algorithms
that function by throwing away bits of music determined by the algorithm. Throwing away music as a method of storing it
may sound good to an engineer. To a
musician, it is not a viable means of storage for replay.
Digital music
storage has been the inspiration and source for all manner of storage and
replay hardware. We’ve gone from the boom
box CD player through the freestanding mp3 player and down to the point of
personal storage on personal cell phones.
I’ve followed
the analog>digital>digital combination path. It’s nearly time to replace the cell phones
with something more in tune with the culture that thinks digital sound compression
algorithms are just dandy. It’s not my
fault they can’t discern the difference between a WAV and an MP3 file. They’ve had headphones or ear-buds over or
into their ears almost since kindergarten.
Their hearing's blown, almost more badly than mine is.
I listen to
digital when it is a matter of convenience or availability. However, allowed all options, I’ll choose
analog reproduction.
“Sure missed
plenty if you ain’t had none.
Oh, the
beedle-um-bum, beedle-um-bum,
Got the best
beedle -bum down in Tennessee”
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