Hello, Louis,
These are certainly perceptive comments and I know only two people who
currently admit to sitting down with a good stereo system and listening
to music. Not surprisingly, one is the music director at our church, and
the other is my recording mentor and good friend, Don Ososke. I remember
when I first visited Don at his home, I came with a CD case and we spent
most of the night playing music for each other, although we sometimes
would not finish a track as our brains spiked on something in that track
that led us to another...and another...and another. Sadly, although it's
probably good for my health--I need my sleep--Don and I have never lived
geographically close to each other <smile>.
What I think I notice, however, about the younger generation is that
they appear to need visual stimulation in order to fully enjoy the
experience. If they don't have something to watch as well as listen, it
appears that they do not enjoy it as much.
I think we may be seeing a parallel to this change in audio consumption
in still imaging consumption, however since George Eastman created his
cash cow (which apparently has or will soon receive some flavour of
bankruptcy protection), photography has been more about the individual
capturing the image than sound/music ever was, despite bootleg concert
taping.
i- and Android phones seem to be changing and mixing up this space yet
again.
Cheers,
Richard
On 2012-01-31 8:31 AM, Louis Hone wrote:
> I'm a SACD owner and I love the format, especially the multi-channel
> mixes. I love to remove all the channels except the center one and listen
> to the singer. Elton John, Billy Joel and Karen Carpenter are favorites.
> It's like you are in the control room while they are doing their vocal
> tracks, and you are soloing their mic. You almost hear their heartbeats.
> I think one of the problems with SACD, is that you have to sit in the sweet
> spot and do nothing else but allow the music to engulf you.
> I remember as a teenager, when a good album would come out, we would sit
> down and listen to it. Just listen - nothing else. Think back to Sgt
> Pepper. Nowadays, few people have the luxury of taking the time to sit down
> and do nothing else but listen. We listen to music in our cars while
> driving, in our homes while preparing supper, on our Walkman while walking,
> jogging, reading, riding the subway, etc. but we rarely have the time to
> sit down and focus on the music being played, on the recording itself. And
> apart from easy file downloads and exchange, the MP3 format has become a
> background music generator while we do other things.
> Q sound was also a format the demanded that you sit motionless in the exact
> sweet spot to enjoy the 3D effect. No wonder it never caught on. Time is a
> luxury today and not too many people want to "waste" it listening to music
> only. Our world has changed, unfortunately. We have become multitask human
> beings with not enough hours in a day to do it all.
>
> Louis
>
>
--
Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
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