OK. Personal opinion here… but… the first half of this movie was written by a 10 year old boy for an 8 year old boy [well, British humor… you know. What can a person expect? Outside of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (the books. The 1st and 3rd books.) Red Dwarf, Dr. Who, the Avengers, Sherlock Holmes… The Brits would have nothing to show for themselves on the literary front ;-P]

But the last half hour or so… lots of mid 60s music. Lot of love of good old Rock & Roll, and LPs, and Music with a capital M. I was literally going to just stop watching the movie entirely but I am glad I didn’t [I kind of expected a documentary-style semi-fictional account of some very interesting times… instead what we get is a parody].

Funny, when I hear a lot of 60s music [okay, a little early 70s too] I wonder what we would really miss is we just lopped off the last 45 years of music altogether. Sometimes I do not feel this way… But… seriously – is what we have these days is a wasteland with a few oasis scattered about here and there? Or am I just a product of my generation? [or are the people who disagree just a product of THEIR generation and all music really HAS been pale derivatives and shadows of 60s music since then?]

We were sent this nice CD from www.QuartetEquinox.com.

It is definitely audiophile grade. Lots of separation and very quiet backgrounds.

The music itself is a mix, mostly quiet jazz but a few numbers are, well, now as quiet. Still, every song would do well at an audiophile show. Sort of in the Diana Krall kind of genre but without any singing.

I played this for a group of people the same night we heard the new Frampton and new Hendrix.

This Quartet Equinox SACD is definitively a very high quality recording. As good as the new FIM? Yes, could be. A little hard to tell with just this one CD, and with not very complex music. But it is indeed very close… a contender!

Some of the most fun I have had on Mattters is learning more about what is out there in the Opera Music and Classical Music genres.

These channels are actually quite popular, especially considering their lack of overwhelming popularity in our youth-centered culture. Especially considering that in my learned opinion it takes a relatively high fidelity system to make opera, and especially classical, sound decent [today’s word must be ‘especially’].

By sound decent I mean that it, well, when it does not sound decent, classical music, and uh, esp. opera sounds irritating to me. Without resolution, uh, esp., Classical becomes a mish-mash and when there isn’t a easily identifiable melody, like say Beethoven’s 5th, is becomes boring.

Resolution also helps Opera not become some women screeching at ya. Harmonic structure, and whatever else that goes into hearing the emotion is the singer’s voice is what makes opera ‘come alive’ for me. Opera, uh, in particular, has been heard so many times on inferior equipment that I, personally, have a hard time unlearning that opera is, well, horrible. Each time we sit down and listen to opera here – I say to myself, look self, listen to the music and see if you like it – do not just automatically tune it out because you have hated it all these years.

To the rest of you, I might suggest you listen to some Heavy Metal and even hip hop, if not rap [which turns some people off because of its political overtones], and see if on your awesome setup it doesn’t have some redeeming musical value that you may have over-looked because most of the time you hear it, often in the back ground, on inferior equipment.

As you all know, Jazz and Pop sound good on about any system… or at least it is accessible and doesn’t completely offend even the sad-sack ears of the average listener [oh, there I go being a ‘snobbish audiophile’ [sorry, I do not save links to all the people who describe audiophiles with this adjective]. Have to say it is hard not to be snobbish when the average person thinks so little of themselves that all they think about is LOW LOW PRICE when thinking about when making buying decisions of any kind (though the iPhone and iPad seem to do OK- but besides Bose, who does marketing like this to the general public in our industry? Hardly anybody].

[Putting in all these links to everywhere is so much fun. I would add one of those previewer widgets so you can see what the links point at, but I usually find the one most people use annoying. We’ll see…]