by Michael

From the ridiculous to the sublime…

Seems like life these days is highlighting tremendous gulf between the ridiculous (human folly run rampant in all its horrific sociopathic glory) and the sublime (human art, oh how plentiful and accessible, and oh, how beautiful!).

Just taking a moment to listen to some of the art…. to REALLY listen… [ Neli is playing an opera, the first half of which was featured last night on Tuesday Night at the Opera on KSFR Santa Fe hosted by one of us audiophile types… (Hi Darryl!) ]

Audio Note UK Gaku-On amplifiers, M9 Phono preamplifier, DAC 5 Signature, and S9 Step-up transformer and EMM NS1 streamer, all on a HRS VXR equipment rack.

Acapella Apollon speakers, Triangle Art Master Reference turntable.

 

And the music … listening again today, to the 24/96 recording from Qobuz (also on Tidal):

  

in Acapella / Audio Note / Emm Labs / HRS 3 comments
 by Michael

A funny thing happened on the way to Pluto

.. to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new emotional experiences and new states of mind. To boldly go where no music has taken us before.

Teeter-tottering on the line between Heart Sound and Mind Sound [see sidebar] …. there is a place. It is easy to feel helpless in this place.

The heart has what it wants, fully occupied and defenseless against emotional content that plucks the heartstrings and exercises our hormonal responses to sonic stimuli.

The mind has what it wants, fully occupied with sufficient resolution and veracity and verisimilitude as it exerts itself examining the fractal landscape of finer and finer audiophile attributes… seeking out flaws and entertainment [does the mind really do anything else?], so much so that our ‘CPU is maxed out’.

In this place – to an observer we appear catatonic. We look not that much different from just someone really, really focused on listening to the music. But there will be tell-tale differences.

Like not moving for extended periods of time. Not even a little bit. [I see people come out of this by irritably scratching and rearranging their position as they come back from this kind of out-of-body experience. Yep, sometimes this just means the sound sucks. But this is not what we are talking about here].

This is not ‘listening to the music’ like a musician or lay-person. This is not ‘listening to the sound’ like an audiophile. This is using music as a kind of propellant [or drug 🙂 see sidebar] to go ‘places’.

End of part I.

 

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy 0 comments
 by Michael

End of the world getting you down?

Then it’s time for …. a ….

Binge.

Music.

Extravaganza!

There are a number of ways to go about this.

This is really a lot harder than one might think and we do *not* want to get into something like the Netflix-homepage-looking-for-something-that-doesn’t suck infinite loop.

Here are some ideas….

A. There is the infinite YouTube-like ‘play something then pick something from the recommended list and play that’ approach. Roon is good for this. You can also just let it run on auto-play, if you the live-life-on-the-edge type and want to risk it [goes for YouTube too, though our recent ‘Fluffy’ binge is working out well].

B. There is the ‘pick an artist and play their catalog backwards in time’, most recent album to first album. Skipping duds *is* permitted. Playing is backwards because, as much as we  love, love, *love* their first albums, we have heard them so many times that playing THEM again may have us wishing that the End of The World hurry the frack on up.

C. There is the ‘pick monolithic multi-album release’ for a deep dive into a concert or recording session. This is nice because because we just have to press play once and we know for certain it is an artist we like.

D. There is the tried and true ‘let’s argue and fight about what to play next until – tired, worn out, not getting divorced ONLY because we are on lock-down – we find something we both like’

Is it working? No. End of the World is still coming every time we look …. But to help us to stop looking, here is what we have done so far:

We do not do A. Every so often Roon tries to play a high-res or DSD album on our 24×96-only killer Audio Note DAC we have on the main system.

B. ? I’ve done this for Eno and Frisell recently. It is awesome.

C. ? We played Frank Zappa’s “Hot Rats Sessions” (6 discs) and Grateful Dead “Complete Road Trips” (17 discs). This is what life is all about – 24×7 live (almost) music.

D. ? We tried the new James Taylor. I don’t know…

So, there you have it. The End of The World doesn’t have to be ALL bad… :-/

 

in Music 0 comments