Digital
Revolution, Analog Revelation
Sam Aurelius Milam III
I
don't remember how long ago music CDs first became available. It
must have been during the early 90s, I think. At the time, I was
skeptical. I believed that the sound of an analog recording was better.
Those of my friends who were technofreaks chided me as old-fashioned, a
stick-in-the-mud. They told me that I was merely accustomed to the
deficiencies of analog recordings. They said that after I'd listened
to digital recordings for a while, and cleansed my hearing of the old analog
cobwebs, then I'd realize the superiority of digital recordings.
One
thing led to another and, for the next several years, I was pushed around
a lot. I was forced to leave Mere Keep and move to the farm.
I was forced to leave the farm and move to Arizona. I was forced
to leave Arizona and move to Georgia. During all of the commotion,
most of my possessions remained in boxes. For a lot of that time,
I didn't even know which boxes contained my collection of audio cassettes.
For most of those years, I listened almost exclusively to digital recordings.
The main reason was that my various computers could play digital recordings.
My need for the computers was more urgent than my need for my modest sound
system, so the sound system remained packed in various boxes while I always
put the computers into service as soon as I could manage to do so.
Over the years, I listened to CDs, then to digital audio files in the computers,
then to digital audio streams. I listened to a lot of music.
I always have. From an early age, I've listened to music.
Recently,
back in September I think it was, I was looking for my old life vest which,
incidentally, still remains among the missing. During the search,
however, I happened across one of my boxes of audio cassettes. I'd
previously located my old Sony tape deck, a relic of the 80s. It
was already connected to my old Sony receiver, a relic of the 70s.
I'd been using the receiver but I hadn't yet used the tape deck, for lack
of tapes. I put a tape into the tape deck, pressed the Play Button
and, sadly, it wouldn't work. Sometime during the years of moving
and storage, the drive belts had failed. I spent some time and some
funds on eBay and bought some replacement drive belts. Sadly, the
tape deck still wouldn't work. Something more serious, something
beyond my limited ability to repair it, had failed. My previous efforts
to get old things repaired suggested to me that people who repair old electronic
equipment exist only in my dreams. So, my beloved old Sony tape deck
took a trip to Hall County Recycling, bound for that big recording studio
in the sky.
I
went to Wal-Mart and asked the kid in the electronics department for an
audio cassette player. He pointed to the only remaining videocassette
player in his vast collection of DVD and Blu-Ray players. "No," I
said, "an AUDIO cassette player." Starting to look puzzled, he pointed
to his collection of iPods and other such technocrap. I shook my
head. He seemed utterly baffled. He didn't have the remotest
clue about audio cassette players.
I
spent some time and some funds on eBay and, on Monday, October 26, 2009,
my lovely new tape deck arrived. It's a JVC TD-W209 Double Cassette
Deck. What a deal! I got it for a mere $22, plus shipping.
I connected it to my receiver, grabbed a couple of tapes from the box,
inserted them into the drives, and pressed a Play button. Nothing
happened. In my excitement, I'd forgotten to plug in the power cord.
With that corrected, I began to test things. By chance, I'd grabbed
recordings of Vivaldi and Mozart. Those are good recordings for a
test. I hadn't intended to actually listen to the music but only
to test the machine. However, as I wandered around the room engaged
in other tasks, I gradually began to notice how good the music sounded.
I stopped and listened. I thought that it must be a much better tape
deck than I'd expected it to be. It sounds really full and rich,
I thought in surprise. Then, suddenly, the truth hit me. My
ears had noticed it right away but it had taken my conscious mind a little
longer to figure it out. For the first time in about 15 years, I
was listening to an analog recording. That was it! After all
of those years of listening to nothing but digital recordings, I was finally
accustomed to them. The technofreaks had been wrong. Digital
recordings are not better.
Music
is good, however it's recorded, but I believe that people have been unduly
submissive to forced obsolescence. We should listen to what we like,
not to what the advertisers want us to buy. I recommend analog recordings.
After all, in spite of the technofreaks, sound remains inherently an analog
phenomenon.![10x5 Page Background GIF Image](../../Images/10x5_Page_Background.gif)
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December 2009 |
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