Strange Times indeed. With absolutely no irony whatsoever, The New York Times reported in its "Technology View" column that the very finest CD systems, the ones which cost 6 grand, owe their great sound to (are you ready?) digital-to-analog converters. The world regards us trackers as a bunch of cranks, as wild-eyed advocates of a laughably useless format.
At the same time, in-the-know audiophiles are shelling out the big bucks for systems which will wrest some real music out of those cold little metal discs by turning their output into analog. Why is it that The Times can placidly report that "musical qualities are widely held (italics mine) to be missing from digitally recorded music--the natural resonances, the sense of room acoustics, the timberal blendings" while failing to grasp the simple significance of what those words are actually saying? Want really great analog sound? Why not try an analog system? No need to convert your sounds to analog if they started out as analog. Hell of a lot cheaper too.
But there are some signs that this view is becoming more common. Three times in six months The Times reported on the trend of brand-new releases of actual vinyl LP records. According to the Neil Strauss article, "For the first time in 13 years, sales of old-fashioned vinyl records are on the rise. Sales have increased by a staggering 80 percent for the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America."
While Strauss is willing to credit the analog choice as being a reasonable one, made by classical as well as pop enthusiasts because "the voice comes through more truly on warm-sounding vinyl," Trip Gabriel takes more of a what-will-those-wacky-kids-think-of-next approach. Vinyl, according to him, is the realm of "disenfranchised young people" such as Manhattan DJ Little Louie Vega who says "To me, there's a lot more bottom and 'dirt' with vinyl." Bernard Holland's view is more of a straight nostalgia approach. According to him, listening to records is an exercise for the imagination, since vinyl requires you to "fill in the blanks." CDs, by comparison, fill those blanks for you. Hmmmm. Sounds an awful lot like the way old timers talk about listening to radio before the advent of television.
In order to really get behind this view, you need to accept on some level that vinyl gives the listener less than CDs do. Despite the disparate views expressed in the three articles, there is no denying the signs of a full-fledged trend; the newspaper of record is telling us that more and more Americans are reconsidering vinyl. After a decade of digital lies and deception, people are starting to think for themselves again. Can the return of 8-tracks be far behind? Again, The Times is right there, reporting on the hot fad of "punkish" bands releasing brand-new recordings on track.
Although the tone of the piece is perhaps a bit condescending (for example, the reference to 8-tracks as having "cockroachlike durability"), the article nonetheless brings the news to a mainstream audience of the return of 8-tracks in the 1990s. And they sure knew who to call for a quote--8-Track Mind's own Russ Forster (and they even spelled our fearless leader's name right!).
Another recent Times article brought my attention to a "new" home audio system which will doubtless be of great interest to trackers and other quadiophiles. In case you haven't heard, the innovative Dolby Surround audio system employs 5 channels and 5 strategically-placed speakers in order to "deliver the in-your-face sound of high-tech movies in your living room." Evidently, "the new multichannel sound has also hooked many a music lover." If this sounds suspiciously familiar to anyone with a memory, even the author of the article acknowledges that "an earlier version of surround sound, the quadraphonic phenomenon, flashed and fizzled in the mid-'70s." Surround is different though, really different. Why? Well, um--because it has 5 speakers, not 4!!
Vacuum tubes have been in the news lately as well. Enemy of the People Newt (it used to mean "little salamander" and hey, it still does!) Gingrich held a tube triumphantly aloft in his recent celebration of the Contract With America. "Good, solid 1895 technology," quoth he. Of course, the Speaker of the House thinks that all vacuum tubes should be replaced at once with microchips (after all, chips are the greatest - just ask Intel about their first-generation Pentium). Republicans in general have been having a field day at the expense of the lowly vacuum tube. In October 1994, Sen. William S. Cohen (Republican from Maine), for example, issued a report on federal computer problems and said that the FAA "buys vacuum tubes in Poland and searches in Radio Shack stores for spare parts to keep computers running."
While his comments were no doubt intended to be derisive, I think that it puts a comforting, homey face on the bureaucracy to imagine air traffic controllers sifting through piles of Tandy products as we trackers so often do. And "transportation Department officials stress that the tubes are reliable and do not compromise the safety of the air traffic system." Not only that, but "about 90 percent of the tubes used by the FAA are bought through the Defense Department supply center, and most of them are purchased from U.S. companies." Good thing. I was getting worried about the valuable federal vacuum tube contracts going to a country like Poland, even if it isn't exactly communist anymore.
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