
Surface Noise - tintinnabula
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/04/21/surface-noise/
======
j_s
This brought to mind the NwAvGuy discussion (mysteriously awesome no-
derivative amp) nearly three years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7451062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7451062)

 _To be fair, his style was highly argumentative. He left no room for
subjectivity or talking about subjectivity in_ anything _. Which leaves out a
fair portion about what audio really is to the human brain, whether or not you
perfect its reproduction mathematically._

------
dsr_
If you want to hear the noise that the artist intended, you need a
distribution medium that doesn't screw it up. Only digital methods have a
chance of doing that.

If you value getting it dirty with your fingerprints and dust and accidents,
get it on vinyl.

These are different values, and only you can say which way is right for you.
Your values can change over time, too.

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jwilliams
Great article.

I had a progression to digital music and then back through analog... and back
again.

First it was the Squeezebox Classic [1] - from a really remarkable startup. A
hardware startup in 2000, with an open source software platform (SlimServer).
For the price the DAC setup they had was remarkable. Really ahead of it's
time.

Then I added the Benchmark DAC1 [2] to that, with a Cambridge Audio amplifier
(solid-state, naturally). I was a major digital music nerd -- Hours spent
using EAC [3] to extract CD. Hours spent finding (and downloading)
unnecessarily high-detail 24bit 196khz FLACs.

Then, I fell in love with a tube amp I encountered online . The first re-
release Macintosh MC275 [4]. So I bought that and removed the digital amp.
There was plenty not to like. It took time to warm up, usually 10-15 minutes
for the sound to really settle. Plus when you had to replace the tubes, you
were shelling out big money. But the sound was warm and genuine. The amp
bought personality, while not imposing on the music.

Still I was constantly having arguments with ardent analog friends,
particularly given I had this warm, organic tube amp combined with a cold,
digital setup. So I eventually gave vinyl a try. Definitely a less practical
(and expensive) move, but I had the same warm experience. So I started
switching to vinyl for any music I really treasured.

The move to analog also _changed_ the music I treasured.

Unlike digital, analog listening was an experience. I'd get home in the
evening, then immediately flick through the vinyl by hand. Choose an album,
put it on. You didn't skip around. I got to enjoy full album experiences. It
really turned into something of a ritual, a performance.

It changed the artists I enjoyed in ways I couldn't have expected. I loved
putting on a Neil Young album and hearing the scratching of the guitar
strings. Having a piece of jazz suddenly feel in the room with you.

The tracks I used to love standalone I came to find insubstantial -- and vice
versa.

As I started traveling for work Spotify started to become more prominent.
Beyond the portability the discoverability and sharing were amazing. I had
playlist with friends, people I was dating long-distance. Discover Weekly
turned up things I'd never have encountered otherwise. So suddenly all my
music is on my phone, streamed, through earbuds.

In the end this drove me to getting a Sonos setup. Spotify was a big reason
for this. However, the killer feature for me was the synchronized multi-room
playing. This was originally for streaming and podcasts - but, inevitably I'm
now listening to most of my music there too.

So this article really struck home. So much of what we do is the experience
and context we wrap around it. It's really easy to focus on the quality or
technicalities of the sound - but for me the difference between analog and
digital goes so far beyond that.

All that said, I'll probably head off after this comment and put on a piece of
dusty vinyl.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezebox_(network_music_play...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezebox_\(network_music_player\))

2\. [https://benchmarkmedia.com/products/benchmark-
dac1-digital-t...](https://benchmarkmedia.com/products/benchmark-dac1-digital-
to-analog-converter)

3\. [http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/](http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/)

4\.
[http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/us/Products/pages/ProductDetails...](http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/us/Products/pages/ProductDetails.aspx?CatId=amplifiers&ProductId=MC275B)

~~~
Kenji
>I had this warm, organic tube amp combined with a cold, digital setup.

What do you mean with warm and cold? You can use a digital equaliser and other
plugins to make your digital setup sound however you want.

------
luma
I'm always perplexed at self-described music lovers who seem to spend far more
time fetishizing the medium over the content.

~~~
jim-jim-jim
The medium does so much to shape that content though. When discussing songs we
love, I'm not sure if it's fruitful to divorce some ideal form of "music" from
its medium, any more than it makes sense to describe a guitarist's work in the
form of pure music theory. It's usually not the notes in abstract that draw us
to a piece, but rather its color and character. Understanding the medium and
its associated recording techniques is valuable in a timbral critique of the
work.

It's also impossible to explore the history of influential artists like Conlon
Nancarrow, Pierre Schaeffer, or the Beatles without understanding the impact
that media like piano rolls, mangnetic tape, and multitracking played in their
creative processes.

~~~
gagege
I agree. I only really enjoy the cassette tape copy of one of my favorite
albums. The bass has a certain character that Spotify or any other digital
format can't seem to (or doesn't want to) reproduce.

