Do You Hear What I Hear?

The noisiest fights in my childhood home were about my father’s high fidelity sound system (stereo wasn’t pioneered until I was in my teens). The Hi-fi was a collection of speakers, from woofer to tweeter, Pa placed in one of the kitchen cupboards built into the interior wall between the kitchen and the living room. The cupboard drawer hid them from the kitchen side and the square grand piano was in front and above so whatever he did there was invisible. The amplifiers and pre-amplifiers were in the bookshelves behind the door between the kitchen and study and the turntable and radio receiver were located in the study. The majority of these components Pa had built himself using Heathkits.

The arguments were not about what was being played or even that it was being played; they were about what Pa called “room volume.” He said, and it was true, that the quality of the reproduction of the original instruments was better at a higher volume. (I suspect that the loss of cupboard space in the kitchen had been included in the arguments in the early days.)

As little as 15 years ago most stereos didn’t do as good a job on the sound at low volumes, I know because I don’t like to listen to music at a high volume and it was almost impossible to find one I could afford that performed adequately for me. (Because of Pa’s great interest in the best possible sound, I’m pretty unforgiving about poor sound with truncated highs and buzzing lows.

This morning someone on one of the Beatles mail-lists I subscribe to posted the URL to an article about tricks to increase the loudness of popular music by messing with it during the process of recording an mixing and the fact that listening to them isn’t good for people.  http://tinyurl.com/26kvz5 I have always disliked loud sounds, as well as heavy odors even if they are pretty ones and it was nice to find out that perhaps I’m not really a complete nervous-Nellie.

Paul McCartney’s new CD has not, I’m sure, been subjected to this process, and the sound quality over my computer with my speakers that are a lot better then the ones usually shipped with a computer, is as expected very good. Even the extreme low notes at the opening of House of Wax (it really sounds like a didgeridoo but may of course be electronically generated) may be distinctly heard and the high harmonics of the electric guitar in the same song are pure and undistorted. It is quite an accomplishment to  have a wild and emphatic guitar solo without either feedback or distortion and I am deeply grateful to whoever is responsible for it.

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