It is that season of life for many of us to be dropping like flies.  🙂  I get up each morning and read the obituaries just make certain I'm still alive.  🙂 

By laws of this site should include that in our wills, the Spyder is posted here 1st! unless of course it was the reason for our demise.  In which case Phatts should have first right of refusal as keeper of the torch

 Im now enjoying Blues Traveler for the first time. I never got into them mainly because I hate the bands that give off that lollapalooza vibe and the weird people that attend those things because I found them to be lame.

  I know there commercial stuff from the 90s but now that I have their greatest hits  I find them to be incredibly tight as a band. The musicianship and the way it was recorded is very good.

 It has a Chicago Led Zeppelin vibe to it.  

Vinyl outselling CDs.

https://pitchfork.com/news/vinyl-outsells-cds-for-the-first-time-in-decades/

Streaming out does both.

Posted by: @grumpy

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Vinyl outselling CDs.

https://pitchfork.com/news/vinyl-outsells-cds-for-the-first-time-in-decades/

Streaming out does both.

CDs are dead. Although good for the time they were a bit misleading on being an evolution in sound quality. 
That all went to hell with MP3s but in an ironic twist new music sucks so bad for both the artist and sound engineer that it was complementary. 

Fortunately there is 24bit audio that is being derived and remixed from master tapes. With the right listening equipment it blows everything out of the water. I have the master DSD of Santana and it’s hypnotic. 

FWIW . . . I collect CDs of music I love so I have have it on hand when I want it and I don't have to subscribe to a music service.  My hearing is not what it used to be, so I don't really care that much about the sound quality, either.  I know I am old school and that is fine with me.  With senility comes complimentary complacency.  😋  

Posted by: @uncle-mush

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FWIW . . . I collect CDs of music I love so I have have it on hand when I want it and I don't have to subscribe to a music service.  My hearing is not what it used to be, so I don't really care that much about the sound quality, either.  I know I am old school and that is fine with me.  With senility comes complimentary complacency.  😋  

One of the best things about CDs is they are EMP proof and are resistant to corruption. Digital files may not hold up with age.

You are not the first person who has implied that progressive hearing loss makes most high-fi  systems irrelevant. I found a new way to give hope and that is if you can tell the difference between a live performance and one that is recorded you are still in the game when it comes to high-fi listening enjoyment. The only deficiency is your upper range will be attenuated but there is not much information there anyway but what is in the middle makes all the difference especially if the timbre and timing is correct.

from what I have read about hearing impediments. due to age and exposure to loud noises over the years: especially with music you have heard for years/decades, your brain corrects the sounds to what "it" expects to hear and makes it so. at least for that music you know well. It does for me I hear the higher notes from songs I know well but not for new music.

Posted by: @grumpy

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from what I have read about hearing impediments. due to age and exposure to loud noises over the years: especially with music you have heard for years/decades, your brain corrects the sounds to what "it" expects to hear and makes it so. at least for that music you know well. It does for me I hear the higher notes from songs I know well but not for new music.

Your brain can fill in the blanks the same way it can adjusts for vision. They say as you get older you can't hear above 16khz that is true but there is a roll off not a hard block. It is attenuated down.

 There is a new kind of headphone or in ear monitor tuning that has become popular.  It's called the Harman curve.   

 If you ever wondered what the function of the loudness button does on most older stereo systems, it boosts the lows and the highs so that it sounds good at low volumes. This actually flattens the frequency curve otherwise at lower listening volumes there is a hump in the middle and the lows and highs are rolled off.

 If you ever wondered why people like to listen to music loud its because it flattens the curve naturally as the drivers are being worked which sounds better.  So for these newer headphone tunings  they dont exactly use an EQ like what you find  with a loudness button which would be the wrong way to do it, they design the drivers in the headphone to play those frequencies naturally which is optimized for the Harman curve. 

 The benefits are that you don't have to turn up the volume to enjoy the music and it is great for older ears. My late father suffered from hearing loss at the age of 50 with hearing aids to help him and it got worse from there but he could hear the difference between a cheap set and a more expensive one as he owns some Sony and Sennheiser sets. 

 Old people can still differentiate between a live performance from a recorded one because there are a lot of other qualities that are harder to duplicate and one of the big ones is precise timing of the note and the speed at which it is delivered. This is what gives music realism because it tricks the unconscious brain. This is what real high fidelity is all about not how many watts a system has or how low the distortion is.  Once you hear the 3D layering of instruments, expansive separation and other things only then will people understand and that is the tragedy of consumer audio. 

I found this the other day. I remember when I was young in the 80s long after the "Imagine" song came out and listened to it the first time and liked it and the lyrics. Later on I come to find out that it is an anthem for communism or better yet the contradiction of John Lennon and his messed up wife. 

 I had no idea that Steely Dan in their sardonic lyrics addressed this in the album You Can't buy a Thrill. Im not knocking the Beatles and I know they are talented but I was never really into them. 

. 

Back in the days, when I was performing, I spent a lot of time in real brick and mortar recording studios and the accuracy of those monitors was amazing.  What was really interesting is that the engineers that I worked with would first mix to the studio monitors but then when I came time for the final mix they would listen on cheep little speakers and tweak the sound to make certain that the audio would sound good on car speakers because that is where most people would ultimately be listening to the final product.  That was back in the days long before automotive manufactures would contract with Bose or other companies for higher-end sound systems in the vehicle from the factory.  Times have changed a lot since then.  I have a friend who's music is fairly well played on New Age music channels and even these days, he will first mix to headphones in his home studio, but then taken the "tracks" to a brick and mortar studio to listen on their monitors -- and before sending out for reproduction, will listen on cheap little speakers just to make certain that the listening experience will be as good as possible no matter what the system the end-user is listening on. 

As for the loss of hearing range when we get older . . . I remember during my college days having the ability to hear extremely high frequencies to the degree that one of my professors commented, "you must be part dog."  I no longer have that range to my hearing and have to boost the high end in my home stereo just to keep from having everything sound muddy because my "normal" range of hearing is really stuck in the mid-range.  On the downside, I am (and always have been) too sensitive to low-end frequencies to the degree that it makes me physiologically uncomfortable (can actually trigger panic attacks) when subjected to extremely loud low-end stuff.  Because of that, I will either leave low end frequencies as flat as possible, or if anything, pull them back a bit.  It is a must for me to wear earplugs whenever attending any kind of venue where there will be high volumes.  

Regarding Steely Dan . . . I am grateful that I had the opportunity to see Donald Fagan and Walter Becker in concert in a fairly "small" venue about 15-20 years ago.  My studio friends often raved about the intricacies of Steely Dan's work because of the duo's musical/engineering prowess and how so much of the magic they worked was created in a studio environment where they had limitless budgets to live in the studio and create and hone, and create and hone, and create and hone, until there was absolute perfection.  Back in those days, they would book major recording studios (i.e., Kendun Recorders in Burbank) for months at a time (as opposed to hours at a time, like many acts back in the day). 

Thanks for allowing me to ramble a bit. It reminds me that I have had a lot of interesting experiences in my life that I am grateful for having had.  🙂  

@uncle-mush  another one whose work in the studio who I always looked forward to was Todd Rundgren. I like his albums but he also shone  in his studio work as a producer. Not as much as Fagen and Becker but in the same neighborhood. He also was not a slave to the record labels on his own albums.

@dev 

It depends on how you perceive the Beatles. As musicians (instrumentally) they were great. But the so were many of the top groups back then before autotune. Clapton, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Who, and many more were first and foremost instrumentalists, and real singers. The Beatles were the first boy band, except the actually had talent with their instruments and vocals. They have a few, very few, songs that are "real", their own. Record labels called many of the shots as UM said about Steelyy Dan. George Harrison made the best of the solo albums from the former group.

Please understand, that is just my opinion of the Beatles, their fans are rabid. Especially those my age just 10 years younger than the Beatles who grew up listening to them. Not as rabid as Elvis fans but sheesh. 🤒 

dev quote:

 The benefits are that you don't have to turn up the volume to enjoy the music and it is great for older ears. My late father suffered from hearing loss at the age of 50 with hearing aids to help him and it got worse from there but he could hear the difference between a cheap set and a more expensive one as he owns some Sony and Sennheiser sets. 

 Old people can still differentiate between a live performance from a recorded one because there are a lot of other qualities that are harder to duplicate and one of the big ones is precise timing of the note and the speed at which it is delivered. This is what gives music realism because it tricks the unconscious brain. This is what real high fidelity is all about not how many watts a system has or how low the distortion is.  Once you hear the 3D layering of instruments, expansive separation and other things only then will people understand and that is the tragedy of consumer audio. 

end quote

That is why when cell phones first came out kids could, and still do, have ringtones adults can't hear. That wy they can text in Schoo; and teachers don't  hear the alert.

Thanks for that info dev! You are making me try to work that research in with trying to read and listen to Peter Zeihan and his take on everything current, and historical about how everything political, economic, cultural, militaristic, medical, climate, supply lines, and much more both before the Brenton Woods agreement and after, plus the current breaking down of that agreement. He has several books, interviews and talks on YouTube, podcasts and I think even his own podcast. What caught my fancy about him is his claim that China will not be a factor in much except for their nucular arsenal' by the end of THIS decade. Mao screwed them with the one child policy. They had/have a cultural bias for sons. They had sex selective abortions starting under Mao. Nature makes for more females being born 1.1 to 1male. In China their "gov/t claimed"  ratio is 1 female to 1.2 males. All others claim China has 1 female to 1.3 males. Not a good situation for China. And that is after the end of that policy in 2021. The younger Chinese ladies aren't interested in large families anymore. The working age people are running out. There are not enough young breeders willing to make replacements. The culture has changed. The population is illeagaly moving from central and Western China to the east coast cities, compounding the problem. Anyway give him a look over. He writes and speaks without jargon, and in easy to follow way. Even for an old midwest, uneducated, farm boy, who now lives mostly on a Wyoming ranch.

@grumpy 

I kind of knew this opposite population crisis would happen long ago. The stupid psychopaths thought that our biggest problem was going to be overpopulation. When I was studying medical statistics I found it surprising that in some areas of Europe particularly parts of northern Italy they were having a negative population growth. It was believed once you lift people out of poverty, improve standard of living and reduce mortality people would have less children or choose not to have them. They would aspire towards self improvement, the arts and so forth. instead of letting it play out naturally, they decided to impoverish people by trickery in the name of population control. whatever the case is the world is in an extensional crisis. 

@dev 

Between that and China producing for the simpler, lower end markets, the dismantling of the Brenton Woods Agreement going on, China's navy not being reliable, they won't have a good outlook on future trade. South Korea's ship yards weren't big/deepenough to build supertankers. They built it in two halves and then built a dry dock around them to attach the halves. China wouldn't have the workforce to do anything near like that.Low quality steel and relatively simple assembly lines are what they can actually do. They can send their brightest students here and to European Universities but the highly skilled laborers are lacking in China. Zeihan has opened my eyes and mind to what all and how many steps are used in cellphones, chips, and such. That and the need for naval force is needed to maintain safe, cheap freight. When the US doesn't maintain the oceans for trade, it will not be a good result for anyone. Read the English papers and the English language papers from Asia, if you don't already. France has been rioting in the streets for days over retirement age going up to 62.