How Do You Listen to Music?

This may sound as heresy to this forum, but apart from my small system in the kitchen, I now more often listen to You Tube via a cheap pair of headphones, the quality of music is there in a way, the resolution more immediate and some of the live Rock concert videos is simply sheer exhilarating.  Not only do I get instant gratification via music but I can also find majority of acts, bands, artist, orchestras and get to see them performing.  My daughter also posed a question to me, " why is music via headphones so much better then via speakers?" , I do not know but I am beginning to agree with her! 

I sometimes listen to YouTube, and love it.  Watching the artists perform will go a long way toward that "suspention of disbelief" and makes up for compromises in sound quality.  I like the sound on the big system, with the video on the big screen.  There are some great performances to be experienced.

Charlie

I think it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking about this stuff too much but the main system tends to be sit there and get carried away - sometimes a good book.   In the car Radio 3 on FM.

joerand posted:

CharlieP posted:

Sometimes music is my time machine back to my youth

I still play LPs I bought in the mid-70's and find it amazing how powerful a time machine that music can be. Stark memories of saving for a treasured album, the paper route, mowing lawns, etc. Playing that album over and over again. Soon other memories of bygone friends ensue. I'm back in the bedroom of my teens where the music has never since sounded quite as real or exciting.  Maybe that's part of the holy grail some of us chase with upgrades; recapturing the glory of the music when we first heard it as new. It may sound better with better gear, but might never sound as good.

Couldn't agree more. Why is it that an old album we loved in our youth just doesn't sound quite as magical today?

Is it that we have built it up too much over the years in our minds only to be slightly disappointed by the inevitable anticlimax? Call it rose-tinted ear drums!

Is it our ears, or rather our brains, have become (too?) accustomed to higher quality reproduction in the home that hearing an old, and possibly mediocre recording from our youth, is a slight letdown because our aural sense expects more these days?

Have our musical tastes simply moved on?

Anyway treasured albums still hold a special place in my heart and the ability to bring back memories of friends, places and occasions is magical. BTW, that is what I love about Tidal - instant reminiscence.

Urm - often when I listen to an old album I find it even more powerful. Listening to Free (2nd album) the other week and the syncopation and time changes I was awe struck.  

nigelb posted:

Why is it that an old album we loved in our youth just doesn't sound quite as magical today?

 

Richard Lehnart wrote a really good piece on this in Stereophile recently (search 'Starting Over Again for the First Time').

This extract gives the gist of it:

It's one thing to have such a singular breakthrough experience, as I did at 17 with Suzuki and Mahler. It's another to want to repeat that experience over and over. It's actually not possible. It's like trying to open an already opened door, a doorway passed through long ago. Whatever it was that was broken through that first time can be broken through only once, and perhaps only at a certain time in life. After that, it can never again be as wholly new and unprecedented, even shocking, as it was that first time—and almost certainly it will not be triggered by what triggered it the first time. It's like the second beer of the evening: I never want a second beer; what I actually want is to repeat the experience of drinking that evening's first beer. But it's not possible: the first beer has already done its work.

Nigel,

I am hearing those old songs today as I have never heard them before.  So the musical performance is more explicitly reproduced, but perhaps the "message" is perceived differently?

Charlie

Yes, many of those long-loved (and sometimes long-lost) albums often do 'sound better' today but often what they meant to you in the past and the associations to that music at that time cannot be replicated. As previously mentioned that door can only be opened once. Maybe that is it.

Nigel, have a read of Lehnart's essay. It really answered the question, for me anyway.

Jan-Erik Nordoen posted:

Nigel, have a read of Lehnart's essay. It really answered the question, for me anyway.

That extract from the essay certainly resonated with me. We maybe getting towards and answer. Others on here however seem to be able to relive those old emotions and sometimes I can but so often I feel more anticlimax than nostalgia.

Another extract may help:

« In audio as in music as in life: Do we spend ever more on audio gear, and on constant upgrades, in an attempt to re-enact a breakthrough first made while listening to a car radio or a primitive dorm-room system? If so, it's important to remember that it certainly wasn't the quality of the gear that made that breakthrough possible. It was something in the music, in ourselves, in the times. It couldn't have happened without the sound, and the quality of that sound was not important. I'm not saying that such breakthroughs can never happen again—they can. But none of us is now the same person he or she was then, and they won't happen because we're listening to better gear than we were last year. They'll happen because we've opened our hearts, and the heart cannot be forced open by the will. As Sergiù Celibidache said of conducting the music of Bruckner: "You don't do anything—you let it evolve." And when that is allowed to happen, it can make of life—and listening—a delight. » 

I think the second Lehnart extract resonates more with me. I do think that listening to the music on better gear gives you a deeper insight and gets you that bit closer to that emotion when you first heard the music. I don't think that is the only dragon we chase though. There's lots of music that I felt no emotion for previously; it was only listening to that music on good hi-fi that allowed me to make a connection.

The most effective, emotional or memorable musical experiences I have felt was when I was young from the age of 4 to about 18.  I try to reason why that is and the only conclusion I can come to is that with the particular musical revelations which occurred, I heard for the first time and the novelty of the musical pieces played a big part.  Quality of HiFi gear simply did not play a role, but I tell a lie because my dad's old Gramaphone/radio must of been run on tubes (back in late 50's to early 60's) and I do remember the warm tones of Bing Crosby singing White Christmas.  I think its a bit like when Hendrix came to England and revealed his style of blues and David Clapton shook his head in despair wondering how he can he go on playing the blues after that display.     

I of course still experience these magical moments with my highly resolving system of today but it tends to be with new discoveries rather than with old favourites of my youth. When I say new discoveries that is artists I have never heard before or albums of familiar artists that I have never heard before. I have recently posted this on the 'What Makes You Cry' thread in the Music Room forum.

'This one is a bit weird. Caravan from Van Morrison's It's Too Late to Stop Now live album nearly brought me too tears - certainly had a lump in my throat. Not because it is a particularly sad track. It is the first time I have heard this album and it is simply brilliant. I know it sounds corny but I was transported to the live setting. The Caravan track was so 'live' it took my breath away. The (almost) tears were due to the sheer joy listening to this track (and album) brought. And I promise you, no other substances or stimulants were involved.

As I say - weird!'

This was a genuinely magical musical moment for me. I am familiar with Van Morrison's stuff but have never heard this album before. Another recent magical moment was listening to Beth Hart's Better Than Home album for the first time. Simply stunning. I have never heard Beth Hart before and what a wonderful discovery (well for me anyway).

I had no expectations when listening to the above two albums for the first time. It was the shock of the beauty and impact these albums had that had a profound affect on me. As the latter extract of Lehnart's essay seems to me to be saying, you can't force these emotional reactions to music, they just unfold. You can't prompt them and you certainly can't anticipate them. Maybe it is the heightened expectation we have when listening to some old favourites that almost dooms them to end up as some nice nostalgia but nothing compared to our original reaction to them when we heard them for the first time in our youth.

Who knows?

CharlieP posted:

I sometimes listen to YouTube, and love it.  Watching the artists perform will go a long way toward that "suspention of disbelief" and makes up for compromises in sound quality.  I like the sound on the big system, with the video on the big screen.  There are some great performances to be experienced.

Charlie

 

Romi posted:

This may sound as heresy to this forum, but apart from my small system in the kitchen, I now more often listen to You Tube via a cheap pair of headphones, the quality of music is there in a way, the resolution more immediate and some of the live Rock concert videos is simply sheer exhilarating.  Not only do I get instant gratification via music but I can also find majority of acts, bands, artist, orchestras and get to see them performing.  My daughter also posed a question to me, " why is music via headphones so much better then via speakers?" , I do not know but I am beginning to agree with her! 

This is an interesting point.  When I listen to music on headphones, I get no sense of soundstage depth.  The music is "in my head" and not, as with speakers (or at a live venue), coming from "over there".

But when I use my treadmill, I will often watch TV on an iPad while wearing headphones. This does change my perception, and after a while, I can just about convince myself that the dialogue is coming from the direction of the actors on screen.

Think I am going to change my music listening habits when using headphones, and spend more time watching video concerts!

ATB.

Hook

Headphones have never really done it for me, other than when I needed to isolate myself from the noise and distractions of an open-plan office. Which was not a good idea as it lead to tinnitus. I really prefer, as you say Hook, to have the sound 'over there' and not in my head, competing with the two cicadas endlessly chirping away.

If you use headphones to reduce distractions in an open-plan office, go for noise-cancelling or at least the closed-ear type. The PSB M4Us are very good, but didn't exist when I needed them...

Since about 1971 when I first discovered classical music as a nine year old, I have only ever listened to music as an undivided sole activity. Yes I may have been somewhere where music was playing and I was doing something else, but I certainly was not also attending to the music.

Over the years my listening slowly evolved between live concerts on the radio and recordings, and moved more and more towards recordings till this summer ... In the 1970s it was most likely nine tenths radio, and till this year it had become nine tenths recordings and one tenth streamed internet radio. 

In August I was given back two Leak Trough Line FM/VHF tuners and over the last months since, I am hardly bothering with recordings at all, but simply concentrating my music listening on the evening Radio Three concert and their various other delayed relays of real concerts. 

So much so that I have sold my DAC V1, and the MAC now connects via its analogue output, which serves well enough for the little use I am giving it. Today I had the considerable pleasure of hearing music through my former V1 with the updated firmware or software or whatever is the proper term, and very nice it was, but for the use I was giving it the money tied up was out of proportion.

So it is true, and I would never have foreseen this in my case, the equipment can influence my listening. And I am delighted to find that my listening has broadened out to music that I would never have bought recordings of as such, but which never-the-less has found me enjoying live performances of even avant-guarde and other 20th. Century music that used to hold my attention, and once again is doing so. 

I put this down to the ability the Trough Line has to convey the swing and emotional drive of the performers’ realisation of the music, and thus seem less artificial - less of a barrier - between me and the music. Streamed internet music is a strange thing. It has a silent back ground, apparently broad dynamic, and yet compared to the Trough Line it has a tendency to make the performances sound bland in comparison to the visceral rightness of the Trough Line ... 

I am sure that I shall in the future balance more evenly than now between the radio and my selection of recordings in iTunes, and then will get a suitable DAC for the MAC, but priced in reasonable proportion to the amount of use it will get.

ATB from George

DAC V1, with new firmware, added to Apple TV3, all thanks to George....

Joff