Issue 235   September 2013
The Only Thing Constant in Life Is Change
Editorial By Neil Gader

   

  One of life's toughest challenges, especially as the years roll by, is to remind yourself to constantly look forward and not succumb to reminiscence — to gazing longingly back to supposedly golden eras. This applies in audio, too. I felt the siren song of the past calling to me for the first time when the compact disc debuted — those soulless, sonically flat and deadening, shiny, malevolent discs that reminded me of everything that was disposable in the world. They even looked prepackaged for a landfill. A polycarbonate/aluminum pancake that needed computer-style processing to read the data. Data? A term in and of itself anathema to the warmth, majesty, and yes, in some instances, kick-ass slam of real music as I'd experienced it in live venues and on the analog LP. I treated the new format with the level of disdain that I'd once reserved for cassettes.

And my early reservations were confirmed in playback. Call me a snob but CDs at that point sounded pretty heinous — a contrivance of convenience and nothing more. But adapt or die is how it goes with technology. Bit by bit, the compact disc got better; the playback components, the DACs, the whole caboodle began sounding worthy of any thoughtful set of ears. The format began to sound, dare I admit it, musical. And even with liner notes still too darn tiny to read, I adapted, just as we learn as toddlers that we must. Grudgingly I started handling my growing CD collection with a bit more care. I kept those silver discs neatly organized (like my LPs), clean, and, when not in use, in their jewel boxes. I began to appreciate the lengths that the designers and engineers of the high-end community had gone to improve the sound of transports, circuitry, and digital recording. Rationalizing, I even began to see the parallels of vinyl playback and CD players. After all it was still a round disc, and it rotated like an LP. It got dusty. There were even top-loading players that had small stabilizing pucks that rode on the disc like my tried-and-true record clamp. The CD became a part of my audio experience, even though I never truly liked it all that much. I just skipped over the “falling in love” part and moved straight to the “let's be friends” part. Music once again overcame my prejudice, and it still does. We could live together, CDs and I. After all, the only constant in life is change, and it was all about the music, stupid.

And then computer media appeared. And once again, gone were all the familiar touchstones. Nothing much to touch at all, in fact. My system became a stranger to me. There wasn't anything remotely resembling a familiar ritual — a hook I could hang my nostalgia on. The only meaning VTA now represented was very troubled audiophile. And the only thing spinning was a 1TB hard drive connected via FireWire to a MacBook. My CDs — ironically, now almost beloved at this point — were committed to hard drive memory and stored on a closet shelf. The talk was all about USB DACs, streaming downloads, a fresh menu of file extensions (WAV or AIFF — what to do?), and new audio resolutions to conquer. The Apple remote app was indispensable, I was told. And never forget to tweak your computer — 8 gigs of memory minimum. Once again I could feel myself starting to gaze back fondly.

So, how do I put this? Computer audio—I hated it. Really. But even as I was going cross-eyed looking for my Mac's MIDI application I kept listening. It's part of what I do. And as has always happened in the past, the music caught up to me. Its melodies and rhythms overcame my reservations about the format. Song by song, note by note, computer audio proved itself. I still may not like the medium but the message came through loud and clear. 

So it began, an uneasy truce with computer media. Like thirty years ago with the compact disc, another bout of approach/avoidance commenced.

Now I'm growing accustomed to it and trying to move forward. And whenever I find myself annoyed after rebooting my computer following a CONFIG change (who knew audiophiles would ever talk this way?), I bite my tongue and remind myself that a whole bunch of brilliant minds have put a whole lot of thought into redefining how music is recorded, stored, cataloged, and ultimately enjoyed, and that I need to get over my annoyance because life changes and it really is so much less about the format and all about the music. After all, it could have been a whole helluva lot worse — I could still be stuck listening to cassettes.

 

---- Neil Gader 

 

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