hello dave, you are out of milk
If you don
the geek ambassadors
We download the beta. We waste money on electronic gadgets, then take them apart. We hack the kernel. We secretly like Scheme. We
ruined for life
Admittedly, I’ve always been a bit of an audiophile. I listen to a lot of music, and with so many years of playing myself, I’m fairly particular about accuracy of sound. Still, about a week ago, I worried I might have gone completely over the the deep end when I found myself dropping $300 for a pair of Etymotic Research earphones. Since they arrived this morning, however, I’m convinced this could be some of the best money I’ve spent.
Mainly, Etymotic makes very high end hearing aids, and their earphones are an extension of that technology. Tiny flanged earbuds, they fit more like earplugs than traditional in-the-ear headphones, sitting deep in the ear canal and sealing out background noise (25db isolation). But what sets them apart is their sound – without a doubt, the most richly detailed, deliberately accurate that I’ve ever heard reproduced. Better, in fact, than speaker systems I’ve used which sell for nearly 50 times the price. In the words of a colleague who gave the Etymotics a whirl: “holy shit!” Or, further: “it sounds like the music is happening inside my head. You’ve ruined me for life. Now I’ll have to buy a pair of these and I’ll never again be able to listen to my Sony’s.”
Come on, you know you want a pair. Sure they’re ridiculously priced. But, after all, it’s only money.
like, dig, man
Earlier today, as promised, I bought a record player, a Sony PS-LX250H. Then it was off to Academy Records to start the collection. Twenty three dollars later, I now own:
- Miles Davis Cookin’ at the Plugged Nickel
- An Electrifying Evening with the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet
- Antonio Carlos Jobim The Composer of Desafinado, Plays
- Fats Navarro The Complete Blue Note Recordings
- Paul Desmond Pure Desmond
- Kenny Dorham Quintet
- Mel Lewis and The Jazz Orchestra Naturally
- Eagles Take it Easy
- Steve Miller Adventures of a Space Cowboy
Vinyl. Clearly the start of a dangerous new addiction.
on user interface
From Joel Spolsky’s otherwise mediocre User Interface Design for Programmers:
Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.
note perfect
A solid article in the Denver Post on the increasing and increasingly-questionable role of technology in musical recording: “When MTV debuted two decades ago, the movement accelerated toward signing artists based not on vocal ability but on how appealing they would be on video. Vocals were put through the technology wringer from that point on.”
The article focuses mainly on pop, but the effects of high tech have even made their way to the staid world of classical music – producers regularly fix instrumental soloists’ cracked or out of tune notes. Live performances, then, are forced to match the nearly impossible ‘note perfect’ recorded standard. Increasingly, performers are forced to focus less on making music and more on just cleanly hitting all the notes.
That’s why I love playing jazz. Because if I screwed up, I meant to crack that note – it’s you’re fault you weren’t hep enough to dig it.
going analog
One word: plastics. Or, more specifically: vinyl. That’s right, I’m buying a record player.
Serious audiophiles will tell you vinyl has a warmer, fuller sound than the digital, mechanical sound of CDs. Vinyl, they point out, uses a wider range of frequencies than CD. These people are morons. Yes, records have greater frequency range, but both capture sound well beyond the limits of human hearing. And only records have that unfortunate snap, crackle and pop.
So why am I buying a record player? In short, women. Records may sound like crap, but a collection of jazz LPs is as James Bond sophisticated as a vodka martini (best served: Grey Goose, dirty, straight up).