Comment by frankus 10 days ago
As a young Gen Xer it's fun to go back and listen to radio hits I heard growing up (on mostly terrible sound systems playing radio or cassette tapes) using modern audio hardware. There's a lot of depth in many tracks that I couldn't really appreciate at the time, because even a half-decent sound system was the kind of luxury I (or my parents) wouldn't have splurged on.
There's no shortage of crappy modern audio hardware, but compared to like a bedside clock-radio, or an 80s economy car, a decent bluetooth speaker is actually an upgrade, and something like a HomePod (that costs around $115 in 1988 dollars) is revolutionary.
Which is not to say you couldn't find a Hi-Fi system from that era that would put a HomePod to shame, but it was the sort of thing only rich people and music geeks would have access to.
I feel like a good set of headphones on that laptop will get you there for far less than the cost of a full speaker system. But emphasis on good headphones (i.e. intended for audio reproduction, and not a gamer-focussed headset).
Even a cheap pair of something like the ATH-M40x will give you a drastically better soundscape than the average headset.
It is amazing that there are entire genres of music like space bass that rely on sub bass for the whole experience, and it's pretty much impossible to get the same experience without a good subwoofer. Good headphones can get close but lose the visceral feeling of the sub in your body.
And even then you weren’t getting the full live experience. Some of the tracks from that time are an incredible physical experience.
Deep bass sounds in live music are just awesome, in the original sense of the word. Those big dubstep "wubs" or deep downtuned sludge metal riffs vibrate through your whole chest. Reproducing something like that at home is certainly possible, but you're going to have to piss off the neighbors to get there.
As a millennial with auditory speech processing difficulties, going back to old tracks on modern gear is always a treat. There’s entire instruments I just could not pick up on when I first heard the tracks years or decades ago, that my modern headphones or BAS (Big-Ass Speakers) bring out so clearly and cleanly, all from the exact same lossless file from the exact same CD I ripped at the time.
Now I need to go back and listen to Vogue again, it sounds like. Totally not complaining!
even a half-decent sound system was the kind of luxury I (or my parents) wouldn't have splurged on
It's not just the sound system that is the issue, in fact, it's usually the least of the problems. Speaker placement + listening room are the main problem. Quarter decent would do as well. Anything which isn't complete crap and has separate speakers, which could easily be found 2nd hand for cheap when we were young, is sufficient to bring out most of what is in songs like Vogue (it was after all also produced to be played on average systems). But that requires that instead of the "let's just place 2 speakers next to the amp and we're done" some basic care is taken wrt speaker placement in relation to room shape.
I figured this out by accident when I was about 10, having spent all my savings (like 50$ or so) on a 2nd hand old (think 70's) amp + speakers: I couldn't wait to play something on my system so unloaded it from my dad's car, outside in the garden, soldered a cable to go from my walkman to whatever input the thing had, turned the thing on and was blown away. Like listening to new songs. Simply because I happened to place them roughly the way I saw on pics in magazines, and eleminated any reflections because I was in the garden. So even though by todays' standards the raw reproduction capabilities i.e. frequency response of the system was very subpar, simply making the stereo work roughly correctly and having some bass with it, makes a huge difference. Hence after moving the system into my bedroom there was again disappointment because it was not quite as good anymore. Though after some experimenting it was still waaaaaay better and more resolving than anything I heard before (except headphones maybe, but that's a different thing wrt stereo imaging and bass), including my more wealthy family's rather expensive systems simply because they were all just dumped in a room.
Every so often when I was younger, I’d do the same with movies, buying and setting up a nice surround sound system to get the spacial effects just right. Every time I would thoroughly enjoy it until rearranging/relocating and not making it a priority to acquire and set up a new system.
Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was that for me. There was always a worn out cassette of it kicking around somewhere and even that played on a shitty little boom box was good.
When I finally got a really good setup at home and gave it another listen, it was almost as if previously I had read about the record and now I'm hearing it.
What recording artists managed with the technology of the 70's is pretty impressive.
Yep. On that note I'd like to remind younger readers that CDs were still very new at the time of this album - many people had still never heard a digital recording so listening to this album in particular on a decent CD system was magical.
I actually had an original Discman and partially credit listening to this album on that as part of what led me to spend (probably too large) a chunk of my adult life DJing clubs and raves.
My dad was into music, so we had a decent set up with turntable, cassette, 8-track, and even reel to reel. I’m very thankful that crappy Bluetooth speakers were not a thing growing up. I had full speaker cabinets with sub, mid, tweeter for rich full sound. I also had lots of time where I was the only one at home and could push those speakers to release the full potential of songs.
Volume makes a difference to be sure, but full wall of sound vs loud earbuds are totally different experiences.