how many people know there is a banjo playing on the eagles hit " take it easy"?
Don’t care. Don’t even play music on the phone.
You’re right. Listening through a decent stereo is a far richer experience than listening over a cheap unit or a phone or earbuds. And listening in an acoustically treated room on a decent system takes it to another level. I love listening to music in my recording studio as does my wife. It sounds big, clear and immersive and is a far more engaging experience than listening through computer speakers or a small system. Man, for a grand you can buy a killer setup, even some great vintage gear. I love those big, powerful integrated amps from the 70s and 80s. They sound great and they look cool.
I heard that banjo in there.
How many know there’s a hurdy gurdy in Apocalypse Orchestra’s The Garden Of Earthly Delights?
/wait..what?
I have several pieces of audio equipment with tubes, and I firmly believe that a tube renaissance is upon us. There’s so much more warmth and depth to audio when using old school methods. That said, I never considered myself someone with exceptional ears, but I can absolutely tell a difference with lossless audio.
I remember in the 90s when MP3s started popping up around the Internet, I thought it was so cool that we could compress audio to the point it was retrievable over dialup. CDA files as found on CDs back then were very large compared to the ~1 MB per minute of early MP3 audio. With FLAC, the sizes are much larger, but the highs are not clipped, and the lower parts of the spectrum are less muddy.
I use a Schiit USB DAC and tube amplifier on my computer with Beyerdynamic semi-open back studio monitors, FWIW. USB isn’t pristine, but it’s got enough bandwidth to support the audio spectrum.
And nobody has time these days to hand crank a Model T Ford either. Nowadays everybody has these fancy schmanzy automobiles with the push button ignitions and the remote starters.
Lazy bastards.
I took a flight physical in 1970 when I was 25 and the physician strangely asked me, “Do you own a good stereo system?” “No.” “Don’t waste your money ever buying one. You can’t hear worth a XXXX.”
Yes, I have hearing aids, but love quiet and don’t wear them most of the time..... ;-)
Flipping the record.
Yes - memories.
And the test record, can you hear the 10Khz, 15khz, 20khz?
Hearing aids now, but listening to XM in the car, some music/songs are better than others. I suspect different levels of compression.
For most people, and especially those of us who spent a fair amount of time at concerts with the like of Led, Rush, Hendrix, et al… and other heavy players… our ears aren’t, sadly, as sensitive and finely tuned as they once were. And recently for me, a malfunction with hearing protection at an indoor range dinged one my ears enough that even flushing a toilet gets it a ringing.
So no, at this stage of the game, lossless audio may not, I say again MAY not make that impressionable a difference.
Although, I once knew that it did.
As for mobile devices, I’ll give Apple their due. They’ve put a lot research and money behind bringing hi end audio and video to those “cheap” mobile devices.
Their music catalog now offers losses audio with Dolby ATMOS. AirPod Pros, for what they are offer impressive sound and noise canceling. Over the ear, studio quality? Um, no. But still impressive.
Well, since you ax, yes I know there’s a banjo in Take It Easy.
More to your point, do you know there’s a banjo in Rhapsody in Blue? It’s true. I don’t think that I’d know from listening, myself, but it’s there. Check out a live performance next time you get a chance. There it is, just like George Gershwin wrote it.