The New Audio Geeks

[mauidan]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/garden/the-new-audio-geeks.html?_r=0

 

[cjfrbw]

I bought a girl's used ipod a few years ago for the gym. It was completely full of her music. I spent some time going through it to see if there was anything I would like. It was all paid for through downloads and couldn't be transferred.

It was torture listening to her selection of rap, hip hop and pop atrocities, I just wound up erasing the whole thing and putting my own music in. I actually like the occasional rap and hip hop as urban poetry, but none of this stuff.

She must have paid a mint for all that stuff over time. Probably could have bought some nice headphones or gear for what she wasted on that music.

 

[Steve Williams]

very true Dan. Thanks

 

[JackD201]

My 20 year old nephew from San Diego visited us for the very first time. His comment was, in verbatim, "If we brought a blind guy in here, I think we could fool him."

The young 'uns get it.

 

[Bill Hart]

I always wondered whether if you ran some of the 'neo-soul' through auto-tune again, the vocals might sound good.
Same goes for later Black Keys stuff- I mean I'm into garage bands n' ****, but it's all garage, and no band.
DangerMouse!

 

[Groucho]

Nice article. I was interested in the idea that it is natural for an audiophile to listen to music "at work". Why? If you're concentrating on the music, you're not concentrating on your work, and vice-versa. Also, I think you only have so many listens to a piece of music before familiarity and contempt kicks in. Why waste those listens using ear buds at work?

 

[Bill Hart]

Nice article. I was interested in the idea that it is natural for an audiophile to listen to music "at work". Why? If you're concentrating on the music, you're not concentrating on your work, and vice-versa. Also, I think you only have so many listens to a piece of music before familiarity and contempt kicks in. Why waste those listens using ear buds at work?

Groucho~ I think it may be a different kind of listening. For one, I can't listen to music and work- it's distracting. Yeah, at the gym, somebody has picked out some channel on Pandora and I listen to it only to identify the recordings. But, my suspicion is that if you asked 99% of the people in the gym what they were listening to, they wouldn't have a clue. It's background for something else.
I'm not saying 'old skool' is better but it was different: when i was a teen, you needed a good stereo (in addition to a few other things) to have a life. And that stereo was the center of life indoors- you sat there and listened.
It's like people talking at a concert during a performance or jamming on their handheld device. The music is wallpaper for something else. Not sayin that's true for everybody, or solely the province of youngins, (hell, look at the number of oldsters doing the same thing at a club or show while the talent is on stage performing).

 

[Groucho]

The music is wallpaper for something else.

I think that's the nub of the matter, and why you can have the seeming paradox of all-time-high levels of music listening while also being at an all-time-low in terms of hi fi equipment sales.

 

[class a]

According to the article Bob Brown the new COO of Thiel wants to design slimmer cabinets to attract young career women.

 

[LL21]

Nice article. I was interested in the idea that it is natural for an audiophile to listen to music "at work". Why? If you're concentrating on the music, you're not concentrating on your work, and vice-versa. Also, I think you only have so many listens to a piece of music before familiarity and contempt kicks in. Why waste those listens using ear buds at work?

Interesting...since I was in high school I listened to music while I worked all the time. When I work at home in evenings or weekends i always have music on while i work. However, I cannot listen to music when I run! I met only 1 guy like that...a taxi driver who was so surprised to finally meet someone else like that. He said his girlfriend thought he was crazy!

When I used to listen to radio, I always had to stop work while someone was speaking and wait til music started again before I could work again. Naturally, I don't listen to radio now...just albums strait thru.