Why contemporary audio is garbage-- a lot has to do with "lifestyle."

[K5UJ]

I do indeed detect an improvement in audio quality with all-vacuum tube analog ham gear compared to what I get with a firmware DSP type receiver, which sounds good in a sterile clinical way, but is flat and dull sounding at the same time. 

I also have just discovered that I, or more precisely, my stereo, is an object of scorn to some, because it represents the old way of listening to music, which is to sit, and well, listen to the music which is to say, give it my undivided attention, since it is supposed to be enjoyable, otherwise, why would I be doing all this?

But no, such ancient apparatus such as analog stereos, vinyl records, CDs even, and (cover your ears or in this case your eyes) dare I write it, speakers are the equipment of the old order along with the high fidelity that went with them, because now, all music or any sort of sound recording, is to be compressed, folded, stapled and spindled, in a tiny box with little ear pods, so the nose produced can be heard while multitasking.  We no longer want to just sit and listen to something--BORING! and the new barometric indicator of this is that younger consumers prefer what I would consider poor sound reproduction quality over something with fidelity. 

How did I learn all this?  Start reading here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/business/media/10audio.html

At least now I know why cell phone audio is tolerated and why I stick with a copper land line.  It's for the same reason I stick with my 30 year old stereo.  I'm old.

Rob

[KX5JT]

I can't imagine hearing Inna Godda Da Vida on an iPod with earbuds.

John

[w3jn]

^^ Indeed.  Best served from a hissette deck into aftermarket 6X9s shoehorned into the back deck 

Inna-gadda-da-vida is 17 minutes long.  It was 27 miles from my college campus in Mankato, MN to Waseca, MN via US 14, going thru the small towns of Eagle Lake and Janesville, both popular speed traps.  Your mission, Mr. Phelps, should you choose to accept it, is to drive from Mankato to Waseca before the end of the song.

Did it many times in my old '78 Fury 440 police interceptor...

[K5UJ]

John, good to talk to you Sunday night.  I'll probably be QRT for the next several days due to wx and Dayton hamvention.

JN you are certainly a man of mystery--Minnesota, Greece, 750 w. TMC rigs, what else have you not revealed?   

[Superhet66]

Sounds more like a Blues Brothers mission.........

Re: ipods & true HiFi, I don't think any one will be shoving this in the Ol' aural canal any time soon:

 http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=223270

[W3SLK]

Kind of like watching the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" at home. Somehow its just not the same. 

[WA1GFZ]

Inna Godda Da Vida in my primer red 60 Pontiac and high school sweetie

[Jim, W5JO]

Anyone know what Inna Godda da Vida means? 

[W3GMS]

I use to listen to Inna Godda Da Vida in my 62 Dodge Lancer with a JC Penny's 8 track with Lafayette bookshelf speakers in the back seat.  Oh yes, I can't forget the color organ under the dash!   
Joe, W3GMS 

[flintstone mop]

Definitely Audio Karma here. I prefer the sound of my hissette deck in my 2003 LeSabre over the CD sound. My vehicle has both and the tapes are really nice. Your typical Dolby HX recorded flat.
A little Infinity sub bass for a little more ooomph.

The tube amps have a nicer sounding bass and the high end doesn't hurt.

Fred

[WB3JOK]

Anyone know what Inna Godda da Vida means? 

The legend is that the singer was incredibly stoned and was mumbling "in the garden of Eden"...

[w3jn]

Sounds more like a Blues Brothers mission.........

Re: ipods & true HiFi, I don't think any one will be shoving this in the Ol' aural canal any time soon:

 http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=223270

Indeed, the maroon Fury in the pic was identical to mine.  The white decal was removed from the doors but it still had the state serial # sticker across the back.

[W2VW]

Anyone know what Inna Godda da Vida means? 

Means the DJ needs an extended trip to the bathroom.

[KA1ZGC]

Anyone know what Inna Godda da Vida means? 

Means the DJ needs an extended trip to the bathroom.

In-a-gadda-da-vida wasn't in the rotation at WTOS (don't ask me why). Our usual "gotta grab a newspaper" selection consisted of Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold", or almost anything from Pink Floyd's "Animals" album. Long about the mid-90s, a band called Seahorses came out with a tune called "Love is the Law". The radio edit was the usual 3-ish minutes, but the album cut went a little over ten. We never played the radio edit.

For those really long absences (as in "gotta run home for a few") I had a 1/4" half-track open-reel mix of Pink Floyd's "Echoes", with "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict" played over the whalesong guitar in the middle. That was 27 minutes, if I recall correctly.

Needless to say, I had a lot of fun messing with the heads of all the stoners listening to us in the overnight hours. Gained a following for it, too.

Now it's just another completely dead art form.

[Superhet66]

I was really hung up on LARGE fast cars in my teens/20's. I picked up a retired unmarked police highway '78 Impala in the 80's. (I'll post pics some time).
I kept it bone stock outside with the alley light but it ended up with a mild 454, TH400, Hooker hdrs, a full length 3" exhaust and tall gearing w/ 3:08's . It wasn't Realy FF but certainly FF for a full frame bannana boat and it loved the Hiway. Audio was a mish mash of Cerwin Vega, klipsch, a Sony head/amp, home made cross overs and a healthy home brew, mid-range bass cabinet . ( not ghetto style bass )  
I was a freak for drive train dynamic balancing and the car would drift up well over 100 if one didn't pay attention on the PA trnpk, NY thrwy or up in MI at school.
My girlfriend at the time would steel the Impala and leave me her Honda accord.
I don't have to tell you where the gas guage would be on return.  

*funny, I got quite, ahemm, Lost this weekend listening to Floyd's Animals LP....
amazing stuff on there and good for the blood pressure.


** "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict" can sneak up on you after being lulled off bye the first tracks, it can be a bit freaky if your not ready for it 

[k4kyv]

This is nothing new.

The first reduction in quality of "consumer audio" for the sake of convenience to be widely accepted by the public occurred when hissette tapes displaced reel-to-reel.  I suppose 8-tracks could be included as well, but they hit a dead end because they were cumbersome and didn't work very well, and weren't all that convenient anyway.

That's one of the reasons "HD Radio" hasn't taken off. Nobody really cares about the alleged improvement in sound quality over analogue FM, if indeed it does exist. 90% of the stuff spewed out on the AM band (political/sports talk) could just as well be delivered via slopbucket. What all commercial broadcast radio needs is new directions in content.

The home stereo component system complete with full size speakers, like amateur radio, would be considered by some to be "faintly embarrassing".

But then, at the other extreme, audiophiles spend tens of thousands of dollars on "high end" audio. In addition there is the misguided audiophile crowd, AKA "audiophools", who have  been conned by tricksters' smoke-and-mirrors into sinking huge fortunes into bogus audio crap like $600 power cords, $1000 speaker cables, wooden volume control knobs, cable break-in, oxygen-free copper, "tessitura", ad nauseam.

[K1JJ]

Anyone know what Inna Godda da Vida means?  
Means the DJ needs an extended trip to the bathroom.

 

Same trip with the song, "El Paso."  Remember,  "Out in the West Texas town of El Paso I fell in love with a Mexican girl." ??

I heard an old DJ tell the story - they would put that record on when it was time to take care of busness. When they heard the bathroom monitor saying, "I felt a bullet go deep in my chest,"  they knew it was time to get out the paper and start moving fast...

T

[Superhet66]

Well Don, if the proof is in the puddin', people are coming around. Forget about picking up any decent vintage reel to reel or even marginal tube AF amps, on
e-pay, etc. on the cheap. There is a strange Renaissance taking place toward "commodious" vintage, audio gear.

com·mo·di·ous   /kəˈmoʊdiəs/  Show Spelled[kuh-moh-dee-uhs]  Show IPA
–adjective
1.spacious and convenient; roomy: a commodious apartment.
2.ample or adequate for a particular purpose: a commodious harbor.   

[Jim, W5JO]

Anyone know what Inna Godda da Vida means? 

The legend is that the singer was incredibly stoned and was mumbling "in the garden of Eden"...

You are correct and, other than church, my first encounter with the song was 1957.  I can't remember the artist name but it was sung as a ballad.  If you would like to research some lyrics from an old tune that you appreciated in such poor quality in your past years, try this link:  http://lyrics.astraweb.com/    In 1957 I didn't have a cassett or 8 track so AM had to do for romancing the sto...er girl.

I was dialing around the web in past weeks and came across several sites that are pushing vinyl again.  It has a big following in the high end crowd.  Wonder if we will go back to worrying about scratching records again?  Oh well what is new is old and what is old is new.

[k4kyv]

The problem with CD's is that the digital to analogue sample rate leaves audible "teeth" on the waveform. The Super Audio CD was supposed to correct that, but unfortunately that technology has apparently gone the way of the Sony MiniDisc, another quality product that never quite caught on with the public.

I can appreciate the virtues of vinyl, but every place I have ever lived, the environment has been too dusty to keep records from becoming full of annoying ticks and pops after only a few plays despite my best efforts to keep them clean.  Also, vinyl doesn't have anywhere near the dynamic range even of regular CD's.

I remember my greatest record cleaning disaster was  back in the 70's.  I purchased a thing called a "record preener".  It was a cylinder covered with something like velvet, with plastic foam inside.  It came with a bottle of liquid cleaner that was squirted into the cylinder to saturate the foam.  The idea was that the liquid would migrate to the surface to wet the velvet, and with the record turning, you lightly laid the velvet surface on the rotating disc, and the wet fibres would extend down into the grooves and clean out the crud, plus neutralise any static buildup.

The thing worked.  I could clean a record and would always find a line of dust and crud on the surface of the preener.  It was easy to wipe off the preener to make it clean for next use.  It substantially reduced the crackles and pops.

To keep the liquid from evaporating during storage, the preener was inserted inside a hollow plastic cylinder that was relatively air tight. My great disaster occurred when some kind of fungus contaminated the liquid and the soup incubated, leaving a sticky gummy residue on the velvet surface.  I ruined several records before I figured out what was going on.  I still have those records but have never found a way to clean the gunk out the grooves.  It leaves the sound extremely distorted and sometimes causes the record to skip, plus it added a tremendous amount of surface noise.

[flintstone mop]

Hell, DON,
I just take my vinyl to the sink and wash in warm soapy Dawn and rinse.
The Audio Karma folks are usually pretty down-to-earth with the audio stuff. Not too much Phoolery with the magic cables, etc.
They love Fishers and Magnavox and the old "electronic Coffins".........consoles

Fred

[N4LTA]

Sad thing is that with the high speed A/Ds and the technology available - digital high fidelity could be great.

But no one cares about music quality -  the IPOD is king.

[k4kyv]

Hell, DON, I just take my vinyl to the sink and wash in warm soapy Dawn and rinse.

I tried that but the detergent seems to leave a waxy film of its own.  Don't remember what brand I used, but maybe the wrong stuff.

[W2VW]

*funny, I got quite, ahemm, Lost this weekend listening to Floyd's Animals LP....
amazing stuff on there and good for the blood pressure.

Best audio trick in the genre was the alternator whine mixed into the beginning of "Wish You Were Here."

[WA3VJB]

*funny, I got quite, ahemm, Lost this weekend listening to Floyd's Animals LP....
amazing stuff on there and good for the blood pressure.

Best audio trick in the genre was the alternator whine mixed into the beginning of "Wish You Were Here."

Dave I always thought that was the sound of a high speed tape shuttle on an open reel machine, which would be appropro in 1971.  During fast-forward or rewind, the tape is lifted from the head stack, but enough gets through on the playback head to hear it do just that. It even changes pitch as the reels shift their load, and the spooling motor feels the change in ratio, just like a set of gears.