Megachangers Have Changed My Mind!
Sometimes it seems as though audiophiles resist progress as
enthusiastically as possible. We have our reasons, to be sure. Many of us resisted CD,
preferring to wait until players and recordings sounded much better than the early samples
foisted upon us as "perfect." And many of us still employ vacuum tubes fifty
years into the age of the transistor -- but, I hasten to point out, most of us aren't
reacting to their retro-coolness, but rather to their suitability as linear amplification
devices.
And, although we resisted remote control for many years, it
wasn't -- I maintain -- because we wanted to suffer for our passion, but because we were
waiting for remotes that didn't degrade sound quality, such as processor-controlled
resistor ladders.
However, I frequently suspect that the same
ornery-mindedness that allowed us to resist the blandishments of "better, faster,
easier" when it compromised our high fidelity, prevents us from recognizing a good
thing when it comes along. What were once virtues have become habits.
I don't mean to paint all audiophiles with such a broad
brush. I'm really owning up to a personal failure of vision: Until recently I just didn't
"get" multi-disc CD players. Now I'm convinced that they might be the best thing
to happen to recorded music since the development of the CD.
You might suspect that statement of being a left-handed
compliment, especially if you're still a digiphobe. Well, it's not. I like my records as
much as the next audiophile, but records have become (and in a sense always were) an
artisanal product. They come close to being handmade, are produced in small quantities,
are now far from easy to obtain and require almost reverential treatment. CDs, on the
other hand, are the epitome of mass-production: They are readily available, easy to
manufacture and, while far from indestructible, are fairly robust.
Yet, audiophile that I am, I never thought about how the
essential differences between the CD and LP formats practically demanded different
connoisseurship approaches. My most pleasurable listening experiences as a developing
audiophile were those late night sessions when I would prepare an LP for playback and then
listen attentively. This could go on for hours -- and frequently did: One of the greatest
pleasures in this type of listening is developing a musical thread and pursuing it.
But the LP format dictated that I would have to jump up
every twenty minutes or so and, at the least, turn the record. Or, just as frequently,
choose another to continue the thread, mood, or theme, then prepare it for playback and
proceed. In the throes of real inspiration, one might go through this track by track
rather than disc by disc.
Like many of my audiophile acquaintances, I tended to treat
CDs in a similar way, playing them all the way through, just I had typically played
complete LP sides. And like many music lovers, I found that my listening rhythm was thrown
off by the fact that CDs could last anywhere from 36 to 70 minutes. For many classical
works, this was a boon -- I could finally hear Beethoven symphonies without interruption!
But, with some artists, going from a twenty-five minute album side to an hours' worth of
music seemed too much sometimes. Of course, really creative musicians began to use the
extended playing times to create programs they never would have attempted on LP, so the
right hand giveth what the left hand taketh away.
There's no denying that people's listening habits have
changed -- it's no longer all that common for anyone to listen attentively through an
entire disc. In fact, listening attentively seems to be on the wane; most people now
listen while doing at least one other thing -- studying or reading or balancing the
checkbook. I don't know whether this is a result of the random play feature so common on
multi-disc changers, or if it is just a sign of the multi-tasking mentality so frequently
attributed to Gen Xers. Perhaps it's just a symptom of how little time we now have for
relaxation.
So there I was, a right-thinking audiophile, continuing to
react to my hobby as though nothing had changed since 1971. I'd listen to an entire disc
or nothing at all. One day I received a megachanger to evaluate. I suspect I actually even
sneered -- but I loaded it with a few hundred discs and set about my usual routine.
Of course, I still didn't "get" megachangers, so
I did more or less what I would do with any CD player. I listened to a disc. Then I
listened to another. Then another. And since two hours is about my limit for listening
critically, I then picked up a book and began to read as the changer cycled through
another disc. It was kind of nice, not having to think about what I was going to play
next, so I happily read and listened until a disc I didn't particularly want to hear came
up in rotation.
That's when I actually said why can't they build a unit
that will just play the kind of music you want to hear late at night. I just sat there
fondling the remote as it sunk in -- they had. I even had one and had been too stupid to
use it in an intelligent way. So I sat down and crudely programmed the thing by listing
each record's category. I then listened until the wee hours to all the late '50s/early
'60s jazz I'd salted the unit with.
It wasn't attentive listening, not in the sense of
following each note and line intently as though reading the score. But it was
intensely personal. I meandered along with Miles' wistful "If I Were a Bell" and
soared with 'Trane's "Africa/Brass." I drifted through Hancock's "Empyrean
Isles" and inhaled the "dry martini" sound of Desmond's "Bossa
Antigua." I was drunk on dreams and reveries, memories and musical reactions. It was
a return to a place I'd never been and one of the pivotal musical experiences of my life.
I tend to listen to a lot more music these days. Some of it
is still the concentrated listening I've always indulged in. A lot of it is background for
the various chores I need to do during the day. But I'm also able to do something new:
something similar to intensive listening, but actually quite different. I recently wrote a
profile of Carla Bley, so while I was thinking about her life's work, I programmed the
Sony CDP-CX400s (which I review this week in Hot Product)
to play only her music (artist select) and spent three days or so absorbing twenty years
worth of her amazing arrangements. This enabled a total immersion in her musical world
that would not have been possible with a single disc player. Oh, I could have played the
discs in sequence, but the very act of choosing the disc order would have imposed a point
of view on the listening experience -- my accidental journey through her oeuvre was
filled with epiphanies and discoveries a guided tour might not have turned up.
I also have to say that the random song generator
frequently combines songs in amazing combinations -- some seem almost inspired, while at
worst, it is no more ham-handed at segues than your typical radio DJ.
I suspect that something like this music bank concept is
our true digital future. We won't use anything as crude as physical changers, of course.
Linn already has a product on the market that points in that direction. It's called the
Kivor and it's a web-enabled, hard drive based, high-fidelity pitch-accurate recording and
playback audio distribution system. It can record, replay and distribute from digital,
analog and on-line media and can allow up to 16 users to listen to separate performances
at the same time.
We're living in interesting times -- Blue Note just
announced that the new Medeski, Martin & Wood CD, The Dropper, can be
downloaded for $15.99 or purchased at record stores as a physical release for a similar
price. That means that authorized downloads are no longer safely ensconced in some
vaporous future time, they're here now. Hard drives, solid state memory and all
kinds of new technologies are ready -- it's us that are dragging our feet. We're
going to need to adapt quickly to this brave new world because it won't resemble the tired
old one.
As far as I'm concerned, bring it on -- now that
I've grasped the megachanger paradigm, I'm ready to embrace it from day one.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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