Listen to the music

The Blog

This is the first of what I hope will be an ongoing list of what I am listening to, why, and the effects of the music, along with other miscellaneous ramblings. I love music, can't ignore it, have strong likes and dislikes, enjoy listening in depth and at length especially when there's something special about the music or performer.

Why Listen?

Music may be the most subtle and profound of the arts. A melody lasts a few seconds and then it is gone. Where did it go? Music exists in time and space. The more material arts exist outside of time since they don't need a performer. You hang a painting, install a sculpture. But for music you need a performer. There is a starting and stopping point to the music; it is here and then instantly gone. Music needs time and you could say defines time using rhythms, time signatures and syncopation.

I listen to be affected by music. Each piece has its own ideas and mood and is the composer's attempt to create something beautiful or startling or new. A beautiful melody affects the listener, and in this way the listener takes an active role with the music. The composer creates and the listener is affected. 

Why Write?

There are two main reasons for writing about music I listen to:

1. Writing helps me explore things I feel and think about while listening and helps bring into consciousness what might be below the surface of my mind as the music plays.

2. Readers may be encouraged to do their own listening to these (primarily) "classical" pieces of music (not only musicology's Classical period, but art music that is generally thought of as "classical"). For many reasons this is a good thing. It exposes more people to good music they may not have heard, and encourages others to think about and be moved by music.

In addition, keeping a personal listening log helps me remember what I like and don't like, and tracks my own development as a music listener.

The HiFi

My stereo setup has improved over the last five or so years as I progressed to more serious listening. First I added a MacBook Pro computer to experiment with computer audio. I streamed music from the web as well as ripped cd's to iTunes. 

Next I bought my first DAC (digital to analog converter) to improve the sound coming out of the computer and going into the receiver. I started with a High Resolution Technologies Music Streamer II+. I liked the improved sound. After a few months I wanted more, so I bought HRT's Music Streamer III. The sound was even better.

Around this time I bought a software product for the Mac called Pure Music. It replaces the sound output from iTunes with its own audio system. Pure Music also automatically sets the DAC to the correct frequency for the music file that it is playing. This is necessary when playing multiple file types, some at 44.1 Kz (cd's and mp3's) and some at 88.2k or 96k which my DAC's also supported.

I started buying high definition music from two websites, HDTracks.com and eClassical.com. The music in a quality high def file sounds more like real music, more natural, more beautiful, easier on the ears, especially in orchestral music when there are many instruments playing at once. 

High definition doesn't only mean anything higher than 44.1 Kz (cd). The word size is also increased from 16 bits to 24 bits, giving a much wider range of numbers used to represent audio waves, making music sound better. In fact some files available are 44.1 x 24 bits and are considered (somewhat) high def. In 16 bits you can represent a number up to 65,535 but using 24 bits the number goes as high as 16,777,215, yielding more accuracy.

I began becoming unhappy with the amount of bass I was hearing in my system. My speakers were Definitive Technology's BP10's, which were purchased with an NAD 7240PE receiver. I used Pure Music to set an OSX CoreAudio equalization AudioUnit to increase the bass to a more realistic level. This was better. 

When the NAD 7240 began having problems in one channel, I decided to upgrade the 25 year old receiver. I was listening more and more, and felt I wasn't getting the full sound that was in the music, and it wasn't worth paying to fix the receiver. So I bought another NAD, the NAD C 375BEE integrated amplifier. Big improvement, also more heat. This is a big heavy amp.

That was good, but I still was unhappy with the amount of bass I was hearing. Using software for bass boost was ok, but didn't sound completely natural. So I tried yet another DAC.

Around this time many new DAC's were appearing on the market, many in the price range I wanted to spend. One which peaked my interest was the Schiit Bifrost. The price was right, it was built in the US and the scuttlebutt from reading audio forums was that it sounded good.

When I replace my old HRT with this new DAC I was stunned and thrilled. Now I had bass. I thought maybe it was my old BP10 speakers, maybe they were just weak in the low frequency range. But the Bifrost DAC made the music sound great, lows appeared when before there were few. I was really struck with how much better everything sounded. It was definitely the best bang for the buck since I started playing around with digital audio.

I turned off all the equalization in Pure Music, and also turned off upsampling (calculating mathematically to a higher bit rate) which I was also doing in Pure Music. Everything sounded great in its natural bit rate. 

I've had the Bifrost for a little over a year. There's been an internal upgrade to a better analog circuit (their Uber Analog). It still sounds very good.

Finally a few months ago I gave in (to myself) and bought new speakers. Speakers are probably the most important part of a high fidelity system. I liked my BP10's but thought "there must be more". I looked around (online), read Stereophile magazine, and decided that the KEF Q900 speakers had the right sound vs cost for me. I had previously bought some KEF M500 headphones, primarily for travel, and was very happy with them, so I was inclined to buy KEF again. 

When I first used the Q900 speakers, playing a high def recording of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, I was stunned. Finally I heard what the basses were playing, and it sounded (and felt) great. It totally changed my impressions of the recording and the symphony. Unless you get enough bass, music is just not music.

This is where I am today. It's a great system, sounds great and fun to use.