High Fidelity

New Speakers 
Almost a month ago I was at a friend's house for brunch. It was a birthday party event, and we brought with us Joanna Newsom's new album Have One On Me as a gift. After savoring an amazing strawberry shortcake dessert, we put the new album on and I was struck by the quality of the bass notes played on the harp. I had already listened to the same album on my stereo at home, as well as Newsom's two previous albums, so I had a pretty good sense of what the harp sounded like on my system. The sound produced by my friend's system sounded so much closer to a real instrument than my own, that I was pretty much ruined by it. I needed to upgrade my stereo, and quick.

As any savvy 21st century shopper does, I posted a quick note on Facebook: "Time to buy new speakers. Currently considering the Bose acoustimass 3 based on the amazing harp bass I heard on friend's system when playing the new Joanna Newsom. Any other rec's for speakers in the $200 range?" Pretty quickly I had two audiophile friends respond dismissing Bose as "an illusion" and recommending slightly pricier but far superior monitor speakers. I went to two shops to test out some of the recommended models. The first was Definitive Audio on Roosevelt (Seattle). The guy who helped me was extremely helpful, if a bit technical. I learned all about speaker components and speaker companies from him. For instance, Paradigm is a Canadian company that gets R&D funding from the government. This allows them to spend more money on making awesome equipment, whereas Bose spends a much larger portion on marketing. Of the speakers I listened to here (B&W, Paradigm) neither impressed me. They were clearly better than what I already had, but each had something a little off in terms of balance of highs and lows.


The second place I went was Resolution Audio in Ballard. This place has excellent reviews, so I was very excited to check it out, but I also feared everything would be well out of my price range. I don't intend for this to be a review of the shop, so I'll keep this short. I fell in love with a pair of Usher speakers and bought them using a 1/2 price gift certificate from Strangermart, the new discount section of one of Seattle's weekly magazines. I've been listening to several albums a day on these new speakers and it's changed what I hear dramatically. 


What I Hear
The idea behind high fidelity is to come as close to possible to producing all the information from the source, whether it is a cd, mp3, or lp. Instruments should sound like real instruments, and the balance should be what was intended by the artist and producers when it was mixed and mastered. The new speakers I have do this much better than the cheap Sony speakers I picked up over a decade ago on clearance at Circuit City. As I've listened to several different albums spanning a wide variety of genres, I've realized that some music is almost not worth listening to at all unless you have a decent stereo. 
Just minutes ago I was listening to the new opera by The Knife called Tomorrow, In a Year. This 90 minute piece about the life and ideas of Charles Darwin seems to come from an entirely different planet than it's predecessor, the highly regarded electronic pop album Silent Shout. On Pitchfork, Jayson Greene called this "deeply un-portable music: It either demands your complete attention or invites you to shut it off." Greene goes on to confirm what I had been thinking as I listened to this album on the new speakers: "Taking in the album in different settings gave me a little of both reactions. (At home, in front of massive speakers, following along with the lyrics: absorbing. On an iPod during a morning commute: maddening.)" This leaves me wondering, how much music is unappreciated, or misjudged because it was listened to on an inferior system. Do reviewers typically have a good stereo on which they listen to the music they critique? Does this even matter for certain kinds of music? I have also heard anectdotaly that many people when played music on both a very good stereo and a mediocre one, will claim the latter sounds best. People are not used to listening to music on high quality components, so when they do it sounds weird. (I don't know where I heard this, so if anyone has a link for this, please put it in the comments section. Cheers.) I don't know how true this really is, but my wife and I are thoroughly enjoying what we are hearing these past few weeks.