It is universally acknowledged that I am an odd fellow, but the oddest thing about me, I’m convinced, is that I find MP3 recordings to be superior to CDs, just as I found CDs to be superior to LPs and tapes. I am clearly hearing something that no one else is listening for, while ignoring something else that means a lot to most other listeners.

What is so great about MP3s? Again and again, I hear new things in music that I’ve known for all of my adult life. New lines of counterpoint, rhythmic depth-charges that I’d missed. And every weekend, when I listen to operas while tidying the apartment, I understand some strange unnoticed line of Italian or German. MP3s make music clearer to me than it has ever been.

When I was young, and routinely unimpressed by the audiophile setups that I was obliged from time to time to stand before and worship, I thought that I was simply deaf, or inartistic, or missing a music receptor. This pained me only slightly, because I knew perfectly well, from more articulate exchanges, that I heard more, in the way of music, than almost everybody who wasn’t a score-reading musician. I still don’t know what all those geeky guys heard. They were certainly unable to explain it. I came to regard it as something like a sexual preference — fundamentally inexplicable.

I’m trying, at least, to express what I like about “compressed” music. It’s largely a matter of line. Think of a sketch — a few swift strokes on paper. Now think of that sketch worked into a drawing, with many, many more markings. That drawing is what I hear from my Nanos — more information, you’ll note, not less — and I’m very glad that I do. The sketch is merely vague, suggestive.

Possibly for those very reasons, the sketch is more atmospheric. Is that what’s lost in MP3 conversion? If so, I’m reminded of the old Horn & Hardart slogan: You can’t eat wallpaper. It’s nice, but it’s not the point.

If I am tired of guys repeating the lament that music downloads, while convenient, don’t sound as good as — as good as whatever superseded mode still holds their interest, it’s because they can’t be bothered to specify what’s missing. One might almost think that they’re simply missing their youth.  

When I talked this over with Kathleen, she spoke of the LP as “warm” and of the CD as “cold.” This is why I’m always inclined to put myself on the Aspie spectrum: for “warm,” I’d say “indistinct,” and, for “cold,” “crystalline.”

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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