Audio, Audiophiles and the Aesthetic Experience of Medium

Back in December I bragged about predicting the onset of the cassette revival, and five months into 2010 it looks like that revival is in full swing. Articles about the renewed interest in the lowly compact cassette have appeared in as wide variety of sites as the Chicago Tribune, UK Guardian and Pitchfork. Much of the press interest seems to be driven by the wave of cassette-only releases and cassette-based labels, combined with the novelty of renewed interest in a medium many believed to be wholly abandoned and discredited.

This past week my Radio Survivor colleague Jennifer Waits posted about a recent piece at PopMatters by Jay Somerset titled “The Day the (AM) Music Died.” In it Somerset makes the case that the particular sonic dynamics of AM radio–mid-range heavy without low bass or high treble–dictated the production quality for records that hoped to be Top 40 hits:

To sound good on mono AM, you needed a dense, reverberant, everything-at-once sound rather than a dynamic, stereo recording that only sounded good on FM, which the majority of people never even listened to.

Somerset brings his argument into the future by noting how lo-fi production techniques that harken back to that AM radio sound have become popular again amongst indie rock artists. This modern take on it creates,

the sort of sound that reminds you of something, but is inherently different. In other words, while it conjures the past, it’s only retro in its top-coat sheen and could never be mistaken for a song from another era, nor charged with being mere nostalgia art.

Nevertheless Somerset’s analysis resonated with me because I’d been thinking quite a bit lately about the aesthetics of medium. On the one hand, I am a bit of a (cheapskate) audiophile. I enjoy well recorded and reproduced sound. On the other hand, I’ve been a media producer long enough to know that the pursuit of some kind of absolute fidelity is asymptotic, if not Quixotic. Every choice made by a recording engineer, electrical engineer and equipment designer has some kind of impact on the sound. That result of that impact may be more or less pleasing to some people. But any impact means that the sound reproduced by your speaker varies in any number of ways from the original sounds created before the microphone (and that doesn’t even take into account strictly synthetic sounds that were never recorded by a microphone).

Here in the second decade of the 21st century we are well into the second century of recorded sound. In this short history we’ve seen five different fundamental analog recording media: wax cylinder, shellac records, vinyl records, wire and magnetic tape. Vinyl and magnetic tape have themselves seen several forms, like 78 rpm records, 45 rpm singles, reel-to-reel tape, 8 track tape and the cassette tape. The move to digital in the last thirty years has also seen several different media: digital audio tape, compact disc, hard disk and flash memory. With digital the medium is often less important than the format of the data, whether it’s 44.1 khz of 16 bit samples on a CD or 128kbps of compressed MP3. Whether analog or digital, what remains true is that the medium is operative and important.

For listeners, the delivery medium is the variable we have the closest relationship to, and the most control over. We can choose to listen to a CD or an MP3. Twenty years ago people often made the choice between cassette or vinyl. While the choice was often dictated by economics or convenience–vinyl doesn’t play so well in a moving vehicle–the quality of sound was and is often an important consideration. At this point I want to refine the use of the word “quality” with regard to sound. Often we think of sound quality as meaning having greater fidelity, or more closely resembling the original sound recorded in the studio. However, quality also means the nature and dimension of something; a leaf may have the quality of being “green.” Similarly, a reproduced sound may have the quality of being quiet, bass-heavy or sibilant. When speaking of playback medium, then, the notion of sound quality in this respect is important.

Audiophiles primarily argue about the relative fidelity of a playback medium and therefore its ability to reproduce what is believed to be the full simulacrum of the original performance or recording. Of course, the question is never that simple, since everything in the playback chain, from the player itself to amplifiers, speakers and the cables that connect them have some role to play as well. Yet, it’s generally believed that the source medium dictates the fundamental potential for fidelity and the nature of the sound quality heard over speakers or headphones.

Amongst commonly available formats, in the audiophile world CDs and vinyl records are generally held to have the greatest potential for fidelity and sound quality which is relatively uncolored and unmodified from the original recording. Each medium has its adherents who present good arguments for their superiority, or potential superiority. By comparison, cassettes and MP3s have garnered cautious acceptance as inherently compromised media that might be coxed to provide adequate fidelity in exchange for convenience and other lesser reasons.

What seems to mystify many audiophiles is why anyone would prefer cassettes (or MP3s) for recording or playback if things like mobile playback and other logistical practicalities were factored out. I contend that’s because of principle concern of audiophile pursuits is this quest for perfection, for fidelity, overall. If a medium introduces some degree of coloration or change in the sound on hears that’s a deviation from fidelity, it’s inherently a distortion of the original intent of the artist, producer or engineer.

Nearly three decades into the CD era audiophiles generally recognize that even the best vinyl or CD playback systems introduce this deviation from fidelity. Yet, they still nakedly pursue that elusive fidelity all the more fervently the more minute–and costly–each improvement becomes.

At this point in time the average adult music lover has likely personally experienced at least three distinct playback media. Someone who’s eighteen probably has heard cassettes, CDs and MP3s. Someone who’s thirty probably had vinyl as a child, and might have used 8-tracks, too. And now, years after LPs and cassettes were supposed to be dead and replaced by digital audio playback, they’re still with us.

Instead of a Darwinian evolution of playback medium towards something–like CDs–which is inherently superior to those that came before, today we have a menu of playback media before us. It’s as if Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men were browsing next to us Homo Sapien Sapiens at the supermarket and making themselves available on Match.com.

With the vinyl revival in full swing, the music fan in a good indie record shop again has the choice of whether to buy an album on CD or vinyl. She also can choose to hit up the iTunes music store for an AAC music file or browse to Amazon for an MP3. Heck, she might luck out with an MP3 download code coming for free along with that vinyl purchase. And with the cassette revival just starting to heat up she might be able to find a few more limited releases on cassette, too.

So what dictates the choice amongst these media? Obviously, practicality is the biggest factor — if you don’t have a turntable or cassette player then a record or cassette isn’t likely to be your first choice. The next factor is probably whether or not the release is available on other formats. If you’re coveting a vinyl-only, cassette-only or MP3-only release, then your choice is made for you.

After pragmatics, the biggest choice is aesthetics. If you can get an album or CD or vinyl, why choose vinyl when CD is presumably the fittest medium? I say for myself that I like and enjoy the particular aesthetic peculiarities of vinyl records. From the physical dimensions of the cover and the record itself, to its sonic quality when played back on a decent turntable, I like whatever changes or distortions that vinyl records introduce into the sound playback experience.

It may be that vinyl records have more fidelity, that CDs represent more of an aberration. Or it may be that vinyl’s tonal curve more closely matches the human ear’s sensitivity. It might just be some potent combination of nostalgia, age-related hearing loss and psychology. In the end, it kinda doesn’t matter, as long as I like and enjoy the sound and experience.

Back to cassettes, I have both fond and not-so-fond memories of them. Rocking a favorite mix tape in the car stereo is a favorite memory, while fishing out a string of disembowled tape from a broken deck is not. But I can also distinctly remember buying an album on CD that I’d only ever heard on cassette and being profoundly disappointed. The apparent clarity and revealing quality of the CD seemed to ruin the experience I’d always had with the tape.

We live in an era of aesthetic choice. Other artistic media are experiencing the effects of this array of choices, too. Photographic film, even Polaroids, are seeing a revival a decade into mainstream digital photography. Visual artists are embracing letter press and other supposedly antiquated printing methods. High definition video still hasn’t displaced 35mm motion picture film, while 8mm movies are seeing a small underground resurgence. Not too many people are making the arguments that these older forms are better than the newer. Instead, they’re just different, and sometimes more interesting or pleasing.

For most of the short history of recorded sound the goal of fidelity has ruled the roost. But with the cycle of obsolescence for playback media becoming ever shorter, there’s also a growing weariness with being forced to abandon a particular medium just because something else is purported to be better.

Those of us who never dumped our vinyl records knew that they still sounded good, even if different from CDs. Why upgrade something that works?

In 1992 that seemed like an almost farcical, luddite attitude. Today, when people feel like they’re being asked to abandon their CDs and DVDs that replaced their VHS tapes and cassettes, it starts sounding more logical. Beyond mere economics, we’re left to consider what we liked about these media to begin with.

Vinyl sounds different than CDs just like watercolor looks different than oil paints. If fidelity was the ultimate consideration, then why didn’t photography obliterate portraiture?

The music lover now faces a richer world where she can choose how she hears her music, and the musician can choose how its delivered. Those choices have both meaning and quality. The choices give both more control over the experience.

What’s wrong with that?

The Irony of the Vinyl Resurgence

Back in the 1980s when the Compact Disc first hit the market there was great excitement in the high fidelity and audiophile world anticipating the arrival of crystal-clean digital sound that would be unmarred by the vagaries of analog playback long suffered by music lovers. Whether vinyl LPs’ clicks and pops or cassette tapes’ hiss, never mind the inconvenience of turning over sides (auto-reverse cassette decks were still a rich man’s luxury), CD not only promised markedly improved sound but the additional convenience of playing a full 74 minutes of uninterrupted tunes and the ability to skip tracks with the push of a button.

Yet, even as much of the audio, electronics and mainstream press swooned over the new digital audio technology, CD had its critics, too. One of the most famous early attacks came from record producer Doug Sax, published in Billboard and Stereophile magazine in 1983. Sax wrote, in part,

[W]hat I have heard on many players, and on more discs than I would ever care to listen to again, is mediocre sound, sound that is often unappealing and fatiguing. …

I have been on record, since I first heard a digital master tape, that there is an enormous price to be paid, in musical terms, for the noise-free performance of digital.

Reading these words today one should hear their echoes in much of what’s been written about the resurgence of vinyl LPs in the last few years. Of course, now music lovers aren’t just dissing CDs, but pitting LPs against the MP3, which is arguably sonically inferior to the CD it’s coming to replace.

Now a generation after the CD’s introduction we have a vinyl revival, which includes a veritable renaissance in the availability of not just new LP records but turntables and record players. I remember searching for a new turntable back in 1996 to replace my aging plastic Onkyo ‘table that I bought in 1987. Even in small hi-fi shops catering to a audiophile crowd I found it difficult to find any turntables under $1000 or so that would offer much improvement over my 80s vintage Onkyo.

The problems of noise and poor sound quality with cheap turntables in the 80s is what ostensibly drew people to CDs in the 90s. Back in the 80s a lot of people relied on inexpensive compact stereos sold at discount stores. These stereos typically had a turntable, cassette deck and radio, paired with speakers, all for one or two hundred bucks. While capable of playing music, these systems didn’t tend to have outstanding quality in any element of playback, especially vinyl. You’ll still find these stereos in thrift stores and at garage sales, and if you look you’ll find that almost universally they have very flimsy, all-plastic record players.

Even the more expensive so-called rack systems of the day often didn’t feature turntables of much higher quality, even at price points of $500 or more. Those ‘tables would usually be separate components, but still made of 75% plastic. If you were lucky the platter and tonearm might contain some metal.

Playing records is a completely physical process that is very susceptible to the basic forces of Newtonian physics. If you’ve ever stomped around a turntable playing a record then you probably know how easy it is to make it skip. But it’s not just blunt force that takes its toll. So does vibration and electrical interference from other devices, including other stereo components. The prevalent plastic turntables and stereos of the 80s and early 90s have very little in their construction to shield against these quality-killers — most of the time you were lucky if the turntable had some little rubber feet providing some modicum of insulation.

For the average record listener in the 1980s and 90s, the usual listening experience was littered with surface noise, pops, clicks, skips and jumps that was unfairly blamed on the medium of vinyl records, when much of the fault lay upon the cheap, flimsy playback apparatus. So it was a revelation when these listeners first heard the unfamiliar silence between tracks on a CD where before they’d expected hiss and scratches. Instead of having to listen through the noise for the music, CDs sounded as if the fog of analog grunge had been lifted.

Unlike the enormous difference between the typical plastic turntable and a truly high-fidelity model, by the 1990s even relatively inexpensive CD players delivered on the fundamental promises of noise and skip-free sound.

I’m sure it’s like the shift from black and white to color TV, or from AM to FM radio was for previous generations. For those of us who remember the first time we heard CDs it’s not hard to understand how they quickly took over. Most folks who didn’t spend thousands of dollars on stereo gear truly did experience a step forward in quality and convenience.

Still, Doug Sax was not alone. A minority of music lovers chose to stick to vinyl believing it to sound better than CDs. These audiophiles likely owned turntables costing more than an average person’s stereo, TV and music collection combined, which also delivered on the potential of vinyl’s fidelity. Many others stuck with records for practical reasons–like DJs did–or because they were happy enough with their records. I suspect a lot of people, like myself, stuck with records while also moving to CDs, choosing to enjoy the records we owned while buying new music on CD.

Whatever the reason, those of us who stuck with records are enjoying the vinyl renaissance because it means more turntables, more new records and, strangely enough, some degree of cred. At the same time, I also see a step backwards that isn’t so satisfying.

Now that vinyl is retro-popular again it’s ironic that people are flocking to the same sort of cheap plastic turntables that scared folks away from LPs twenty years ago. Within the last year the gadget landscape has been inundated with turntables that connect to your computer by USB, or are attached to CD burners, or which now even record your LPs as MP3s directly to a thumb drive. But almost every single one of these ‘tables is pretty much a plastic late 80s design with some extra digital electronics tacked on. All the more ironic is the fact that the supposed benefit of these new plastic wonders is their ability to let you convert your precious analog records to digital, extra clicks, hiss, pops, skips and all.

I’m not spitting in the face of utility. If you have records which are rare, out of print, irreplaceable, never released on CD or just of sentimental value then I can certainly see why easily archiving them to digital is desirable. What I don’t understand so much is why you’d want to do this archiving at such a low level of quality.

It’s not just these new digitizing turntables. There’s also been an explosion in 80s style compact turntable stereos dressed up in early 20th century retro clothes. Sure the cabinets might look like wood, but inside the record player is the same crap plastic used in that Emerson stereo someone got for Christmas in 1987. Moreover, because the speakers are in the same cabinet, introducing more vibration and interference into the game, these new retro all-in-ones arguably sound worse than the cheap 80s stereo

The funny thing about this is that it’s possible to get a pretty nice sounding turntable made out of very little plastic for less than $300. While not chump change, this is actually about the same as what a decent turntable would have cost in the 80s. Adjusted for inflation, the quality turntable in 2008 costs about $156 in 1985 dollars — less than what you’ve had paid for a flimsy plastic all-in-one stereo.

If you’re willing to invest a little more time and go used, you can pick up nice quality turntables made out of metal and wood that would have cost more than $300 in the 80s for a fraction of that price. Just add a new stylus or cartridge, maybe a new belt, and you’re good to go.

The same phenomenon is happening with cassettes too. There’s almost a double-irony with tapes, which outsold records in the late 80s, before CDs trounced them in the 90s. Besides the convenience of the walkman and car stereo, one of the reasons many people switched to tapes was because they didn’t skip and have quite as much obvious noise as records did (when played on their cheap K-Mart stereos).

Despite my semi-facetious predictions to the contrary, it doesn’t look like a full-on vinylesque revival is happening for cassettes. Nevertheless, USB-connected cassette decks have started to trickle into the marketplace offering up the ability to digitize your tape memories with relative ease. The tech and popular press reaction seems to be a bit more muted for the cassette revival, at least in part because cassettes haven’t quite faded away as much as vinyl had.

I was just a little bit heartened to read a recent CNet review of one USB cassette deck that clearly revealed the flimsy plastic under the flashy digital veneer:

Aside from the USB port on the back, the TapeLink is no better than the cassette deck you probably had in the 1980s, and lacks conveniences such as autoreverse.

More so than with records, I can understand wanting to digitize old cassettes, especially mix tapes or other custom tapes that are difficult to replace or have sentimental value. I’ll also bet that most home recorded tapes were probably created on a plastic 1980s compact stereo to begin with, so there’s likely not so much fidelity lost when digitized using a new deck of similar quality. Of course, if you happen to have a higher fidelity tape–and cassettes could be capable of fine fidelity–you’d probably want to seek out a better, probably non-USB, cassette deck.

While I’m glad to see the resurgence in vinyl and analog music playback in general, I really wish the lessons of the past better informed today’s record enthusiasts–especially those old enough to remember those tacky Emerson, Yorx and Lloyd’s discount store stereos. I fear that for many new or revived record listeners the thin fidelity of these retro-plastic wonders will cause them to tire of vinyl quickly, making LPs more of a novelty than anything else.

Folks got tired of vinyl in the 80s and 90s for a reason: cheap crap plastic turntables. Avoid them now and you’ll still be enjoying your records when you’re less well-equipped friends have tired of their new collections already.