[old tech]

Some of you may be interested in this Ian Shepperd podcast episode "Dynamics in Dolby Atmos - Nick Rives Interview"

https://themasteringshow.com/episode-82/

​

 

[71 dB]

I can’t think of a better way to expend energy than to explore new music.

Try Ohio Players “Fire” to start. Or best of Sly and the Family Stone.

For Funkadelic start with their live DVD. You have to see all the zany fun going on, not just hear it. Their concerts were like a three ring circus.

I checked Ohio Players “Fire” on Spotify. Tracks 3 & 7 are ok, otherwise not to my taste. This is the problem of exploring new music. It gets frustrating easily.

 

[bigshot]

I don’t think you’re interested at all. Fire is one of the best albums ever made in this genre.

 

[71 dB]

I don’t think you’re interested at all. Fire is one of the best albums ever made in this genre.

I wouldn't have listened to it one second if wasn't interested, but being interested doesn't mean I am blown away by it.

Sorry, but that's how I am. I have my taste and that taste isn't shared by the masses most of the time. It is almost impossible for other people to know what I like. That's why the "biggest" albums by the "biggest" artists are not so special for me. For example "No Secrets" is Carly Simon's best selling album by far and "You're So Vain" is her biggest hit by far, but those are not my favorites by her. I prefer her less commercial stuff that was less succesful among masses. As I have said, I did explore 70's funk a decade ago and found out my kind of edgy energetic funk is rare. Most of it has too much soul music in it for me. That's why I like Rose Royce. They make separately energetic funk and beautiful soul ballads.

 

[bigshot]

I'm glad you have esoteric taste, but that doesn't mean you're open to new things. I really should have learned by now that you're here just to drag down everything... even a thread called "Greatest Audio Experience" where someone is nice enough to share with you about music you aren't terribly familiar with. I know a lot about some things, but I'm still learning. There are two reasons for that... 1) I'm basically optimistic and enthusiastic about myself and my interests; and 2) I seek out people who know things I don't who are willing to share. When they share both those attributes themselves, I can learn a lot from them and we can all grow together. I keep looking for people like that, and I hope perhaps people who aren't might be able to change (that is probably my error).

 

[71 dB]

I'm glad you have esoteric taste, but that doesn't mean you're open to new things.

Within the last few days I have listened to about 75 minutes of music based on your recommendations. How open to new things do I have to be to make you happy? I have a life. You are just one dude online for me. Being open to new things and liking something are different things. If I don't like something myself it doesn't mean I condemn other people liking it. I have nothing against you liking stuff. Good for you! It is not away from me and My liking of Rose Royce shouldn't be away from you.

Your recommendations are not bad. Its just that for other people it is near impossible to know what I would like. Generally I don't care about much music that is typical in its genre. I seem to like more stuff that is on the edge of its genre flirting with other genres. I seem to be more interested of musical structures rather than the sound.

I really should have learned by now that you're here just to drag down everything...

I am just honest and direct. It may feel negative and cold, but when I say I like something that means business too.

even a thread called "Greatest Audio Experience" where someone is nice enough to share with you about music you aren't terribly familiar with.

I shared artists I like. Your response was (between the lines): "Don't listen to those, listen to these instead". Then you get angry to me for not being thrilled about your suggestions. Thanks for the recemmendations bigshot, but I did not ask for them. You wanted to give those to me yourself!

I do not EXPECT/DEMAND other people to like King Crimson, Carly Simon, Rose Royce, Tangerine Dream, etc. Cool, if somebody does, but those are for MY taste and I know very few people have similar taste to me. Also I don't expect people to be open to new things so much that they start to explore those artists. It is enough for me that I like it, that I have found music I like and someday I probably find more... ...Funkadelic and Ohio Players don't seem likely candidates based on what I heard. Sly and Family Stone I did listen to 10 years ago. There just isn't much funk for my taste out there or it is something so unknown and obscure that it never comes up anywhere.

I know a lot about some things, but I'm still learning. There are two reasons for that... 1) I'm basically optimistic and enthusiastic about myself and my interests; and 2) I seek out people who know things I don't who are willing to share. When they share both those attributes themselves, I can learn a lot from them and we can all grow together. I keep looking for people like that, and I hope perhaps people who aren't might be able to change (that is probably my error).

Well, don't expect other people to share your taste. Cultivate your own taste and be proud of it. Respect the fact that other people have their own taste. This is what I have learned discussing with other people online for 2 decades. 25 years ago I didn't understand this at all and I tried hard to make all people to like Elgar, my favorite composer, but nothing good came out of those efforts. Just wasted energy. So, I learned that some people like Mahler, some people worship Beethoven and so on.

 

[Mink]

tried hard to make all people to like Elgar, my favorite composer

Shouldn't Sibelius be your favorite composer?
Just kidding

Exploring new and different types of music not always results in success.
I have tried atonal music, bought works from Boulez, Schonberg, Berg and Stockhausen. I really tried, but it never clicked with me, I just don't get any pleasure out of it.
I did kinda like Messiaen and Lutoslawski though, but those aren't truly atonal.
Bela Bartok is the only more 'modern' kind of composer I really really like.
I have tried minimal music. Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, Steve Reich etc. It just bores to me to death. Although Pärt has a few works that are beautiful, but more in a guilty pleasure kinda way. Just like Gorecki's Symphony no. 3
I have tried some Jazz, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker. I do like the sound, but it just doesn't hit me, like classical, rock and pop music does.
If I were a true audiophile I would have played Jazz all day long, because nothing beats the sound of those recordings.

 

[71 dB]

Shouldn't Sibelius be your favorite composer? Just kidding

No, actually no. I don't care much about Sibelius.

Exploring new and different types of music not always results in success.

Yeah, I have noticed that, but when there are results it feels great!

I have tried atonal music, bought works from Boulez, Schonberg, Berg and Stockhausen. I really tried, but it never clicked with me, I just don't get any pleasure out of it. I did kinda like Messiaen and Lutoslawski though, but those aren't truly atonal.

That's ok. I do like Alban Berg, but that's enough "atonal" stuff for me. A lot of contemporary classical music is very tonal and I have found lots of nice music exploring contemporary composers. Sometimes it is about coming back to some music 10 years later to see if it clicks.

Bela Bartok is the only more 'modern' kind of composer I really really like.

Bartok is a tricky composer for me. It seems to be so much up to my mood whether I enjoy his music or not.

I have tried minimal music. Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, Steve Reich etc. It just bores to me to death. Although Pärt has a few works that are beautiful, but more in a guilty pleasure kinda way. Just like Gorecki's Symphony no. 3

Minimal music works for me. I do like Pärt, Glass and Reich.

I have tried some Jazz, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker. I do like the sound, but it just doesn't hit me, like classical, rock and pop music does.

I also struggle with jazz even when my dad is a jazz nut, but there is jazz that I like. Jazz can be harmonically extremely sophisticated which can make it demanding, but my problem with it is that often jazz is nothing but improvisation. I simply get bored after a while.

If I were a true audiophile I would have played Jazz all day long, because nothing beats the sound of those recordings.

Huh? Sure, more modern jazz can be very well recorded, but older jazz has pretty bad sound.

 

[sander99]

Huh? Sure, more modern jazz can be very well recorded, but older jazz has pretty bad sound.

I don't disagree with you but wanted to remark that I have been stunned a few times by the very good spatial qualities (via loudspeakers) of for example some Miles Davis recordings from around 1960 or so. I don't remember exactly which albums.

 

[castleofargh]

Anytime someone writes about a band or a music genre they adore, I wait for someone to post ”xxxx isn’t real music” as a reply.
I like what I like and always feel happy that some tracks still manage to move me. Beside that, I’ve started a new game IRL when musical tastes come up in a group. I give 3 or 4 band names I really love(no lie about that), but I try to give different names and genres each time the topic comes up again. Initially it was for myself to reflect on what else I liked beside Stevie Wonder And Mozart. But because I’m evil incarnate, it rapidly turned into a game to have people profile me stupidly wrong just with a handful of bands(again without lying about what I like). In turn I got surprised by how much that seemed to matter to some. To me anything about taste is like which flavor of ice-cream you prefer, I simply do not care what someone else likes or dislikes. Clearly not everybody agrees on that to the point that it’s kind of scary sometimes.

Once I’ll say Iron Maiden, Cradle of Filth, Be’lakor. Another time I'll go with Nas, Rakim, Jedi Mind Tricks, Tek9, or maybe Radiohead, Portishead and Bjork. Mostly I compartmentalize for the lolz and avoid stuff nobody will know(not fun to have no response) or anything that will be respected by most(the typical audiophile stuff). I would get no interesting reactions from saying I love Shirley Bassey, Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin. Or The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zep. While when I bring up Britney, Ace of Base, and 2unlimited as music I love, the response is... well, different


Or if you really want to watch the world burn, say: R Kelly, Michael Jackson, Red Army Choir. That way you know immediately if someone can separate the art from the artist or not
I almost always add that I don’t like Jazz or Blues. Which is kind of true as Miles Davis just mentioned above, is about as far as I’ll go(but I do love him). Anyway acting like I straight up hate Jazz is a great way into a conversation with audiophiles. Muhahahaha!




Ps from hell: out of all the names listed, I’d put The Beatles last. Also Yoko was the soul of that band.

 

[dirtrat]

For me it was first listening to the MAGNEPLANAR TYMPANI speakers with Audio research electronics back in the 70's. That was my first real taste of a High-End system that blew me away and got me hooked on the hobby.

 

[71 dB]

Anytime someone writes about a band or a music genre they adore, I wait for someone to post ”xxxx isn’t real music” as a reply.

People should stop doing that. I enjoy music from some commercial bubble cum pop to sophisticated classical music and a lot of stuff in between. I don't care how the music I enjoy is rated by other people. All I care is what the music means to me. People should think it this way:

- Some of the music you like is considered bad by some people
- Some of the music you like is considered good by some people
- Some of the music you don't like is considered bad by some people
- Some of the music you don't like is considered good by some people

For some people the correlation of general opinions and own taste is bigger than for some other people. There is also this correlation: People who like music that a lot of people like usually have a limited music collection. People with esoteric taste often have large music collection. People with esoteric taste may even surprise themselves of what they buy to add to their music collection.

If someone enjoys something as music then it is (real) music. No one else has to like it.

I like what I like and always feel happy that some tracks still manage to move me. Beside that, I’ve started a new game IRL when musical tastes come up in a group. I give 3 or 4 band names I really love(no lie about that), but I try to give different names and genres each time the topic comes up again. Initially it was for myself to reflect on what else I liked beside Stevie Wonder And Mozart. But because I’m evil incarnate, it rapidly turned into a game to have people profile me stupidly wrong just with a handful of bands(again without lying about what I like). In turn I got surprised by how much that seemed to matter to some. To me anything about taste is like which flavor of ice-cream you prefer, I simply do not care what someone else likes or dislikes. Clearly not everybody agrees on that to the point that it’s kind of scary sometimes.

Mozart I like of course (not really everything by him, but as a genius he was super-prolific and left us over 600 works to choose from). Stevie Wonder I don't really know, but I might explore him since you mentioned him and bigshot listed him too.

Yes, music taste is like what ice-cream you prefer, but it can be cultivated. The more you listen to different kind of music the better you understand different music.

Once I’ll say Iron Maiden, Cradle of Filth, Be’lakor. Another time I'll go with Nas, Rakim, Jedi Mind Tricks, Tek9, or maybe Radiohead, Portishead and Bjork. Mostly I compartmentalize for the lolz and avoid stuff nobody will know(not fun to have no response) or anything that will be respected by most(the typical audiophile stuff). I would get no interesting reactions from saying I love Shirley Bassey, Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin. Or The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zep. While when I bring up Britney, Ace of Base, and 2unlimited as music I love, the response is... well, different

Hah. Where to start? Radiohead's "OK Computer" has been enough for me. Some of Aretha Franklin's songs are really good, Portishead never did it for me and my sister was (is?) a Björk fan, but I tend to like only select tracks by her. Ace of Base, and 2unlimited are commercial eurodance and not my thing (my taste in electronic dance music is more underground), but commercial popular music can be stunning in my opinion (e.g. Katy Perry and Ke$ha/Kesha).

Or if you really want to watch the world burn, say: R Kelly, Michael Jackson, Red Army Choir. That way you know immediately if someone can separate the art from the artist or not
I almost always add that I don’t like Jazz or Blues. Which is kind of true as Miles Davis just mentioned above, is about as far as I’ll go(but I do love him). Anyway acting like I straight up hate Jazz is a great way into a conversation with audiophiles. Muhahahaha!

Jazz I like: Clifford Brown/Max Roach, Miles Davies (In A Silent Way, On The Corner), Gato Barbieri (Bolivia, Under Fire, Fenix), The Neil Cowley Trio, Bobo Stenson Trio, Brad Mehldau,..

Ps from hell: out of all the names listed, I’d put The Beatles last. Also Yoko was the soul of that band.

The Beatles is a strange beast to me. I like the music, nothing wrong with it, but it means nothing to me. I have nothing from them. All I have is a cover of "Norwegian Wood" by Tangerine Dream.

 

[bigshot]

There's a difference between not being able to appreciate a certain type of music and not liking anything other than what you already know. You'll never appreciate anything new if you don't make a certain amount of effort to appreciate it. That takes more than just playing it on Spotify while you clip your nails and open the mail.

The one thing I will say about LPs is that they focused your attention to the music. You had a nice big picture to represent it, liner notes on the back to read, track listings, lyrics sometimes, and it required you to get up to change the side every twenty minutes. It didn't lend itself to multitasking and backgrounding the music. It's fine to use music for the background. I use ambient music for that a lot. But listening to music that is designed to be engaging that way doesn't get you very far. It just makes you hit next over and over like snapping through the channels on cable without ever really watching anything.

When I was 7, my grandfather had a great library in his office and he taught me how to "address a book". He told me to pull up a chair to a table in a well lit room, lay the book in front of me and open it flat to protect the binding. He showed me the part of the page to use to turn it. Today, I see adults who use the heel of the hand smash to turn pages in a book and I shake my head. It's the same with listening to music.

It's respect for the art. Modern technology has allowed us to surround ourselves with great art, and to be able to access it at the click of a button. I think a lot of people don't realize how fortunate they are. They use art to line their birdcage and drown out the sound of farts when they take a dump. Schnabel was one of the greatest interpreters of Beethoven piano works of his day. But he refused to record it. When asked why, he answered, "I fear that if I record the Diabellis, someone somewhere will be listening to it in their underwear at the kitchen table while eating a ham sandwich. Beethoven deserves respect."

 

[The Jester]

For me music can be a trip down memory lane, I own a few Beatles and Rollings Stones albums now, but at the time they both flooded the airwaves enough that when I started buying music in the late 60’s I bought the stuff that was heard only infrequently, now relaxing and “in the mood” with no distractions I can play anything from the 60’s to present day and have vivid memories of where I was and what I was doing at the time, usually pleasant but sometimes, especially with late 60’s stuff, when the female fashion was short skirts and long hair I spent most of my spare time tinkering with cars ..
They say youth is wasted on the young … Lol
So as far as audio experiences go there are plenty in the memory banks that can be triggered by certain music, but the standout audio experience for me was bringing home and setting up a pair of KEF R104/2 speakers in the late 80’s, dynamics and an actual physical impact at realistic levels I’d never experienced before, and for the $$ only a few times since, when they were eventually replaced over 10 years later, instead of trading or selling I chose to pass then onto a friend on condition that he’d give them back if no longer wanted so I could still listen to them now and then …. He still has them ..

 

[bigshot]

Huh? Sure, more modern jazz can be very well recorded, but older jazz has pretty bad sound.

That depends on whether you're listening to the sound or the music.

I think I might think about music differently than most people. I don't think in terms of albums or performers or composers... I think of associations between them. And an album or performer or composer can have multiple associations. For instance, when you mention Tangerine Dream, I think of the aspects of them I find interesting... one of those is the improvisational live music that evolves and builds into atmospheres and that reminds me of Fripp and Eno's album "No *****footing" and their later ambient/Frippertronics work. It also reminds me of parts of Sibelius' Pohjola's Daughter and Hans Salter's horror movie soundtracks or The Residents' Eskimo. Or early Pink Floyd or Zappa's Varese inspired compositions. None of those would be found in the same stack at the record store. Or I can think about it in an entirely different way, by the way Tangerine Dream uses sequencers and synths, which makes me think of Phillip Glass or Kraftwerk or Tomita or Walter Carlos. Or I can think of it in terms of being really good stoner music like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Eno's Another Green World or Talking Heads' Remain in Light (not to mention lesser stuff like Camel, Gentle Giant, Caravan and Van Der Graf Generator).

I don't think in terms of "I like the Beatles." or "I don't like the Beatles." I think in terms of the associations Beatles music makes in my head. If it fires a lot of neurons in my brain and makes me think and understand other music better, I love it. And there are always new associations to be made. That's why I listen.