The Audiophiliac

You don't need to be an audiophile to hear the difference between average-sounding and great-sounding recordings, but you do have to listen. Really listen.

First try this experiment and set a benchmark: Listen to someone playing an acoustic guitar, in your room. Then play a recording of an acoustic guitar. Notice any difference in the sound quality between the two? Yeah, it's not even close. If your real, live guitar player can sing, next compare the sound of that person's voice to the recording's vocal. The recording's singer will most likely sound small, tonally thin, like the voice is coming out of tiny boxes. It might be hard to tell the singer has a flesh-and-blood body connected to that voice. The live guitar sounds big and clear, very clear, without any edge or harshness. Few recordings of guitar sound like the real thing.

My point here is to first establish a standard of what good sound sounds like to me. I like recordings that sound realistic. After all, if the musician on the record is playing a Gretsch Synchromatic 400 Acoustic Archtop guitar, I'd like to hear its unique sound. But if the producer and engineer recorded the Gretsch through a pickup instead of a microphone, equalized its sound, compressed its dynamic range, added digital reverb, and processed it to death--there won't be much left to the Gretsch's sound. Then it's just a generic guitar, which is why I would describe the sound of the recording as "bad."

Some of today's DVD and Blu-ray soundtracks are so densely mixed that dialogue can be hard to understand.

When actors' lines are obscured by onscreen mayhem, you may miss important plot details. The dialogue intelligibility problem is even worse for people who are hard of hearing.

Here's a simple fix to improve intelligibility that also works like a charm for quiet, late-night movie watching.

Onkyo's TX-SR805's remote offers direct access to center channel volume.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Turn up the center channel volume level. Please understand, that's not the same thing as cranking up your receiver's volume control. Raising the center channel volume relative to the left/right and surround channels makes dialogue louder than the music and sound effects, so it's easier to understand what the actors are saying.

The easiest way to make the adjustment is with your receiver or home theater-in-a-box system's remote control. Check and see if your remote has a button marked "Channel Select." My Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver's remote has such a control, marked "CH SEL". It toggles through left, right, center, etc., and once I got to the center I used the "Level -" and "Level +" buttons to adjust the center channel volume.

Experiment to figure out how much louder you want the center channel speaker to be, but start with turning it up by three decibels. That might be enough, but don't hesitate to turn it up higher if that's what you need.

Of course, you can also use the CH SEL feature to boost subwoofer volume to taste whenever you switch movies or CDs. Or adjust the surround channels volume.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like most musicians I meet are more into making music than listening to it. They don't care about how music sounds at home; many are satisfied with the sound they get from boom boxes or chintzy computer speakers. Some tell me they're more focused on the way the players play than the sound.

Sure, I've met a few musicians with ears for sound. That happened just recently when I struck up a conversation with jazz drummer and audiophile Billy Drummond.

He readily conceded my point: "Getting a good hi-fi isn't high on their list of priorities. Like everybody else, musicians listen to music while they're on the computer or sending e-mails. That's what music is now, a backdrop, so fidelity isn't important anymore."

Sad, but true, so what is music for? Drummond had a ready answer. "It's for people to enjoy," he said. "It can take you somewhere, you can dance to it, music conjures emotions. For musicians it's an expression, a way to challenge ourselves, and it can be inspiring. If you're a saxophone player and you're listening to Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane, music can motivate you. It lets you see what's possible.

"I really enjoy playing (live) for myself and for an audience, I want people to feel something when I play. When I listen to Tony Williams or Elvin Jones (two great jazz drummers) and what they've accomplished it's mind boggling, that's what music means to me."

That's all great, but how did he become an audiophile? Drummond explained that he was always an avid music collector, and when he first heard his favorite music played on a really great system he was blown away: "Wow, I never heard my music sound so real, so vibrant, so great."

It turned you on, I asked. "Right, I was even more motivated because I could hear the nuances of Max Roach's drum set or Tony Williams ride cymbal. It helped me become a better player because I can get in touch with the thing I'm chasing after. Which is, how can I sound as good as these guys."

It's a small island, populated by audiophiles, but please don't look down on us for our devotion to good sound.

Yes, it might seem a little strange to outsiders, but we like to hear music the way the producers and musicians did when they recorded it. If they put a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears into creating it, it might be worth listening to. Sure, you can play and enjoy music over freebie headphones or $20 computer speakers, just don't kid yourself that you're hearing everything, or more important, the emotion that went into the music.

Computer speakers vs. the real thing.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

But don't get the wrong idea, we're not elitists, we just place a higher priority on listening than most people. That is, we listen, most don't. Sure, they have music on all the time, as background sound while they work, drive, exercise, read, etc, but never just listen. For those that do occasionally listen, well, I'd say they're audiophiles. So you see, it's a state of mind. Listening, appreciating music should be enough, if it's great music why relegate it to the background?

Being an audiophile doesn't mean you're into vinyl, vacuum tubes, or that you're made of money. No, we audiophiles just love the sound of music. So if you listen please join us on the island and whatever your budget, get better sounding gear.

The speaker on the right is an Usher S-520 ($400/pair). It's 12 inches high; the small round speaker came with my old iMac.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

I'm talking about listening to music, as opposed to having music serve as background to other activities. "Listening" when you're on the computer, making dinner, reading, driving, running, working, etc isn't the same thing as listening at home without doing anything else.

A friend who owned a record store in the 1980s put it best when he said, "Recorded music is the worst thing that ever happened to music." At first I thought he was kidding, but he explained that before Edison recorded sound most families played music, on their own instruments, at home. Most middle class families had a piano, or at least a guitar and sang and played at home. Involvement was on a whole different level than it is now for most people.

Records changed that, so fewer and fewer people played instruments, but at least they were listening to records. They'd put a LP on the record player, sit down and listen to music. Yeah, I know that seems a little strange in 2008, but people actually did that on a regular basis. Especially when they bought a new LP or 45, when they really wanted to take it in, they listened with their eyes closed.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

The iPhone commercial parody on YouTube with genius filmmaker David Lynch hit the mark for me. His insight about people watching movies on iPhones, I'm paraphrasing--"You think you've seen the movie after watching it on your iPhone, but you'll be cheated. You haven't seen the movie."--could also be applied to music.

Just because you were listening to music while text messaging your boy/girlfriend doesn't mean you've actually heard the music. Exposure to music, art, film, what have you, is not the same as active engagement. It's kind of like having sex while watching Lost or Law & Order, which might not necessarily be a bad thing, but it does say something about the sex.

So the question is, do you ever just listen to music--without also doing something else at the same time?

Or do you--

Read

Cook

Work

Exercise

Commute to work

Or ________

while listening to music?

And when you just listen, does it change your feelings about the music?

Listen here

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Listening comes naturally, doesn't it? Well sure, everyone with normal hearing can listen, but what do they hear? What I'm talking about is listening as a focused activity--as opposed listening where music serves as background to something else, reading, driving, running, working, or washing the dishes--active listening can be a lot more rewarding. You hear stuff in your favorite music, maybe rhythm guitar patterns, overdubbed vocals, or instruments you never knew were there can suddenly jump out of the mix. It's stuff the band may have put a huge effort into perfecting, that you only notice when you're really listening.

Bass drums and bass guitars can easily get lost when you're distracted, but they provide the very foundation of dance music and rock & roll. Paul McCartney's bass playing with the Beatles was amazing, and if you're really listening you'll hear every note. On acoustic jazz recordings you should be able to hear every pluck and slide.

Stereo imaging--the placement of instruments and vocals from left to right can be fascinating. Imaging is especially cool over headphones where it's all in your head. With speakers you can sometimes hear a sense of "space" surrounding each instrument. There might be spatial depth so some instruments sound like they're in front of other instruments. Over really good speakers you can almost "see" the musicians in front of the speakers.

The word "transparent" plays a key role in the audiophile lexicon and refers to the ability of components and speakers to disappear so you feel like you're hearing the original sound of the recording session. Of course, that's not literally true--transparency is a matter of degree. When everything's just right the heightened clarity lets you feel like you're getting closer to the true sound, and well, you feel closer to the music.

Just listening for these qualities will make you a better, more aware listener. One thing's for sure, the more you listen, the more you'll hear. And most importantly, you'll get more out of the music.