the rare rant, and a poem

I have been listening to various headphones (I have some nice sennheisers, listened to Kevin's Grados) as well as some live performances, some involving speakers and some without. My headphones expose so much detail in songs, it used to blow me away, and sometimes it still does, but I have become so used to it that it has ruined all less-accurate headphones for me. Even the Grados, they have amazing bass and a rich warm color, but they lack the detail of mine, so they start annoying me of songs I know well. I do not know if I can ever go back to earbuds, even decent ones sound shallow and lacking comparatively. It is annoying to not be able to listen to music you like without subconsciously finding the speaker's every fault.

I wondered why this was, how could I be happy with my old headphones when I have heard live performances before, and know what it really should sound like? Why has this just started to bother me? I realized that almost every performance we hear now is projected from microphones and speakers.  We really have no reference, we have crappy car stereos and headphones and boom-boxes, we rarely hear those warm, rich, unadulterated sounds from live performances (sans speakers) inside acoustically correct areas. These headphones provide the closest thing to that. They set up the soundstage almost perfectly and tell almost every varying tone, but even so, they are not the real thing. They lack the power, the reality of those live performances. But how would I know the difference, I only hear things through speakers. The speakers might sound better because that is what I am used to.

So this is my rant against recreated sound. I must learn to treasure strumming on the guitar, plunking the piano keys, or listening to others do so. I have no musical talent, but I can appreciate the purity of good old analog sound.

this song will go well with this poem:


The Soul Fire Sky

Viewing the midnight sky
I see a million porch-lights, as if
the sky is but a mirror, a huge concave mirror,
the scientists had it wrong this whole time
we are merely viewing the vast metropolis'
and lonely settlements of those abiding in Gaia,

and I see two reflections,
yellow street lights, next to each other
like binary stars, attracted,
but never touching, dancing with souls entwined
in their dangerous orbits,
inescapably bound to their partner
until they unite and explode
in glorious abandon.
And I wonder if some of those Astrologers were not quacks,
they were trying to tell us that everything is as it seems to be.
That this universe cares, that there can be moral in the mechanistic.
But I cannot believe in the stars.