Sound Of The Times

I had a revealing but fairly depressing experience recently; one that should have been neither revealing nor a surprise, but oddly — and somewhat interestingly — was.

A young, casual acquaintance of mine, an enthusiastic aficionado of classical music, knowing of my past history as a card-carrying audiophile, invited me to his home to audition his newly purchased and set up stereo system for which, he assured me, he had spared no expense in assembling the very best components available. Knowing how attached most audiophiles are to their equipment, and how sensitive they are on the subject, I tried firmly but gently to decline the invitation, but in the end my curiosity got the better of me, and I accepted.

Bad decision.

This young man (a late twentysomething) proved to be a true child of his era as I suppose are we all, for what he had assembled was, to not put too fine a point on it, a sonic horror; an exemplar of the MP3/iPod sensibility writ large and loud.

Although a concertgoer of some if not extensive experience, this young man seemed to have a total mental disconnect between the sound of live music in an acoustically first-rate concert hall and its reproduction via recording. What seemed most important to him, and what he was most excited about, in his newly set up stereo system was its ability to effortlessly achieve undistorted SPL levels on a par with those achieved in live performance in a concert hall, especially where it concerns frequencies below 125Hz, no matter how grotesque such SPL levels sound within the acoustic space of a home listening room. Overall accuracy of reproduction, including that elusive but all-important back-to-front transparent layering of acoustic perspective, was of little or no concern to him. While such unconcern makes no nevermind if what one is listening to is a reproduction of a performance by some rock-and-roll band, it simply won't do when a reproduction of a performance by even a small chamber group, much less a full symphony orchestra, is under consideration.

Within the first three minutes or so, I understood what I was dealing with, knew there was nothing for it, and decided my best and most prudent tactic was simply to affect to listen attentively and vaguely admiringly, and then make my exit as quickly as was politely practicable.

Given all in the world today one has to be depressed about, surely the deadening or absence of refined acoustic sensibilities where reproduced classical music is concerned ranks, or ought to rank, somewhere near the very bottom on the scale of importance.

But, somehow, it doesn't.