Alternatively
titled….
The
Future Of The Four Seasons Sound Part1
Are
Four Seasons fans geeky computer freaks who obsessively collect multiple copies
of their fave group in the hope of finding a different mix?. And how do they
listen to their favourite ‘Four Seasons’ tracks. Record player, CD player, I-pod or computer? (I’m
assuming most people have now abandoned 8 track and cassette!!) Well if you are
reading this you might just be a fan (maybe not a geeky one!) and looking back
over your life as a ‘Four Season’ fan…. what has been the music player that
you’ve listened to the most?
Some
would say it only matters what you choose today. And today whatever you choose,
it finally looks as though sound quality will make a recovery as ‘music lovers’
with the benefit of today’s technology will take control of their ‘masters’.
They are increasingly able to store and stream them in a variety of different
formats. It is a matter of personal choice. But it also appears most of us
don’t care much about the sound .
Greg
Milner in ‘Perfecting Sound Forever’
considers the state of music in this decade and its quality…”When music on a CD is converted to MP3, or AAC (the I-pod default)
between 80 and 90 percent of the music is simply discarded. We (supposedly)
don’t notice because of the psychoacoustic phenomenon called masking” that this
codec employs…… ‘High Fidelity’ barely exists today, not so much because
recordings don’t attempt to document reality anymore but because the fundamental
ethic governing recorded music has been reversed. ‘Presence’ implies capturing
‘everything’. Today, we try to capture as little as possible while fostering
the illusion of everything. We don’t want everything. We want just enough “……..consumers
are probably still more likely to take convenience over fidelity when push
comes to shove.”
But this music trend has a built in problem for its
listeners, as a leading sound engineer told us….”The problem with
compression is that the technical design relies on “normal, standard hearing of the human ear”,
which doesn’t exist.
Listeners
will find problems of age and gradual hearing loss: they will notice more
problems in listening to compressed music (MP3, AAC) than younger people, because,
what they are missing in the sound , can’t be replaced by something that has
already been “thrown out”. This is because the encoder thought you have a
“standard, normal ear”. Various tests have shown this phenomenon occurs,
particularly for people with abnormal (but not necessarily deficient) hearing.”
So
ignorance is a problem for us and thanks to this fascinating and
educational book we can learn so much
about what is important in sound recording....and how the 60s and 70s analogue
recordings are the 'Holy Grail'.... George Schowerer (former Four Seasons Sound
Engineer in 1967) has commented on how “studios
gave recordings a special sound” and the 'presence' and ‘ambience’ that
can be found in many 60s recordings…even in ‘mono’. Every location has a distinct and subtle sound created by
its environment….an ambience whilst
the presence is created by the position of the microphone in relation to
the space boundaries. A microphone placed in two different locations of the same
room will produce two different presences.
Focusing
on these often confused aspects sent me
back to my ‘keystone’ albums and their sound. In terms of the Four Seasons it
was "Edizione d'Oro'” that really started me analyzing how I liked
my music to sound and that double stereo album remains one of my reference
albums for the group (even though some of the editing and sound tricks used
were criticised) . 1966 to 68 were classic years for great analogue studio
sounds. Check out the ambience on Valli’s ‘Solo’
and ‘Timeless’ albums…either vinyl
or well mastered CD
As Milner says the future seems to be compressed and like it or not the CD is
dying as a commercial product….and even as a storage medium it needs to be used
with care. Many commercial CD versions are not as good as the original vinyl or
compared to vinyl that is digitized and carefully re-mastered.
A
survey showed many young people preferring to listen to MP3's compared to CD as
Greg describes in his book! Perhaps it is a case of what you are most used
to…or what your ears get used to during your teens/formative years, but
scientific tests have shown that even at 128kbps the loss of quality from CD to
MP3 is hard to discern and some tests show with higher bit-rates that….”human hearing cannot differentiate
between a high bit-rate MP3 and the PCM (ie CD) source used to create it”. AAC
beats MP3 for sound quality in tests but FLAC is clearly the best (it stands
for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless,
meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality). Music
catalogs in FLAC, AIFF, and MP3, are in existence and plans exist to offer 96kHz/24-bit
FLAC files soon. Computers and software are beginning to emerge with sound
cards capable of getting the best from these formats. Quality is coming back
and will soon be available to those who don’t want…’just enough’. Another key thing to remember is that music in each
of the last 6 decades has been different in each one as a result of technology,
studio and engineer/producer and the sound is distinct as a result. Not only
that, but the sound will be different due to the sound transfer medium. 78's,
LP's, Cassette tapes, Eight Track, CD, and digital downloads - they all have specific aspects that shape what
you hear. So we all have several different sounding versions of the same
classic Four Seasons tracks in our collections
Those who want a tangible object to store their sound will perhaps collect the
above list of formats. But today as we enter the ‘Streaming Age’ anything will work. You can stream your vinyl to
the new streaming amps either hard-wired or wi-fi. The choice will be yours. So
don’t sell your vinyl!! Vinyl will survive and prosper as it often has a greater
dynamic range than the CD mastered version. And the CD won’t disappear, it just
will not be the primary storage/listening medium. But reading 'The Long-LP Good-bye'
and 'Appetite
for Self-destruction – The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry In the
Digital Age' you can see the collapse of the recording industry and of
the process of recording. At the moment it is a confusing time for music
collectors with the historic data-base of music from the last century available
in many formats
The 50s to the (early) 80s it seems could be
called...'The Analogue Age’ for pop
music and it remains the key period
for the music of the Four Seasons. But is it wrong to focus our listening on
recordings and music created during this time.? With the ‘loudness wars’ and some
terrible CD productions on the market today, it is no wonder that vinyl is
re-appearing in the shops and why collectors are focusing on it more than in
over 2 decades. Particularly, as you get a digital ‘download’ copy with the
re-issued vinyl today and with the high quality of today’s record decks and
sound processing software you can stream it to your player in either format.
We asked a leading European Sound Engineer his
opinion……”As a person partly in the
industry, I really must say there are no ways left to earn money on NEW music
unless you can gain mass exposure to OLDER people. Young people won't pay for
CD / music at all, and they don't care about quality, because, primarily there
is so much music around, if you don't like this track, you will have another
one that fits your personal taste within days or hours, by electronic media.
There's no real identification with music and artists. Back in the 60s and 70s
fans were anxiously awaiting the next release by their favorite star /group.
That has gone. No CD is played to death nowadays! Music is not worth anything
anymore - it's just entertainment for a few minutes, until you have something
better to do! And there are a lot of alternatives nowadays. In the music business,
the real money makers are ADSL providers, File Sharing services, wireless
carriers, Apple, Amazon, and anyone concerned with digital communication….the
CD age is finishing”
’The CD Age’ looks like spanning 1986
to 2010...and now we are moving onto a
future of streaming digital files. We heard Linn the Scottish audio
firm have stopped making CD players and now make a solid state music streamer.
Even
Cambridge are selling a de-compressing I-pod dock to connect to your audio
amps and provide improved sound amplification.
The
future…. It is all
about storage and accessing the best sounding versions of classic studio sounds.
Centralised storage of Video and CD for home wi-fi
transmission seems to be capturing the market and any sound file types can
be used in this format. So eventually DSD sound will be a storage option and
players will emerge based on computer technology. You can see the market in
downloads expanding to sell such files on-line.
The
Four Seasons where firmly locked into ‘The
Analogue Age’ and in fact only 2 of their original albums (‘Hope and Glory’ and ‘Romancing The Sixties’) are ‘digital
recordings’ All of the others appeared originally on vinyl with the warmth and
dynamic range of that analogue tape based recorded sound….so is streaming our original
vinyl a good choice….or can we and should we re-master it ourselves?
In
Part 2 we’ll consider this and if illegal copying really has caused the collapse
of the music industry’s economic model of selling ‘physical objects’ that contain
music …plus we assess the likely approach of a new generation of ‘digital’ Four
Seasons fans…young and old….and what they might want.
Casey
Chameleon
Photo of Frankie Valli courtesy of George Schowerer
Comments