I spent Saturday and Sunday this past week at the Newport Audio Show. While there, my friend Robert and I visited one room of many that was solely using a digital servers hooked up to the room's operator via laptop. The conversation came around to a discussion of vinyl records vs digital downloads. The person demonstrating the room told us that he had downloaded 4000 records from his collection onto his hard drive. My friend Robert asked him how he spent his Saturdays. His response was ... "downloading my records." Robert said ... "well that's nice. I spend my Saturdays hitting garage and estate sales looking for more records." I asked him how he'd organized his downloads. His response was: "I've hired a college kid for fifteen dollars an hour to organize my hard drive and server." This whole time I'm thinking ... WTF? I have over 5000 records and probably 2000 CDs. There is no way I'm going to take the time to download all of this. I'm too busy listening to music.
The digital system demonstrated did sound good though. In fact, most of the rooms using downloads sounded good. A couple even sounded great. But the best sounds at the show came from analog rigs. At least to my ears.
The digital system demonstrated did sound good though. In fact, most of the rooms using downloads sounded good. A couple even sounded great. But the best sounds at the show came from analog rigs. At least to my ears.