We take for granted so much. Turn a knob and water comes right out. Hot water! Need light? Flick a switch. Music? Just make sure its plugged in. Oh, yeh, batteries. Music, any music is portable now. We cant even imagine how easy we have it compared to folks just a blink behind us in our history. Im still amazed when I look up in the sky and see a couple hundred people sailing by. Its no wonder kids think its all a given. Glad some are still curious.
The miracle of the turntable?
This afternoon I was finishing up reprogramming my Proceed AVP after the AVP2 upgrade, and I was playing an album to check that I had set up the analog pass-through correctly. As I did, my 8 year old son was watching. He gazed in wonder at the spinning black disc and said:
"I still don't understand how that can make music."
I started to explain the principle of the mechanical movement of the stylus in the grooves, and how the cartridge turned that into electrical signals, and then I stopped and asked: "Do you know how a CD makes music?" He shrugged his shoulders to indicate "No."
It got me to wondering...how is it that a new generation just accepts the fact that they can feed a shiny plastic disc into a tray on a black box and get music, and yet they are dumbfounded by the technology of the LP?
Am I just getting old, or what?
"I still don't understand how that can make music."
I started to explain the principle of the mechanical movement of the stylus in the grooves, and how the cartridge turned that into electrical signals, and then I stopped and asked: "Do you know how a CD makes music?" He shrugged his shoulders to indicate "No."
It got me to wondering...how is it that a new generation just accepts the fact that they can feed a shiny plastic disc into a tray on a black box and get music, and yet they are dumbfounded by the technology of the LP?
Am I just getting old, or what?