What in the world is going on.....

I can't say anything other than this particular record is not his best - So Beautiful So What is, IMHO, a far better album. 

I agree with the observations about its sonics - there's a marked difference between the two 

That performance at the DNC was....good gosh. Well intentioned though it was, I was cringing. 

Phoned in?  That would have been a wise decision!  But one performance, one rendition doesn't negate a career that has been pretty damn amazing.  

Recent additions to my system have me flipping vinyl more often than listening digitally.  Even my vintage vinyl sounds great.  

If having a system worth upwards of $75k could make an album sound better I'd be squirreling away money to buy one - but I'll probably be dead before that happens. 

I play golf, badly, and not often as I'd like to. I could literally spend a couple thousand bucks on better clubs but...I'd still be a pretty below average shagger. 

Stringreen, I most certainly am not casting aspersions on your system or making light of its cost. Nor am I doubting its value to you. If I had the funds I'd have one, too. 

Poor recordings/pressings et al have been around for as long as I can remember. I can recall playing records in the '70's that I thought were awful sonically. I've been listening to Simon's latest recently and have found it to be pretty dismissable content-wise, compared to his previous releases at least IMHO, and the sonics are definitely more in-your-face. I have it on LP and an HDtracks flac download.  The LP sounds better overall. I listen to my digital through a Sony HAPZ1es. 

I just find the content of this release missing somewhat, the strength of the tunes?  "So Beautiful..." has a great collection of material. 

I HAVE noticed that transferring files to the HAP is better executed using LAN than wifi. It's faster for one, and secondly it's less prone to bandwidth issues than when I wifi them. (Can "wifi" be a verb, too?) I've noticed that there are burps in many of the tracks that went via wifi. It could be my imagination but I'll swear to it. 

I use Tidal, iTunes, HDtracks and Amazon to hear stuff now because there are but a handful of stores remaining to do so in person. A couple of hours doing that and you'll hear the differences on all the recordings.  It's just there. 

Happy listening, peeps!

I listen to music in my car either through a traditional original iPod 160gb or an Astell & Kern AK100. The differences between the sonics is night and day with the A&K obviously winning. There are many files shared between the two but I pretty much reserve the A&K for my jazz collection almost specifically for discovering Bill Frissel's work rather late in life. I have bought everything I could find of his stuff. 

Amazingly good stuff in every respect. 

The ipod cost $250, the A&K $900 - in this case a very worthy investment IMHO.  Thanks for some of the artists listed here whom I knew little about before - great learning new stuff!