Vol. I No. 16

I have mentioned that it is easier to distinguish analog from digitalized sound with live music. In the case of recorded music I am often able to do so if I am very familiar with the song from hearing it in the pre-digital era.

Yesterday I was listening to a digitalized version of a Moody Blues song which I heard many times on FM radio in the 70's. At one point in the song I uttered the thought of "Let's hear how this acoustic guitar comes in." It is a good moment in the song when the acoustic guitar crashes in with the loud, mechanical sound of the pick striking the strings.

And it was vastly disappointing!! Instead of the loud, complex, rich, textural crashing of the chord as it is struck, I hear a muted semblance of the same which seems to be in the background or mid-ground.

Afterward, in my thoughts as I uttered them, it was that word 'textural' that seemed to me to aptly describe what it is that digital audio lacks generally. Musical tones, musical moments seem to lack the quality of texture which they will possess, will embody, in all-analog - that is to say, never-digitalized - versions.

Another bit of apt phraseology, which may seem vague, but which I believe is accurate, is that in a digitalized version you will hear sound that compares to the analog version of the same production. But in the all-analog version you will feel the sound. The digital version plays thinly on the eardrum. The all-analog version moves the eardrum richly - in fact you feel it move the entire inner ear in a comprehensive way.

Other phraseology I approve is to say that it is not a soul that computerized music lacks; rather what it lacks is body.