seen from Italy
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seen from Germany
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There Is No Recording
For musical listening, a home audio system exists to render recordings into sonic events that facilitate attunement: the state in which you become part of the music rather than remaining outside it, analysing. That’s the working definition, and it’s held up reasonably well as a way of thinking about what playback systems are actually for. But it contains an unexamined assumption: that…
When the Producer Matters
Hugh Padgham and the Conditions for Attunement Hugh Padgham’s birthday passed yesterday, one of those minor calendar notifications that social media surfaces. But it caught my attention because Padgham’s name appears with unusual frequency in my listening: Phil Collins, Genesis, Kate, Bush, The Police, XTC, The Human League, Robbie Robertson, Paul Young, Black, Clannad, Suzanne Vega, Tears for…
When Demonstration Kills Immersion: The Audiophile Approval Trap
Oh dear, another list of albums: “These are the albums people bring out when they want to flex their rig and prove they’re not old people who only listen to old music.“ https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/05/best-mastered-albums-century/ Ha—yes, the defensive crouch is palpable. “We’re not just banging on about Dark Side again, honest!“ Let’s have a look at what made the cut… So we’ve got the…
Alva Noto and the Audiophile Appetite for Conceptual Austerity
The claim circulates widely: Alva Noto’s recordings are exemplary test material for high-end audio systems, prized for their “precise imaging, dynamic range, and textural depth”. Audiophile forums recommend Xerrox Vol. 3 or HYbr:ID III as system evaluation tools. The assertion carries a whiff of cultural legitimacy—here’s experimental, conceptually serious electronic music that also happens to…
Asymmetric Control
Rethinking Production, Playback, and the Listening Rendering There’s a striking asymmetry at the heart of audiophile practice that rarely gets examined directly. We have essentially zero control over production rendering—the sum of all choices made in recording, mixing, and mastering—except in the binary sense of choosing to play a recording or not. But we have substantial, even obsessive…
What to listen with in the rendering framing
I’ve been thinking about producers who consciously think in rendering terms, and those whose work happens to render well as sonic events regardless of their conceptual framework. Geoff Emerick wasn’t sitting there thinking “I’m creating a sonic event for future reproduction systems”, but the spatial and timbral decisions on Sgt. Pepper’s totally function that way—the record is the event, not a…
Another look at Soundkeeper listening
Construction, Attunement, and the Listener’s Role With news that a new recording project is nearing completion, again recorded in the warm acoustic of a room built in 1820 at The Silo in Northville, CT., I was inspired to take another look at his approach to creating an album. Barry Diament’s Soundkeeper Recordings project represents something of a puzzle in contemporary audiophile culture.…
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Playback as Rendering
Three Systems and the Question of Musical Attunement I have configured audio systems in three rooms of my home. The first – what I call the long-wall room – houses large Audio Pro Avanti 100.A floorstanding speakers driven by Topping Pre90 and LA90 amplifiers, fed by an Eversolo DMP-A8 streamer and Musician Draco R2R DAC. Alongside this sits a rack of processing equipment: a Behringer FX2000…
