Good Enough Doesn’t Mean What We Think it Means
Generally when we describe something as good enough, there’s an air of resigned disappointment about the phrase. A weary shrug of the shoulders, as if all the lofty ambitions had failed to be achieved and we were somehow settling for something which, contrary to the literal meaning of the term, was inadequate.
I suppose it’s a language thing, but ‘good enough’ rarely seems to actually mean ‘good enough’. It tends to mean ‘not as good as we expected’. There’s an interesting article on Wired at the moment describing this exact phenomenon. They cite a number of example, from the Flip camera to unmanned combat aircraft, and online alternatives to Microsoft Office (Google Docs being the most obvious and successful). The term they use as a catch-all for this general trend, whereby high-quality, high-fidelity and feature-rich products are suffering at the hands of their bare-bones brethren is “The mp3 Effect”.
I have heard countless arguments amongst audiophiles about labels using high-quality mp3s or FLAC or AIFF files to reclaim territory lost to illegal downloaders and I really think they are making a mistake. Some people will care about that, but most simply do not give a shit. There are studies, albeit somewhat off-the-cuff ones, referenced in that article which show users are actually growing to prefer the lossy, compressed sound of an mp3 file to its higher fidelity cousin. Personally, I really don’t give a shit 95% of the time, either.
The whole Meursault album has been released on (not-particularly high bitrate) mp3s. Neil’s rationale: it was never supposed to be a high-fidelity record. It wasn’t recorded like that, so why should it be released like that? He’s right of course, but there is always the more practically expedient question – had he pushed for something more high-quality, requiring more expensive equipment, maybe studio time… well, it all just makes it increasingly unlikely to happen, doesn’t it. What’s more important to you, that it be perfect or that it happen.
I often ask myself this question with this blog. Is a timely review of a live show more important than the writer figuring out exactly what they want to say? Are the Toad Sessions much better – in terms of production values, depth of content and so on – than they need to be? Would you rather twenty quicker, easier, more cut-and-shut Toad Sessions in a year or eight ones with a lot more work put into them?
Now, I do appreciate a high quality recording played on shit-hot equipment, but honestly, the vast, vast majority of the time I just wouldn’t notice. I also appreciate quality writing and great production values on internet video, I appreciate all kinds of very very nice things, just not very often. Most of the time, and I doubt I am alone here, I just want good enough. It’s fair enough to blame idiots for the rise in reality TV or mediocre chick lit or banal blockbusters or poor sound recordings or crappy convenience food or low quality pictures posted on the internet or pretty much any proliferation of ‘not as good as we expected’ in a field we care about, but I think we are all like that most of the time. When you watch telly do you wait for something good, or do you just fancy emptying your brain for a bit and just make do with whatever you can find, most of the time?
I really can’t face the idea of convenience food… doesn’t mean I never eat it though. How much time, in all honesty, do any of us have to appreciate real quality most of the time? I love music, and I am perfectly happy with mp3s 98% of the time. I love eating well and we cook a really decent meal no more than a couple of times a week. Real quality generally needs a degree of attention to be truly appreciated and how much of our life can we really devote to that kind of proper indulgence? Kids, jobs, admin, chores, there just isn’t room enough in everyone’s lives for ‘good enough’ not to make up 97.36%* of our requirements for pretty much everything.
Like all good ideas, it just seems so bloody obvious when someone points it out to you, but the idea of making something just good enough rarely gets past the drawing board in most places because people always seem to take it mean slightly less than good enough.
Bruce Springsteen – My Best Was Never Good Enough
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*Warning: Approximately 88.6% percent of statistics in this post were made up on the spot.
It really isn’t all that obvious, though it is a question I’ve grappled with myself. But you just saved me the time of delving into how I feel, because much of it aligns with your thinking. Well-said.
Well I thought the article made it obvious for me, really. Even with the stuff I care about the most I am happy with good enough most of the time.
Your spelling of “doesn’t” is good enough I guess! I got the meaning. Would a higher quality spelling have improved my reading? Not really. Im just a pedant. “Doen’t” sounds better anyway. Sigh. Goodnight.
I can’t be arsed reading that whole article.
But (i’m gonna make a tit of myself anyhow)…
…sometimes “good enough” is absolutely fine, and anything more is just inefficient. Ben whatshisname (Goldacre?) in his Bad Science book points out that moisteuriser was developed to a “perfectly good enough” standard decades ago, so you (or yer missus *cough*) can buy a big vat of Diprobase for a couple quid and that’ll do 98% of what a moisteuriser could ever possibly do. But instead companies like Oil of Olay waste countless millions every year on developing and marketing ineffective new moisteuriser technologies so they can charge £40 for a wee tub that smells nice and contains Hydro-X Revit-a-Lize’n'Lift ™ molecules, which do absolutely fuck all. Drink more water! It’s the same with shampoo and soap, and television (I refuse to be bullied into believing I need an HD telly), and cars (apart from the obvious alternative-fuel thing), and basic painkillers, and hand-driers, and all sorts of stuff. Do we really need five-blade razors (when’s that going to stop)?! We developed these things to a “perfectly good enough” standard years ago and we should stop wasting time trying to refine them further.
Especially when we could instead be spending that time posting more whiney comments on internet blogs!
Not to be a twit, but, I do hear a difference between mp3s and FLAC and moreso between a CD and a mp3. I was going to say that it is more noticeable on music that has strings and such in it, but then I re-thought that in light of some of the simple vocal/guitar stuff I have on CD where the singer’s voice just pops out and into my ear in a way that it doesn’t when I hear it digitally.
I’m not sure that I’m the average music fan though, and as you say, the vast majority (avoiding your made up statistics, ha!) of people simply don’t care. When an artist does spend time and money in the studio to make a product that sounds different on CD or vinyl, I do want the option of hearing it that way, however. xoxo
And you know, the thing is, you make choices with what you put up with. I won’t watch crap TV anymore. If it’s not interestingly good, I’ll simply turn the fucking thing off and so I end up watching about 2 hours a week at most. It’s just not a top level priority. Of course, I’ll listen to crap mp3 recordings of Elliott Smith for hours every day, to clear my brain instead. That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
The funny thing with music of course is that people can record 192khz record in their garage. Really high quality speakers are becoming cheap as chips.
but if you listen to meursault on on a cd or vinyl it means that the low fi production comes through more clearly – mp3s compress things, makes them sound more like the pop records we hear on the radio, not more lo fi, mp3s take away dynamics. mp3s don’t make things lo fi, the intial production is lo fi and has charm and that gets compressed to fuck on an mp3.
i also think that when videos on the internet are great quality and people have taken time over them (like the toad sessions) it’s so so much better.
i agree that sometimes people lose the bigger picture and it’s better to get something out there but i like it when people to strive for something more, and cds and vinyl give me something more.
incidentally, record labels are on another planet, the majority of people don’t give a fuck about the quality of what they buy, whether it be records or shopping in pound world but those with fucking taste, like me (ha), like to cook a nice meal, i like to drink fucking nice wine if i can, i like records i like cds, i like it when people blow me away with their endeavour and don’t just settle for something less.
might have missed the point but it is 8.38am.
and i haven’t read the article (yet)
I agree with a lot of AC’s sentiments. Quality is a really, really nice thing.
In relation to HD tellys – sure no-one really *needs* an HD telly. It won’t save someones life or anything. In fact, probably endanger it. They do use a heck a of a lot of power compared to a CRT….but the point is I wouldn’t be caught dead playing 360 on a CRT anymore. It’s simply not a good enough experience in comparison.
The thing is, if it’s your hobby/passion/whatever then “good enough” isn’t actually good enough. You strive to get the best with what you can afford. I think the same is true of music. Why do people buy vinyls if not for the preferred sound quality? Anyways – when ripping my cd’s I always rip at the highest quality – thats cd quality right? Or is it? Ach I don’t know. It had better be.
Quality is so easy to recognise and it’s great to see it. Its appreciated. In retail terms you also dont necessarily have to pay through the nose for quality products. It all depends on where and when you get it from and knowing what you are looking for. I reckon.
Rambling, indeed.
If we’re talking quality of music format, based around the quality of music production, then I have to say I have come to a point where I simply will not listen to /tolerate any old shit, regardless of quality of tune.
I definitely hear the difference between formats/production levels & it bugs the fuck out of me to such an extent that, if I want to playlist a song for a show but the production/format quality is abysmal (such as the recent ‘golden oldie’ sextet chosen by our studio guest) I will actually fiddle with the production/format & enhance/amend it myself.
But DC, that puts you in a tiny, tiny percentage of people and therefore it is almost pointless to cater for you due to simple economics.
I am not actually decrying the value of quality, and as Tart says I do actually appreciate it, but only when I take the time to listen. If I’m just listening to music on the bus, whilst doing Proper Job, whilst cooking or pottering about the house which is an awful lot of the time, then I really don’t notice at all.
This applies to lots of things. I prefer good food, but if I am grabbing something quick before heading out then whatever is in the fridge gets grabbed and it just doesn’t bother me. And the difference between good and mediocre food is probably much more obvious than the difference between a reasonable mp3 file and a CD, especially given than people listen on crap headphones/speakers/in the car and so on.
I am not saying that there isn’t a niche, and a very worthwhile niche, for things of high quality. I am just saying that in real life, even as regards the things we care about the most, when you sit down and think about it it really is surprising just how often ‘good enough’ really is perfectly fine.
Ah REAL life! I see…
Sometimes one has to resort to a bog standard basic beat off. I don’t always have the time to paint my nails and sit on my hand until it goes numb. In these cases I agree that the sacrifice of quality is not that important…as if I do all that I will be late for work.
So, I agree.
I don’t think I’m in a tiny minority or even being that anal or niche-y; if the quality overall is fucked (whether that be format or production) then I’m not prepared to let it fly as ‘good enough’, & I genuinely don’t think most people would these days.
Sure, back in the ’80s most people were happy to manual record songs off a radio onto a separate cassette recorder & listen to them back as though nothing was wrong — it’s all they knew.
But we’ve now got the advantage of CD, digital & all their alternatives giving us an entire spectrum of experiences, per song, as you run through the variations. I’d be amazed if no one can tell the difference & state a preference between MP3s or WAVs or WMAs of FLACs or etc. because the difference is pretty vast from one end of the rainbow to the other.
That said, the argument is valid in terms of what people (in a general sense) are willing to pay/settle for, which is why we have a Dixon’s for every Sony store, a Lidl for every Sainsbury’s, & a British Home Stores for every Debenhams.
It’s not about telling the difference or stating a preference. I can do those in all the examples cited this far, but it still doesn’t matter to me most of the time.
And if you don’t think you are in the minority in insisting on higher-quality, less-compressed files then the explosion of mp3 use suggests pretty strongly that you are wrong, because most of those files zinging around cyberspace in their billions are of pretty indifferent quality.
I am pretty confident that anyone waiting for any kind of high quality revolution in audio quality is going to be waiting for a very long time.
And ‘all they knew’ is pretty condescending if you ask me – people had vinyl and CDs then; they knew the difference. But for the job it was being asked to do it was more than adequate, just as people will happily trade MySpace rips now. Yeah, they’d prefer something better, but not at the cost of extra hassle.
DC – If the quality overall is fucked then It obviously isn’t “good enough”. But what do I know I like the Fall and still listen to hissy cassette versions of Peel sessions.
So firstly, when I’m working I find the phrase ‘good enough’ infuriating. Good enough for what? And I understand that people don’t really care but, as a professional, it is important that people take a certain pride dammit! Take some fucking pride! Also if you live by the ‘good enough’ code you are basically excluding the discerning consumer from your audience. Even Meursault, for all they have ‘lo-fi’ sound chose that sound so, why not describe it accurately (that’s a question, not an accusation. I’m way out of my knowledge base here when it comes to artistic decisions).
Now sure, for most rock produced after 1970 a shitty MP3 isn’t going to lose that much information but it is also important I feel, differentiating between the two types of compression AC mentioned. There is compression the musical effect which does indeed lesson dynamic range and then there is digital compression where by you computer chooses how much detail to go into when describing your beloved tunes. I prattle about the first but the second one is a more interesting problem. Crappy sound is fine if you are listening on i-pod earbuds. They can’t recreate the detail anyway. Less so Sony, and most certainly not Sennheiser or AT. But who reading this blog really kept their i-pod headphones. And why wouldn’t you buy a nice set of Sennheisers for only about 20 quid. Less than the price of a night out for fucks sake. Then suddenly this whole argument changes. Decent speakers for your kitchen are also dirt cheap these days. For all we get excited about the abundance of music the explosion in consumer gear that can achieve entry level professional sound means the hi-fi/lo-fi argument in about to become really interesting again.
I suppose my rambling thought is this: Why downsample everything? My mp3 player hold 10 odd hours of music, five of CD grade MP3. That seems like plenty. It holds about three albums in unconverted, uncompressed .wav format. My question is: How much fucking music do you need on you at any given moment. My earphones can accurately describe sound between 20 and 19,000 khz, kitchen speakers too. And frankly I don’t splurge on consumer stuff. So why would you suffer bad sound given that there is simply no need?
Also DC, I’m not sure how upsampling from an mp3 to a .wav (or some such) can really help you. Once audio quality is gone it’s really gone for good. Re-eqing might help but once in a lossy format always a lossy format I thought.
(Mind I’ve never tried, MP3′s a treated someone like plague viles around these here parts).
Drew’s answer is much better than mine – DC, you’re making the exact same mistake this post was aimed at: that of mistaking good enough for not good enough in an absolutely literal sense.
I think we’d be surprised how low our threshold is for pretty much everything 93% of the time. Including you and including in relation to music.
But Drew, would you listen to reel-to-reel, vinyl, or .wav of those same Peel Sessions if you had access to them? Enjoying those on tape is seems like more a necessity than a choice.
And of course people knew the difference between tape and better sounding stuff. If you’ve heard an instrument played live you know tape is a second rate way of recreating it! As long as there has been audio there have been audio snobs.
Christ Matthew, your brother doesn’t half go on a bit!
Ben – of course I would want to listen to them on vinyl butt they were never completely available on vinyl or anything else until 2006 when they came out on cd, which I have but still find myself going back to the taped from the radio version but that is just my personal perversion.
The point I’m making is that I will not restrict myself to what I listen to because it is on an inferior format, but this is digressing from the original point, being good enough doesn’t mean being rubbish it just means not being earth shatteringly brilliant.
Actually most people of a certain age only ‘knew’ recording off the radio as opposed to buying/owning/listening to vinyl & CDs for years – that is an accepted truism & not an implied condescension by any means. It was an economic reality rather than an aesthetic statement on their/my part.
& it most certainly is about telling the difference/expressing a preference otherwise other formats/choices wouldn’t exist, surely? Or are we in the business of capping aspiration now?
Settling for what you get is fair enough &, to an extent, the norm in any scenario. But to return to the example of music, the main issue re: formatting (ergo quality) is accessibility.
There’s been no conscious choice that’s been made by the consumer, simply an acceptance of the proliferation of the one format at the head of the race when the anti-iTune lobby mobilised.
FLACs & AIFFs + a variety of other formats are perceived as industry formats because MP3s have become the VHS of the digital music world. It was simply the outcome of marketing, PR, a stronger branding, a deeper budget pocket, etc..
Anyone who was around in the ’80s knows the BETA vs. VHS story — music formatting is the same. People use what they are told is better by those who shout quicker, louder & longer. The irony is even though VHS has more or less disappeared as a valid product BETA is still used & considered the superior format by the TV industry.
Anyway, I’m not waiting for a revolution of any kind & I don’t think many others are either — I’m simply saying I don’t think anyone given the choice would listen to shitty quality over crystal quality . If the better quality (in a compatible format) was available then I am betting people would switch tomorrow without a second thought.
Drew – that’s as maybe, & that’s of its time & perfectly reasonable. But there are ways of hearing that hiss in a far clearer way, therefore enhancing your enjoyment of said hiss.
But Ben, it’s not about him preferring one or the other, it’s about how much extra effort/cash he or you might be prepared to part with to gain that last percentage improvement from, say a 192kbps mp3 to a wav, for example. That make a colossal difference in file size and therefore what you can do with the file, which is important to an awful lot of people.
Just be grateful I saved you from three-post mentalism.
Ben – I was talking EQ-ing & a few other tricks, not necessarily transferring from MP3 to WAV or whatever. Lossy is as lossy sounds, really, no? But there are ways of pulling a diamond from the shit.
Toad – I so understand what you’re saying re: the difference between Good Enough & Not Good Enough. My point is I don’t think anyone would settle for ‘Good Enough’ if the superior were available without obstacle or ignorance.
Absolutely Matthew the amount of music you can store on wma, wav, is massively reduced but with the advances in storage technology how much does that matter? A cd is 80mb, and a decent MP3 player holds 8G. So you are really holding about 9 CD’s without lessening the quality at all. Hardly tough editing. So if you combine that with even a $100.00 investment in speakers and earphones you banished the need to settle from your kitchen and commute. Now given you own a stereo (or in your case two lovely Tannoy nearfields) for listening at deafening volumes in your living room that only really leaves your office as a place where good enough is good enough.
DC, once it’s a MP3 I would say the more accurate metaphor would be pulling coal from shit. It’s made of the same stuff, it’s dirty, isn’t beautiful but at least it can be useful.
And see ignorance is really at play here. Accesibily is not something you can put down to being the sole responsibility of an individual. All sorts of other factors come into play such as age and location and dare I say economic situation? So un the end, those folk trading MySpace rips can’t be all grouped together as people who put up with good enough any more than people who stopped watching TV simply because they can’t work how how to use the TIVO or find TV shows on the Internet (stupid, technologically inept old people). I honestly don’t think I knew what an mp3 was until 2007ish.
DC – well it’s ‘without obstacle’ that is the point. When you get to the situtation where that quality is available at the same convenience and ease of access and price as mediocre-but-acceptable quality today then of course everyone will choose it.
But I think you are over-estimating people’s desire for high audio fidelity when you consider what other things have to pay the price to achieve it. I think Ben, for example, with his statement above, is massively under-estimating people’s desire for convenience: nine CDs on an 80Gb mp3 player? I doubt very many people would accept that, never mind the amount of time it takes to copy and paste and/or upload files of that size.
Sure, when technology makes that quality available in smaller file size, or increases memory capacity or bandwidth availability or the price of all these technologies then people will welcome it with open arms, but at the moment I really think you are failing to understand the priorities of most people in most situations.
Tart are you referring to the year or your age?
When 2007 years old you reach, look as good you will not. Hm!
Bastard idiot of a man-child you are.
WHEEEEEEEE!
So by your logic if we just make it so that acquiring the means to access an inferior product is equally inexpensive for the masses, then they will, by default, most of the time choose inferiority due to their busy lives. And only those who truly have good taste will ocassionally venture out into the barren wastelands beyond the masses? But these chosen few can come from any strata of the population? I don’t get it.
There’s no mechanism, no motive, other than laziness v. un- laziness / hectic life v. leisure. and your study is a sample of one :-p
What on earth are you talking about, Tart? That’s just pure mentalism and your usual determination to read snobbery into pretty much anything.
What I am saying is that factors like convenience of use, price and ease of availabitlity are hugely more influential in people’s decision making, particularly when in direct oppostition to quality, than most of us generally think.
What I am also saying is that generally when people make this sort of statement they are referring to Other People, but actually I bet a dollar to a dime that we all do it much more than we think, even in areas where we claim to care about quality an awful lot.
This sentence verges on suggesting that you have learning difficulties: “if we just make it so that acquiring the means to access an inferior product is equally inexpensive for the masses, then they will, by default, most of the time choose inferiority due to their busy lives”, especially given that I had just said said this: “When you get to the situtation where that quality is available at the same convenience and ease of access and price as mediocre-but-acceptable quality today then of course everyone will choose it.”
EDIT: In terms of study size, the third paragraph above is just a hunch.
But the second is based on the examples, plenty of which were cited in the article linked at the beginning, where people have been extremely successful with products where they have reduced the quality/features/precision/whatever metric you choose far below what common sense would suggest was acceptable for most people, because the price and ease of use and various other benefits more than compensate for that reduction in overall quality.
Touche.
I suppose I am still living in the dark ages before most information was bought off the internet.
with great un-laziness comes great hi-fidelity
Sweetness, reiteration is a commonly used to make sure one is understanding the argument. The important stuff comes next. The stuff you consistently refuse to address. Who are these people with “taste” and how to the get it and what causes them to get un-busy or un-lazy enough to go buy a real CD? And can they literally come from any segment of the population? If not, why not?
I would have thought the answer to that question M’Lady du Tarte was that the people with “taste” are simply people who really really enjoy listening to music that connects with them.
Matthew, you are right to be a snob. Poor people are shit!
Who are these people with “taste”
Which people with taste? I never mentioned taste or anything like that. Are you projecting or just nuts?
If by seeing snobbery you mean the fact that I can buy a mp3 album on AimieSt for $1.39 but I have to pay $7.99 plus shipping for the physical CD and hence higher quality AND that I only know that they sound different from one another because I’ve become an audiophile over the past few years, then yes. That to me IS snobbery. And it’s snobbery brought on my having the financial luxury of spending loads of time on the Internet and listening to music. That is a very class based and class afforded opportunity in the world, in my opinion.
The hardest thing about having any kind of conversation with you, Tart dearest, is trying to prevent you turning anything and everything into something which can be addressed by this one raging, infinite monologue you seem to have endlessy echoing around your brain, which you seem determined to do irrespective of how much the original topic has to be tortured in order to fit the bill.
Yes, I know… I’m simply obsessed with it. Take comfort in the fact that you’re equally obsessed with not talking about it and we can go back to your gin consumption and my general need for cock
xoxo
Go on then, I’ll give it a go.
I am not talking about quality as a value-judgement, I am talking about it in terms of a higher spec, whatever that may be: higher bitrate, better build quality, more durable materials (IKEA, for example), more memory, higher pixel count, larger lens, all of these things which can make a product better in terms of performance specification.
These higher specs tend to come at the expense of various other metrics. In the case of mp3s you yourself rip from your own CDs, as an example, a higher spec comes at the expense of storage space and speed of file transfer. In terms of a digital camera it comes at the expense of cost, size and often time to market.
What I am saying, is that people hugely over-estimate the influence of the higher specifications in terms of people’s actual, real-life requirements. Often, as I will bet Ben and DC are doing here, they can even over-estimate it in terms of their own requirements. Ben talks a fine game, but how often have we sat listening to music too quietly because the parents were asleep or in the car where the engine noise muffled the sound? In both those cases, yes, better would have been nice, but the quality we had to hand was perfectly good enough.
I’ll accept a 128kbps mp3 if it means I can shunt it about easily, someone can email it to me and I can store it easily. When I ripped my CD collection I settled on 320kbps, because technology made the storing of wav files expensive and inconvenient – although as Ben sort of points out, this is less the case nowadays than it was five years ago when I did it. If you look at the damage that the acceptability of this quality of audio has done to the music industry then you can see that I am far from being in a minority in this case.
This isn’t about taste or being able to tell the difference or anything. I can tell the difference, but I am still happy enough with a shitey mp3 a lot of the time.
People use phone cameras all the time. By any measure the pictures are of inferior quality in terms of any sort of spec by which you design a product, but the convenience and immediacy make the quality of the picture ‘good enough’ in the overall evaluation. This obviously doesn’t mean that people are going to reject phones with better spec cameras in favour of identical ones with poor cameras, but in terms of priorities, image quality is a long way down the list.
You know Matthew, you may have convinced me t! You wrote:People use phone cameras all the time and my first thought, totally instinctively was “Well, of course they do. What’s wrong with that, but that’s totally different”. Which of course it isn’t. I do accept good enough.
I was also not totally disagreeing; I just think that ‘good enough’ is often accepted when it doesn’t have to be. And soon we’ll all have to buy the White Album again because we ripped it to 320kbps five years ago and now, the speakers/earphones we used have out grown that, and the need to compress the shit out of things will have gone away.
This, I think, is called Capitalism. And it’s best enforced at gun point I am lead to believe.
Ben you are going to have to learn not to mention Capitalism in a thread on which Tart is commenting. I barely have the energy to deal with her myopia as it is.
What I find amazing is how often I accept good enough in areas which I care about an awful lot. Food is the obvious one – for someone who loves really good food and cooking and all the rest of it, I am surprised when I look at just how often I make do, for a huge variety of reasons.
I bet most people are the same, when they really honestly think about it – but that’s just an assumption.
i saw something on the news awhile back about a professor testing his tudents audio tastes. he set up secret listening posts with vinly, cd, and mp3. the majority of his students preffered the mp3 sound to the other two. (wish i could find that news bit now).
i heard that phil spector use to listen to the playbacks through a very small speaker in order to emulate what someone might be hearing in a car or on a transistor radio. funny because so much is made of his lush productions and wall of sound engineering.
ive also noticed that people with great music collections tend to have inferior audio equipment. while “audiophiles” tend to have either a small collection or a crappy one. anyone else notice this?
Hey Ben, wanna meet up for a drink next Thursday? I’ll buy
I would describe most of my friends as ‘good enough’. But them I’m a snob you see…
Are you in Boston tart? Well then of course! I know just the commie dive bar to take you to at that.
And decent pizza if your memory goes that far back?
Haha it does and I wish I were for reals!!!
tart is a commie tease.
Bloody hell, that all got a bit detailed. I reckon that as long as you know when something just is NOT good enough you’ll be ok. That probably applies across all the categories above and to life as a whole rich, poor,capitalist, ethnic soup, camera phone or scratch 7″ single.
puts head back down below the flak line
Hmmm. I define audiophiles as the sort of people that bask in the precisely calibrated wave emanating from their valve amp/linn speaker combo. The sounds issued being secondary to their value in putting the engineering through its paces. I mean, who the fuck else would listen to Pat Metheny?
Musophiles. Ah fuck. those I live with day in, day out. The same thing. Envelope comes through door, goes on pile with 600 other envelope contents yet still generates an excited smile like the prospect of a sneaky handjob from Scarlet Johanssen. Musophiles are like dogs, they will never stop chasing the ball as long as someone keep throwing it.
yeah, there is a tech fetish going on with those audiophiles…sometimes i hear really cool things when im stoned and listening and maybe then i might benefit more from hi-tech gear.
but then i fetishize novelty, so who am i to criticise.
Well I think the Mrs. is right in her distinction. Very few of us are audiophiles, most of us are musophiles. And Chris has pegged me exactly, I’ll make one horribly shameful confession (which I know I will regret for the rest of my Internet life, i.e. forever) … I don’t even own a stereo.
waiting for the collective thud as you drop off your chairs
the best listening I do is in my car which has a Bose stereo, parked in my lot behind my apt. or through my fancy laptop with my sound cancelling $100 in-ear headphones. So call me what you will
I do have a kick ass collection tho
I appreciate the high quality of Matthew’s writing.
And some other blogs are good enough.
I don’t own a stereo either Tart. I do some speakers and a number of old amps. But nothing that is recognizable as a stereo exactly.
tart – the credit goes to former fbi director hoover and his book ‘you can trust a communist tease to be a communist tease.’
Ben, oh reeeeeealy! My shame diminishes.
Chris, just who are you, darling and did that book happen to come with a black negligée?
Fuckme I thought I closed that italics, sorry
Don’t get me wrong Tart, my office would give Batman a stiffy, and my wife won’t eve go into my studio because she thinks the amount of electronics in it is pornographic but, there is still no stereo.
When someone builds a stereo I like I might buy one. But I will bot play Pat Me-fucking-theny through it.
tart – no negligee with the book, but im sure j edgar was wearing one when he wrote it. im chris, that’s who i am.
i’m long past caring about the quality. I just love the fact that I can carry 20,000 songs around with me in my pocket. That’s progress.
and once again, I’m convinced that before I shuffle off this planet I’ve got to get Matthew and tart in the same venue of an evening. I could sell tickets and on the proceeds retire to the Caribbean.
Oh JC I promise you that one day that will indeed happen (tho no tix please! the pressure would be enormous!) and you’ll see that I’m not a commie tease afterall, haha. I’m afraid I’m the real thing.
Matthew, I promised myself I’d let it go. But really, you can’t honestly believe I’ve somehow inserted my agenda into this discussion when you, yourself made the remark about it being an economic issue on your second comment in this thread.
Letting it go now, honestly. I’ll behave better next time boss xoxox
Speaking of quality, did anyone watch Psychoville?