It’s a couple of months since Neil Young announced on his Facebook page that he would no longer allow his music to be streamed, stating:
I don’t need my music to be devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution.
OK, so he’s right. The sound quality delivered via streaming services like Spotify is… well, compromised. I should know: since moving to Canterbury, at the end of 2013, I’ve listened to music entirely streamed or on my iPhone. It was only a few weeks ago that the vinyl-based hi-fi I bought many, many years ago finally came out of the boxes.
It took a bit of scurrying around to find a new cartridge; then another couple of weeks before I finally got around to screwing it into the tonearm. And we were ready to go: Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge mounted in a Rega Planar 3 deck; Naim Nait amp; Mordaunt-Short Festival 3 speakers…
The first record off the top of the stack was Prince Far-I and the Arabs: Cry Tuff Dub Encounter. I followed up with side 2 of the Madonna remixes album You Can Dance (Over and Over, Into the Groove, Where’s the Party?). This isn’t ‘beautiful’ music. It isn’t a Chopin Nocturne or the Saint Matthew Passion. But it’s great music… and it sounded unutterably wonderful. Actually, a religious experience.
I always knew that I got very lucky with my gramophone. I bought it in Dublin, back in the ’80s when I had the good fortune to share a flat with Adam Meredith, who was working for a small company called Noel Cloney Audio. I couldn’t afford the best that money could buy — even then, you could blow a terrifying amount of dosh on hi-fi components — but I managed to stretch to about a grand. The individual components could have been improved upon — the speakers have never been comfortable with the amp turned up to more than 5.5 on a scale of 11 — but somehow they all really liked each other and have always sounded fantastic.
Vinyl brings out my inner train-spotter. It’s not just the components themselves. The room is important (real hi-fi buffs build their own listening rooms). The connecting leads are crucial. Even removing the telephone from the room really can make a slight but perceptible difference. But that way madness lies.
So yes, I buy what Uncle Neil says about the degraded quality of most of the music we listen to now.
The trouble is, of course, that he’s pushing his own pet project, the superior-quality Pono digital music player, an expensive, clunky-looking gizmo resembling a Toblerone bar. (Opinions seem to vary on whether it actually sounds significantly better than, say, an iPod. I haven’t had a chance to listen to one; I’m not even sure where I’d get the chance, this side of the Atlantic.) On his Facebook post, he continues:
For me, It’s about making and distributing music people can really hear and feel.
I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Stones on a rattling tin box and I felt every second of it. The first Neil Young record I remember hearing was playing through a home-assembled turntable wired into a family radio. Our relationship to the music we love is far more complex than Uncle Neil’s diatribe recognises and, most of the time, has little to do with sound quality.
Whatever the original source –Dansette record player, tape cassette, Spotify, iPhone, vinyl– the music we grow up with downloads to play in our hearts. Uncle Neil may own the music, but he doesn’t own our responses.
Donald Hounam 