In “Bluetooth Speakers Are Ruining Music,” The Atlantic’s Michael Owens takes an historical lens to our evolving relationship with music, notes the relatively recent tug-of-war between quality and convenience, and accurately identifies the audio industry’s enduring fixation with “fidelity.”
He calls that last bit “silly.”
He writes, “From the early years of recorded music, the people selling it have relied on a dubious language of fidelity — challenging the listener to tell a recording apart from the so-called real thing.”
He’s right — to an extent. Allow me to explain using a long and convoluted sports metaphor!
I enjoy participating in fantasy baseball, an online game in which people like me act as general managers of imaginary teams comprising various players of real-life teams, cobbled together to accumulate points in key statistical categories. It, too, is silly. One of the greatest joys in fantasy baseball is prospecting. The manager capable of accurately identifying an emerging star has a clear and meaningful advantage over all other managers in the league. And so, we dream on the futures of unproven players based on scouting reports and grading scales — reviews and class rankings, in other words — with little to no evidence of their actual capabilities or eventual ceilings at the Major League level.
So, is it silly to dream of a superstar ceiling for Konnor Griffin of the Pittsburgh Pirates? Well, no — not if you know you’re dreaming.
Chasing superstars, like chasing fidelity, can be a whole lot of fun. And it’s only silly if you think it’s possible to hit with any level of accuracy. Still, it is silly for those of us selling music or gear to challenge listeners’ abilities to distinguish a recording from the real thing.
Recordings are one thing
live music another, and
never the twain shall meet.
What are we trying to prove? Who are we trying to convince? What do we stand to win?
But Michael Owens isn’t here to take part in audiophilic arguments about acoustic integrity.
He continues: “We do listen to sound waves, of course, but we also absorb them with the rest of our body, and beyond the sound of the concert are all the physical details of its production — staging, lighting, amplification, decor. We hear some of that happening, too, and we see it, just as we see and sense the rising and falling of the people in the seats around us, as we feel the air whipping off their applauding hands or settling into the subtly different stillnesses of enrapturement or boredom.”
Rather than mere fidelity, Owens is interested in the space that music makes — how we furnish it and experience it, with what and with whom.
Today’s ubiquitous Bluetooth speaker, Owens argues, represents “the first time since the arrival of hi-fi almost a century ago that we’ve so widely acceded to making the music in our lives smaller.”
And isn’t that a tragedy?
And doesn’t it present a far more compelling reason to embrace high-end audio?
Instead of chasing fidelity, shouldn’t we be reaching for space?
Not in the Elon Musk sense of the word — the italicized, all-caps SPAAAAACE! — but as in a haven, a place where we can breathe freely, stretch out and relax, strengthen bonds and create new ones. Communities whose foundations and walls are built on naturally beautiful sound.
While the literal idea of “fidelity” has always been at least sort of dreamy, the real possibility of creating a large, safe space that can be shared with friends and loved ones remains as appealing and important as ever.
So, what are we going to listen to today?
Sarah Klang: Beautiful Woman (Nettwerk Music Group)
Nia Wyn: A Pleasure to Have in Class (Nia Wyn)
Wafia: Promised Land (Nettwerk Music Group)
Squid: Cowards (Warp Records)
Larry June, 2 Chainz, The Alchemist: Life is Beautiful (The Freeminded Records)
Omar Thomas Large Ensemble: Griot Song (Omar Thomas Music)
Jon Batiste: The New Orleans Collection (Universal Music Group)
Tony Allen, La BOA: La Boa Meets Tony Allen (Planet Woo/Comet Records)
James Brandon Lewis: Apple Cores (Anti-)
Rubén Blades, Roberto Delgado & Orquesta: Fotografías (Rubén Blades Productions)
Dean Blunt, Elias Rennenfelt: lucre (World Music)
Oklou: choke enough (True Panther Records)
Heartworms: Glutton for Punishment (Speedy Wunderground/PIAS)
Lawrence English: Even the Horizon Knows Its Bounds (Room40)
Sharon Van Etten: Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory (Jagjaguwar)
