Tubes and Vinyl and An Understanding Spouse
For the three of you who will care about this, here’s the birdseye lowdown about my tentative journey back into the land of tubes and vinyl. First, the ground rules. I will not be dragged into any arguments about the quality of experience of vinyl versus digital, tubes versus transistors, active versus passive, coaxial versus component. In each of these controversies I have held unshakeable convictions only to have them dashed to pieces in the harsh sunlight of experiment, and the only thing I can say for sure is that everything—from the choice of microphones, to whether the musicians had breakfast, to whether the balance engineer actually understood the emotional underpinnings of the music, to whether the listener had breakfast—affects how recorded music is perceived. I only offer my observations from a lifetime spent listening and mixing in a mostly vain attempt to coax the ghosts out of the hidden spaces. Second, a disclaimer. Mine is not by any standard even a lower-mid-level a...
