Last night I used my car for the first time in about a week. My car has 5 bands on the radio for storing presets, one for AM, two for FM and two for XM. When I don’t drive it for a while, for some reason, the radio defaults to the first FM band. I listen exclusively to XM because New York broadcasting is so abysmal. So when I started the car and an FM station began blaring, I was shocked. I wasn’t shocked as much by the music as by the sound. I hadn’t listened to terrestrial radio for a long time and it sounds even worse than I remember. It’s amazing what you can get used to. I actually liked the song that was playing (On The Jack, I think the station is called, you might get a song you dig once in a while.), but I couldn’t listen to it because it was so terribly mangled by dynamic processing.

How do I simplify this?

Terrestrial radio is regulated by the FCC. Stations have strict requirements to broadcast only at the frequency and at the power at which they are licensed. Therefore, through a process called compression, they electronically “crush” the audio they’re broadcasting as much as possible. The result is that all of the highest levels of the music are reduced to the same level as the quietest parts, and the whole lot is then re-maximized to the legal limit. I know it sounds technical, and I guess it is. The end result is a mess that sounds nothing like the recording was supposed to sound at the recording studio. The goal is to make your radio station loader than everyone else’s. I guess the reasoning is that if it seems to jump out of your radio, more people will listen. If you’re actually listening, like I am, the opposite effect is probably achieved.

Commercials on television are done the same way. Have you ever been watching a television show when the station goes to a commercial and had your head nearly blown off by the increase in volume? The level isn’t any higher than the one for the show, but all of the audio has been maximized to the legal limit, presumably to get your attention.

Did you ever notice how a song you hear on the radio sounds nothing like the one you play from the CD at home? I noticed the phenomenon at a very early age (with records), but it took about 15 years before I became a recording engineer and understood why.

If it still isn’t clear, here’s a perfect analogy. THIS ANALOGY IS USED ALL THE TIME TO DESCRIBE A TREND IN AUDIO RECORDING REFERRED TO BY SOME AS “THE LOUDNESS RACE.” HOW ANNOYING IS IT THAT I’VE TYPED THIS SECTION IN FULL CAPS? DOESN’T IT FEEL LIKE I’M SCREAMING AT YOU?

That’s what the music sounds like on the radio. To make matters worse, modern recordings of pop music are mastered to be “capitalized” at the studio! Then, when the record company pays all that money to get the recordings on the radio…

You can barely make out what that says, right? (It says “They’re Capitalized Again!”) You can’t make out anything in the recordings either. What happens when someone screams all the time? Don’t you stop listening? If you listen to one-dimensional, “full caps” recordings of music for long enough, your ears get tired. It’s true. They stop perceiving detail. Soon, music doesn’t matter at all. Sort of like what’s happened on New York radio. What’s the answer? To turn it up even louder? I’m tired of being hit over the head.

At a time when the technology exists to reproduce music with astounding clarity, the trend is to make it sound worse than AM radio. Why? Because somebody interested in selling recordings got the idea that louder is better, to the exclusion of all aesthetic standard. Louder is good sometimes, but life doesn’t exist at one dynamic. It’s made up of a wonderful collage of timbres, with innumerable louds and softs. Don’t miss them, even though the radio and record companies would like you believe that they don’t exist. Choose your music with your own ears. There’s plenty of it out there. Most of the best stuff doesn’t get to the radio, so don’t stop there. Check out as much independent music as you can. It’s the only hope for the art form.

I think the hardest part about writing a blog like this one is that I’m always wrestling with whether or not I should mention a particular event, or personal emotional response to it. Writing a blog without a large readership tempts me to write about anything that floats through my transom, but that isn’t the wisest thing to do, is it? A strange dichotomy is at work here. I consider myself a very private person, yet I’m writing my thoughts and observations in a place where they can be read by anyone. I thought that trying to stay on point with my New Aquarian principles would see me through, but it isn’t that easy for me.

So I’ll try to get a bunch of my concerns, current obsessions and opinions out in a flurry of verbiage, in the hopes that free writing will calm me. I worry about oil and gasoline. I use my car as little as possible, to at least do what I can. I think the president is a psychopath and I’m deeply concerned for my children and their children because of the mess his legacy will undoubtedly leave behind. I find a great portion of the population to be asleep at the wheel and despite my supposed enlightenment, sometimes feel resentful that I must spend so much time and energy staving off the restless pull of complacency.

I tire of the uniformed soldiers of fear standing in front of the New York Stock Exchange with assault weapons. Are they out to protect the money, or the people? And since when did anyone attack New York City with anything an assault rifle could effectively counter? Maybe they think that it makes people feel safe. It’s so twisted that intimidation is the only thing our government can think of to give the illusion of safety. You know what it is? It’s fear. They’re scared shitless. Bullies usually are. They’re intruders in my city. They may as well be in airplanes.

…

I think these points are valid simply to show that even though I believe that it’s possible to live well in the world exactly as it is, the way to do that is not always immediately apparent. On some days, the way to live well can be the most elusive thing. Perhaps tomorrow will be better, or even an hour from now. I thank you for your indulgence.

I discovered a good blog at howtolive.org. This guy Tom over there seems to share many of the same ideas I work with at New Aquarius. While I’m focusing on personal awareness, and using our talents and innate good sense to live well within the context of a society seems to discourage the endeavor, Tom takes a broader view: learning how to live. Many times, I think we’re talking about the same thing. I encourage you to check it out. Good articles and interesting links. I’ve decided that his will be the first link I publish here. Look down in the link list, and visit by all means, but remember to come back here! Tom has taken a lot of time to make his blog available for subscriptions. I’d like to do that as well. I have to look into it. The appropriate feed files are on my server, but Tom has links to a number of aggregators.

It was oppressively warm in New York this weekend, so my wife and I thought it best to do something inside during the hottest parts of the day. We decided to skip the bike ride and hit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The last time we went, I didn’t get to Egypt or Greek and Roman, so we went for it. While wandering about, I came across an enormous room of early American exhibits that I’d never seen before. It was awful! It seems that early American art consisted mostly of portraiture and poor portraiture at that. Many of the portraits were by unknown artists. Too right! It didn’t help that most of the pieces were mounted on an ad hoc steel grating that was painted white. The whole mess was set behind glass, upon which some genius at the Met shined floodlights from the center of the aisles. The glare on the glass was so awful it seemed as if someone was trying to soften the blow of these awful paintings by discouraging the views of patrons. The exhibit reminded me of a trip to Levitz, walking through the warehouse, looking for exits.

The portraits captured very little of the context of their creation and even less of the personas of their subjects. They seemed to have been created by artists lacking the ability, if not the understanding of what they were doing. I’m not an artist, and only a frustrated critic, but it seemed that most American art, if this exhibit represents any authentic cross-section, was created more by artisans than artists. Perhaps that’s exactly what one should expect from a fledgling little band of colonies trying to gain footing. But do we need a whole room of these monsters? American art had no way to go but up, and that thankfully occurred. Whew!

The subjectivity at work in the choices of the early American exhibits gave me pause. Who’s to say what ends up at The Met and what ends up in the fire? The lesson is to keep doing what you do. Attempt to do it well. That’s enough. The significance won’t matter that much to a great number of people, so it shouldn’t be about that. Just make your point, and contribute to the best of your ability. Maybe they’ll put your blog under glass on Lower Broadway. People gotta walk somewhere, right?