I remember in my twenties discovering things in old music when I purchased my first good stereo. I have recently started to make new discoveries again with Hi-Res audio files and improving dacs with better headphones.
Listening to most Pink Floyd with a good pair of headphones changed it for me. The music is practically “3D” the way they use the left and right channels.
The Jimi Hendrix version of All Along the Watchtower is the one that did it for me. I put it on a playlist to walk to work one night with headphones, and it blew my mind. I’d only ever heard it on portable CD players, where the speakers were close together, so had never noticed the effect 🙂
Yeah, love holophonics, a subset of binaural recording.
Many songs by Pink Floyd. I suddenly noticed interesting and beautiful background noises that I couldn’t believe hadn’t picked up before. (Especially on the “Wish You Were Here” album)
Floyd was my first re-discovery in my twenties when I purchased my first good stereo.
Way back in maybe 90’s when I first got some better headphones, it was startling. Had to listen to all the records that I had or could borrow again because there was all kinds of new stuff I hadn’t heard before.
First Sennheiser pair after Sony and the like was similar and Genelec brought the same level to speakers. But it’s probably kind of plateaued there in that there’s not so much new things to be found. Just good results. I wish I remembered some specific examples.
Sometimes there’s a stereo or surround thing that only really stands out of you have headphones or are in just right spot in the room. And you can hear compression artifacts and distortion and hyping, so there’s that. But I’m not overly good eared really. Adequate is adequate for me.
So I found appreciation for Kendrick Lamar and Tyler the creator after getting a pair of audio technica m50x to go with my Scarlett 2i2. I always liked a few songs from each of them but on those headphones in flac the music is legitimately night and day. They don’t even sound like the same music. Especially in the case of Kendrick who loves to throw tons of interesting things in to his beats that 100% go unnoticed unless you have a good set of headphones.
Where it really makes a difference is in music that is very well produced but busy. A good example would be like the foo fighters. Typically to me they sound pretty meh due to the heavy use of crash cymbals. Compression of lesser quality formats just makes the fantastic guitar tones and everything else just meld into this kind of slop when you hear it in mp3. Seriously do a side by side on something like monkey wrench.
A huge album that I have rediscovered is the entire album cross by Justice. It’s just mp3 but even with the dac and headphones it makes it sound great vs in the car only being meh thanks to repetitive things being highlighted.
Tl;dr. Good headphones+dac+flac = makes 78% of music you have heard 1000 times gooder.
Tyler is in my backlog. I need to get around to checking them out. I agree about Kendricks music. I am an old rock head so I would usually just listen to hip hop on spotify or youtube because I always saw it as stripped down. Not layered like older rock. I put on TPAB one day at work with my dac and headphones. I kept stopping going “wait what?”
Sexual Healing by Hot 8 Brass Band. Rockferry, basically the whole album.
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the entire album. Hands down.
Oh, gods, so many things.
A few years ago, I quit smoking. That’s a massive savings, and I splurged on a few things that I’ve never been able to justify, as a reward to help fill the gaps smoking left.
One of those things was a set of decent headphones, beyerdynamics, alongside a fairly decent phone with the ability to drive them, an lgg7 (those and the g8s really are great).
One of the songs that really made me glad I got the gear is “if we were vampires” by Jason Isbell. He’s a bit of a dick, but an amazing songwriter. That song has a thermamin in it that I had never heard before. It’s this haunting note, bending in and out of the more traditional instruments and his voice, and I had never heard it despite loving the song for quite some time (it’s brutal, in the best way).
That’s the song that sticks out the most, as showing exactly how much difference even entry level gear can make with music.
My ears aren’t “sharp” enough to benefit from the really top end audiophile stuff, and I know that because I’ve had a chance to try stuff out. Past a point, there’s just no difference to my ears. But I can, just barely pick up differences in something like a flac file vs an mp3, even on cheap gear. On my stuff that I have now, it’s easier to detect.
Since then, I’ve gone through all my favorite music, multiple times, and there was so much I had missed.
It might not matter to everyone, regardless of being able to tell there’s a difference. As my sister says, “why should I care, it’s just music to pump while I drive”. Which is perfectly valid, imo. But if you really do want to immerse yourself into music, it’s worth a few hundred bucks
Congrats on quitting! Did it myself in '97. Its hard to kick.
There are times I’m like your sister. I swing back and forth. But when something grabs you, its worth getting the whole album and putting some intention into your listening. Especially if the artist/producer has put the effort into the album. I’m glad to see some artists going back to creating albums as a whole.
Joe Bonamassa - The Ballad of John Henry
I use this for EQing by stereo equipment. The chains must sound like chains.
Also the entirety of The Barenaked Ladies album Gordon.
I will ALWAYS upvote Joe Bonnamassa.
