Guardian writer falls for the new-age fad of “decluttering” and throws away her entire record collection. And then regrets it, because streaming everything on a laptop just isn’t the same.
Listening on my laptop wasn’t so much making me think music shouldn’t take up physical space – it was making me forget the aural space that music was supposed to take up. My ears stopped expecting so much from the sound. The songs were compressed; the quality decreased; the speakers just two little discreet areas on either side of my typing hands. The music sounded about as deep as an oatcake on there. There was no graphic equaliser or anything like that – if I wanted to experience the song with more dimension to it, I just turned the volume up. It’s not so much that my laptop made all other physical forms redundant, it’s that it made music so dull that I lost interest in music.
You do have to wonder whether someone who was willing to throw away their entire music collection has some serious neuroses; so terrified of turning into a Nick Hornby style music nerd that they go to the opposite extreme. Or is it perhaps that they never truly loved music in the first place? As much as some music journalists love being part of the rock’n'roll circus, do they ever make any deep emotional connection with the music itself?
I’m decluttering right now (trust me, we need it badly), but I’m keeping just about my entire CD collection.
There’s a big difference between thinning out stuff that’s taking up too much space, and throwing out everything. I still maintain you’re getting rid of an entire record collection either the music was never that important, or there are some serious neuroses involved.
I had a major problems with CD storage a few years ago. Nowhere to put them so they were piled up around the living room. Must have been about 2005 when I contacted a local carpenter and got him to make some CD shelves for me. The ones they sell in the shops were totally unsuitable so I designed some to my own spec and gave him a diagram and measurements to the millimetre. They were designed to fix to the wall so that when they were fitted, they took up no space whatsoever in the front room. Two shelves that join together, six rows high and a slightly higher top row for DVDs. No wasted space, they look good, but cost me £200. It was very pleased with them. I thought there would be lots of free space, but then discovered a load of new music and they’re full up and I’ve ended up with loads of them in boxes.
The journalist does no favours to the industry that she works in by throwing away her entire collection. And if she’s just streaming music through standard computer speakers, then its just going to sound like background music at best. Most modern televisions have a PC channel. So I’ve got my computer wired to the television PC channel as a monitor for sound and vision. She has a solution. But there’s no chance of my throwing my CDs away.
To be charitable, at least she admits that she made a mistake. It is difficult to fully appreciate music if one is listening to a compressed mp3, or similar, through a pair of desktop speakers. You get the general gist of the music, but miss most of the subtle details, and listening becomes a chore not a pleasure. If she had kept her CDs and had a quality music system I doubt she would have lost interest.
It’s been suggested that Metallica’s “And Justice for All” is mixed perfectly for laptop speakers. Though Jason Newstead might not agree….
Silly Metallica! Surely it’s in the artists interest to achieve the best possible sound quality? Well recorded music will always sound half decent via a poor system, and absolutely stunning on a good quality hi-fi. Mixed for desktop might be ok through such speakers, but will sound pretty dire on good gear. A pox on dynamic range compression!