Responding to
Criticism
 A few months ago I wrote an editorial in which I argued that one of the things in the future
that might hurt high-quality sound is the lack of young people interested in it. I used my
own experience as evidence. A student of mine had landed an internship designing CD
players for Panasonic but was not excited about the job. He thought that, while it was
good experience, it wasn’t any different from any other engineering job. I suggested,
and still think, that this must in part be because of a failure on society’s part to
impart an understanding of the value of music. Second, I suggested that students’
lack of knowledge of musical history and theory has also led to them to not value music
and, consequently, its reproduction. Third, I argued that the Apple iPod, in all of its
wonderfulness, has skewed consumer interest toward small, portable sound and away from
good sound.
I received e-mails that criticized each of these points.
Here, I respond to those criticisms and explain why I stand by my initial position.
One person wrote to tell me that my student’s reaction
was normal, and that I may have too much invested in wanting others to value good sound
the way I do. I’ll agree that my commitment to good sound may go beyond the norm, but
I think my point doesn’t require sharing that commitment. I think that if a person
doesn’t care whether he is designing CD players or garage-door openers, then he does
not value music very much. My criticism is more of what society fosters and deems valuable
than a criticism of this student, who is a smart and thoughtful person. If he does not
value music, it is because he has not been taught to appreciate it.
Some writers took my criticism that university students
don’t understand music theory or history as a conservative attack on the
students’ own interest in today’s music. They argued that students’
interest in hip-hop is the same as previous generations’ interest in rock. New
generations, I was told, are always described by older generations as having lost their
heads when it comes to music.
This troubled me, not least because I’m pretty sure
I’m closer in age to the students than to those who lobbed this criticism. It also
suggests that I did not clearly make my point in the first place. I don’t find my
students’ interest in hip-hop the problem, but that they seem incapable of even
understanding the music that interests them. They cannot place it in its cultural context,
or even understand that the samples on which hip-hop relies come from earlier music. As a
teenager, I first heard John Coltrane’s "Ascension" as a sample on a Public
Enemy record. It led me to investigate this music and to increase my understanding of it,
and also to understand why Public Enemy may have wanted to use it. What interested me was
not just the sound, but the intentions behind it. Without understanding the meaning of
music, in whatever form, it begins to be valued more as a way of ridding ourselves of
silence than as a way to experience beauty and meaning.
It was pointed out to me that the Apple iPod itself
isn’t the problem, because it is not limited to playing lossy MP3 files but can also
be used to play high-quality digital copies. This is true, of course, but that’s not
how digital music players are marketed, or, as far as I can tell, how they are used by the
vast majority of those who own them. The ads for the iPod stress how many thousands
of songs it can hold, not how good those songs will sound; the goal is not quality
but quantity. The iPod makes a music library into a fashion statement, not a meaningful
collection of art. It might be that a music collection stored on an iPod can be treated as
both and that these things can coexist, but my outlook is pessimistic.
In "As We See It" in the February 2005 issue of Stereophile,
John Marks raised issues connected to those I’ve raised here. John’s essay is
more eloquent than mine, but I think both pieces indicate that there is a real devaluation
of music as serious art in contemporary society. Audiophiles’ failure to help turn
the tide may ultimately hurt themselves. In some ways this issue reminds me of the
characters in G.K. Chesterton’s The Ball and the Cross. Chesterton is best
known for his Father Brown mysteries, but he was much more than a mystery writer. Toward
the end of this fantasy novel, a theist and an atheist who have been feuding and fencing
their way around London realize that their true enemies are not each other, but those who
do not take seriously the question of God’s existence. If God’s existence
is not taken seriously, then reasoned belief, whether theist or atheist, suffers. The
amount of energy that goes into the haranguing that populates audio websites about the
superiority of SACD over DVD-Audio or vice versa, or tubes vs. solid-state, or how crooked
some audio reviewers may be, would be better spent encouraging others to see the value of
good sound and good music.
A note on this month’s review
We begin this month with a review of Magnepan’s
MG1.6/QR. At $1725/pair USD, this loudspeaker may be the most expensive item we’ll
ever review on GoodSound!, where we strive to cover products that are both
affordable and provide high performance. While the MG1.6/QR might be reaching the limits
of the definition of affordable, we believe its quality of performance is so high
that some readers might be willing to stretch their budget to buy a pair. Great speakers
can be had for much less, but sometimes we can gain much by stretching ourselves just a
little.
…Eric D. Hetherington
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