What in the world is going on.....

Clapton, Santana and Beck can be okay though not really impressive, and John McLaughlin is in a league of his own as a guitar player. However, for the last twenty or so years what he has been playing does not impress me at all, unless he plays older compositions. His music appears to have run out. Well, he is 74.

If having a system worth upwards of $75k could make an album sound better I'd be squirreling away money to buy one - but I'll probably be dead before that happens. 

I play golf, badly, and not often as I'd like to. I could literally spend a couple thousand bucks on better clubs but...I'd still be a pretty below average shagger. 

Stringreen, I most certainly am not casting aspersions on your system or making light of its cost. Nor am I doubting its value to you. If I had the funds I'd have one, too. 

Poor recordings/pressings et al have been around for as long as I can remember. I can recall playing records in the '70's that I thought were awful sonically. I've been listening to Simon's latest recently and have found it to be pretty dismissable content-wise, compared to his previous releases at least IMHO, and the sonics are definitely more in-your-face. I have it on LP and an HDtracks flac download.  The LP sounds better overall. I listen to my digital through a Sony HAPZ1es. 

I just find the content of this release missing somewhat, the strength of the tunes?  "So Beautiful..." has a great collection of material. 

I HAVE noticed that transferring files to the HAP is better executed using LAN than wifi. It's faster for one, and secondly it's less prone to bandwidth issues than when I wifi them. (Can "wifi" be a verb, too?) I've noticed that there are burps in many of the tracks that went via wifi. It could be my imagination but I'll swear to it. 

I use Tidal, iTunes, HDtracks and Amazon to hear stuff now because there are but a handful of stores remaining to do so in person. A couple of hours doing that and you'll hear the differences on all the recordings.  It's just there. 

Happy listening, peeps!

Oblgny....that's just the point.....Fremmer gave this record's sound, performance, and content a rave review....Simon is and has been one of my favorites.   This recording just doesn't make it on MY system....and wondering why.  (as an aside I was REALLY amazed and disappointed at Paul's performance at the Democratic convention....out of tune, garbled words, phoned in....)

That performance at the DNC was....good gosh. Well intentioned though it was, I was cringing. 

Phoned in?  That would have been a wise decision!  But one performance, one rendition doesn't negate a career that has been pretty damn amazing.  

Recent additions to my system have me flipping vinyl more often than listening digitally.  Even my vintage vinyl sounds great.