I have a hard time believing that it's nearly been one year since my Behringer Truth Studio Monitors were delivered to my door. I can assure myself that the purchase was not in vain; the speakers did get a lot of use (not abuse) over the past year, and they still sound fantastic.They do not, however get quite as much use as I would like -- as they only have two volume settings: medium-loud and very loud. Setting the dial on the amplifier to 1 ensures that the sound level in the vicinity of the speakers makes it difficult to speak over. Turning the dial past 3 will ensure that the neighbors will soon be annoyed, and anything past 5 will ensure that your crystal and china collection will spontaneously shatter, as well as any eardrums within 1 meter of the speaker cones will bleed.
They're great for listening to your favorite music; however they aren't great at building or strengthening relationships.
Shortly after the initial purchase, you may even recall how I became unruly, noting that I could hear artifacts in my compressed music, and that I would have to re-encode my music collection once again. I chose 192 variable-bitrate AAC encoding as my codec of choice, but I wonder if that wasn't good enough. Still, I suppose I should worry about quality once I have my CD collection in its' entirety, in my hard drive first.
If you have been wondering about my progress re-encoding my music and finishing the import of the remaining CD's in my collection, let me assure you that it is a work in progress. For example, I bought Tool's latest album 10,000 Days last May, and it remains enclosed in cellophane wrapping, as-yet un-listened. I assure you, I resolve to crack the CD and listen to it, before the 1-year anniversary of its' release.
Sadly, due to the inherent craziness of my schedule, I don't get a lot of time to sit down and just listen to an album anymore. That might be why it's taken me so long to encode a 600-CD collection. And it's not about the time it would take me to encode: With the dual-core processor, I can encode an entire CD in less than 5 minutes. I could have the remainder of the collection ripped in an afternoon.
Well, I don't have an afternoon to spare.
What is important, is how I feel when I sit on front of the speakers. It is absolute musical bliss, hearing music uncolored, and the way the artists and producers meant it to be heard. With these speakers, I have heard details I never had never heard before. This might just explain why I have listened to a lot of Massive Attack and Statik Sound System (and other ambient techno artists from Bristol) in the last year.
As far as Statik Sound System, Tempesta II was "one of those CD's" that I went on a crusade to find, after discovering them as a DJ at CKUL (pronounced skull) radio in Lethbridge during my university years. One late evening The Mydnyte Mystryss and I were finding material to accompany our mix of Industrial and angry Alternative music, and out of sheer luck, one of us grabbed this disc. "Statik Sound System", one of us commented; "This might sound interesting". And it was. It was very cool ambient trip-hop, and I knew I had to find that disc to add it to my collection.
It took a few years, but out of sheer fluke, I found a copy of Tempesta II while on tour in 1999, in all places but a pawn shop in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.
Life is serendipitous.
I am looking forward to the next several years with my studio monitors as my musical companion.
2 comments:
I remember reading a few years back that you could send your cd's to a company, and they would rip them and send them back to you. it was cheap, like .30 cents a CD. Anyways, when I look at my collection, that always crosses my mind.
And you have to open the Tool CD just for the cool 3D glasses and artwork. very cool
Ah, yes. The 3-D glasses. Adding to the legions of Tool fans who look like Bubbles.
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