Acetate Acquaintences

I used the Finder to search my laptop for a jpg I made that illustrates, visually, the frequency spectrum available in 192 kHz wav files compared to 44.1 kHz wav files compared to 160 kbps mp3s. Couldn't find it. Instead, I discovered this: a paper I wrote in graduate school in which I speculated whether Theodor Adorno would spend $500 on a 40GB iPod. HAHAHAHA! Those were the days.

Acetate Acquaintances & Passive Regressive Listening: Theodor W. Adorno on Music and Technology

“There is no longer beauty or consolation except in the gaze falling on horror, withstanding it, and in unalleviated consciousness of negativity holding fast to the possibility of what is better.” - Theordor Adorno in Minima Moralia

Would Theodor Adorno buy an iPod?  What would he put on it?

If he had lived into the twenty-first century, long enough to plug a quarter into a jukebox and pull up a string of lonely country songs, to peel open the shrink wrap on the first pressing of Sympathy For The Devil, to witness Ozzy, Devo, Madonna; if Adorno had been able to see The Kronos Quartet perform “Purple Haze” followed by a Steve Reich string quartet, or download an illegal mp3 of Dangermouse’s mash-up of The Beatles and Jay-Z; if Adorno had the opportunity to look back on the first century of recorded music, what would he make of it?  And what would he make of the record players, boomboxes and iPods, vinyl, cassettes and CDs – the artifacts - that litter living rooms and hide in backpacks and coat pockets?  Would he throw up his hands in frustration at the ostensible distancing of artist and audience?  Or would he begrudgingly shell out five hundred dollars for a 40 gigabyte iPod and load in Beethoven’s entire works? 

That image I was looking for? Found it. Take a gander at a visual representation of what goes missing when you down sample and compress your audio.