What I Listen to Most

Just because I can. Using Doug Adams’ mySpins, which aggregates play counts from your iTunes library:

The first column is the number of plays by artist – you’ll note that I set the artist for classical music to the composer’s name, as it’s easier to navigate on iPods with the tag set this way. The Grateful Dead is in the lead, followed by Franz Schubert, notably because I listen to his lieder a lot; these are songs that are, on average, 3-5 minutes each. There’s much less Beethoven, because those are longer works: piano sonatas, string quartets, etc. Bill Evans beats out Brad Mehldau by a bit, in part because I’ve been listening to him longer. And Bob Dylan is very high up, as I have all of his albums, and listen to them regularly.

The second column is the songs I’ve played most, across albums (that’s what “pooled” means). In other words, I’ve listened to Playing in the Band, by the Grateful Dead, 151 times, over 59 different albums (lots of different live versions). All of the top ten pooled spins are by the Grateful Dead.

Note that these play counts are not absolute for all artists or songs, as removing then re-adding music deletes their play counts. I’ve done that several times with certain composers, and with many Grateful Dead concerts.

Music Notes: Hyperion 99-Disc Complete Liszt Box Set

Hyperion Records has released a 99-disc box set of the long-running series they have been publishing of all of Franz Liszt’s piano music. Recorded by Leslie Howard, with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra for the concertos, this series has been a labor of love for some 25 years (the first disc was recorded in 1985, and was an early digital recording). Hyperion claims that it holds the Guinness world record for the world’s largest recording series by a solo artist; I don’t know of any that even come close.

Liszt’s music is an acquired taste; I’ve been listening to bits and pieces from this set since I got it nearly a year ago, and while some of the music is too over-the-top for my taste, much of it is very interesting. It contains 7,266 minutes of music, enough to keep anyone busy for a very long time. Discovering an oeuvre like this is a long-term process, and having all the music available in one set makes it possible to flip around from period to period to hear how Liszt grew.

A large number of these discs are transcriptions: of music from operas, of songs by Franz Schubert (11 hours’ worth), of Beethoven’s symphonies (masterful transcriptions indeed). The one set of works that has held me spellbound is the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, a series of “mystical” keyboard works. This set is full of surprises, and I have barely scratched the surface so far.

It’s currently listed at €186 at Amazon FR, £228 at Amazon UK, and $302 at Amazon.com, with marketplace sellers offering it for less. Hyperion – one of my sponsors – also has it available for download, in MP3, FLAC and Apple Lossless formats, with impeccable metadata, and full notes embedded in each track. They sell it for £200, but you get an immediate 25% “bulk buy” discount, making it £150. And you don’t have to rip the CDs.

Album Notes: Charles Ives’ Violon Sonatas, by Hilary Hahn and Valentina Lisitsa

Charles Ives (1874-1954) is one of America’s most iconoclastic composers. Not a “professional” music maker, his modernist music was largely ignored during his lifetime, but that didn’t prevent him from composing music that stands out as unique and surprising. After studying music at Yale, he went on to make a large number of money in the insurance business, composing in his spare time. He wrote four symphonies, two piano sonatas, two string quartets, 114 songs, a handful of other works, and the four sonatas for violin and piano on this disc.

It’s refreshing to see a violinist of Hilary Hahn’s stature record these four violin sonatas, which have seen a handful of recordings, but never one as high-profile as this one. The performances of these works are sensitive and intimate, and the sound is excellent. The rapport between Hahn and Lisitsa is also evident, as they perform these difficult works in close symbiosis.

Ives’ music is tonal at times, atonal at others (particularly as his music evolved over the years), and notably features a number of “quotations” of American popular and folk songs. Listening to this music demands a great deal of patience, especially if you’re discovering Ives’ idiom for the first time. But this recording is an excellent way to discover Ives’ unique sound world. (The other place to start is with his wonderful Concord Sonata for piano – I have a special appreciation for this recording by Donna Coleman – which puts to music the ideas of the great inhabitants of Concord, Massachusetts: Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts and Thoreau. And while I’m on the subject, let me point out this astounding orchestration of the Concord Sonata, by Henry Brant, and recorded by the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas, who is a champion of Ives’ music.)

I’d like to note one criticism of this disc. Too often, recordings are made where one cannot take the time to appreciate the end of one work – especially if it consists of multiple movements – and the beginning of the next work. Some labels pay careful attention to this, adding extra silence between works. On this recording, there is hardly any silence, and you go from one work to the next without realizing, at times, that it’s a different sonata. It doesn’t cost anything to add silence, and it helps the listener appreciate the music, when they have a bit of time to reflect after a work ends.

Here’s Hilary Hahn in an NPR “Tiny Desk Concert,” performing some Bach, and some of the tunes that Ives uses in the violin sonatas:

Gadget Review: SRS iWow 3D Audio Enhancer for iPod, iPad and iPhone

In the search for better sound from portable devices, such as iPods, a number of add-ons (or plug-ins, literally) are available. There are several small headphone amps that you can use with an iPod or other portable music player, and then there’s the $70 SRS iWow 3D. This device plugs into the dock connector of your iPod, iPhone or iPad, and has a headphone jack for you to plug in your headphones or earbuds.

I tested the SRS iWow 3D on a number of devices, and with several different headphones. SRS claims that this device “Deliver[s] natural and immersive sound with deep, rich bass,” and that it “Dynamically locates and restores audio details buried in source material.” It does indeed change the sound of your music; the question is, is that change good or not? I think this type of device is something you will either love or hate, and that there’s not much middle ground.

First of all, the SRS iWow 3D does provide a feeling of surround sound, or what the company calls “immersive” sound. It’s actually quite impressive; there is a noticeable separation among instruments when it is on. While I wouldn’t call it surround sound – which SRS does not – it is more spacious. I don’t know exactly how this voodoo is worked, but some of it involves equalization and a change in overall volume. When you connect the SRS iWow 3D to your device, you press a small LED-lit button to turn it on; if the LED is off, it is merely passing the sound through without altering it. You can instantly notice that the volume is slightly increased, so to compare, you need to adjust the volume to try to hear both signals at the same loudness. The high end and low end are noticeably increased, and there is an overall augmentation of bass, something that portable players often lack.

In my tests with Beyerdynamic DT 990 32 amp headphones, I noticed a bit of hiss at the high end, with some types of music (this was more prominent with orchestral music than rock or pop); it seems that this treble boost is too much for some recordings. Jerry Garcia’s voice on Ripple sounds less smooth; the drums on U2′s Sunday Bloody Sunday are too punchy; and the bass on Brian Eno’s Just Another Day is almost distorted; and Bob Dylan’s voice on Desolation Row sounds processed and hissy.

On the other hand, when I plugged in a pair of Sennheiser PX 100-II i headphones, Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road sounded much better through the SRS iWow 3D; Lou Reed’s voice on Pale Blue Eyes stood out much more; and the acoustic guitar background on Bob Dylan’s Forever Young took on much more space.

(Note that most of my tests with classical music showed that the device, at least with good headphones, doesn’t help much.)

I performed the above tests first on an iPod classic. If you have an iOS device, you can use SRS’s iWow application to choose the type of output (headphones, speakers or car), and choose from advanced settings, such as Wide Surround, Deep Bass and High Treble. This gives you a bit more flexibility in the way the sound is rendered, and you can adjust these settings to fit your headphones. Results were a bit better using the device with the app.

My verdict is this: if you have good, relatively expensive headphones, the SRS iWow 3D won’t improve the sound of your music, and the adjustments it makes may not work with your headphones. However, if you use earbuds or portable headphones, notably with limited bass response, the SRS iWow 3D will give them a much better sound. Also, if you use an iOS device, the SRS iWow app will give you a bit more control over the sound.

This said, I think each listener will need to decide if they like the type of sound this device provides. You should ideally test this with your headphones to see how you feel about the sound.

One note: the LED on the device is bright, and, together with the actual signal processing, the SRS iWow 3D uses up a fair amount of battery life. SRS claims that this reduces battery life by approximately 18%. That’s a lot, if you use your iPod for several hours a day, and could be a deal-breaker.

iTunes Match Feature I’d Like to See: CD Matches

While I have some issues with iTunes Match – notably the fact that it doesn’t match very well – I was ripping some CDs today, and realized that there is one feature that could be very useful.

I got a 12-disc set of Murray Perahia playing Mozart’s piano concertos, and had to spend a long time ripping the CDs. Wouldn’t it be great if you could insert a CD on your computer, have iTunes match it, then have it added to your library without needing to rip the discs? While you’d have to download the music, it’s still less labor-intensive than ripping CDs, at least for multi-disc sets.

I can see the reason why this wouldn’t work – it’s too easy for a friend to bring their CD collection to your home, and for you to insert one CD after another, matching them, then downloading the tracks. But since you could also just rip that friend’s CDs, it’s not that much of a difference, other than the time saved.

You may ask why I am buying 12-disc sets of music on CD rather than from the iTunes Store or Amazon? It turns out – paradoxically – that most classical box sets are much cheaper than they are by download. I bought this set from Amazon FR, for €30; on iTunes, it’s €60, and it’s not available by download from Amazon FR. Go figure.

The Grateful Dead Movie Now Available on Blu-Ray

I remember well, back in the summer of ’77, when The Grateful Dead movie was released. I don’t recall exactly where it was showing in New York City, but with my friends, I went to see it shortly after it opened. It was in one of the few movie theaters that had Dolby sound, and the sound was, indeed, excellent (for the time).

Times have changed, and The Grateful Dead Movie is now available on Blu-Ray, with much better sound than the original film: as with the 2004 DVD release, there’s a 5.1 surround sound mix, this time with lossless audio (because there’s more room on the disc) and 1080p images.

Let’s face it: The Grateful Dead Movie is not a very good movie. It tries to be a cross between a concert flick – which was becoming common at that time – and an overview of what the Deadhead scene was like. Interspersed among the concert footage are interviews and films of people waiting on line at the Winterland, during what was thought to be, at the time, the Grateful Dead’s last concert run. (And that cheesy opening animation…)

Fortunately, this turned out to not be the case, and after the hiatus, the band came back strong. But this attempt to portray the anthropological nature of the scene took away from the concert footage. Had there been full songs, long jams, and uninterrupted musical sequences, together with the rest of the footage, this might have been a good movie, but when watching it, you want to hear the music, and it keeps getting cut off. I’m sure the reason was financial, but if only the movie had been an hour longer, it could have been a good record of the period, and had lots of music as well.

Fortunately, on both the DVD and Blu-Ray release, there are extra filmed tracks with music only. These total about 100 minutes, and are roughly the equivalent of a full set of a Grateful Dead concert, and features the following songs:

Uncle John’s Band
Sugaree
The Other One > Spanish Jam > Mind Left Body Jam > The Other One
Scarlet Begonias
China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider
Dark Star
Weather Report Suite

Not a bad setlist. So, while I have the DVD set already, I’ll certainly buy the Blu-Ray, but not for the movie itself; I’ll get it for those extra songs. There are very few good films of the Dead in the 70s, and this is the best record of a Dead show, until the 12/31/78 Closing of Winterland DVD set. Unfortunately, this show was only recorded on VHS, so the quality is not up to par. I really wish that more footage from the October 1974 shows – the ones recorded for The Grateful Dead Movie – were released, but I have a feeling that there’s not much left that’s salvageable. In any case, getting Dark Star, The Other One and China > Rider on a Blu-Ray is worth the price of admission.

An Overview of Apple Lossless Compression Results

I recently pointed out that the Apple Lossless codec has gone open source, meaning that this lossless codec can now be freely used in both hardware and software. The Apple Lossless codec is similar to FLAC, and offers the same advantages. When you compress files in a lossless format, you lose absolutely none of the original data. Just as when you compress a text file using zip compression, decompressing returns all the original letters and characters, lossless music compression provides the full fidelity of the original audio you compressed.

It’s interesting to look at the sizes of files compressed in Apple Lossless format. (These file sizes are similar for other lossless formats, such as FLAC, SHN and APE.) I took a handful of CDs, and ripped some tracks to show how the amount of compression can vary.

When comparing file sizes, the easiest way is to look at the bit rate that displays in iTunes. (Comparing file size is more difficult, as the different files used would have to be the same length for this to be valid.) This is an average bit rate, but it gives an idea as to the amount of compression that was achieved. Different types of music, notably with different instruments, result in compression rates that vary widely. Compare the bit rates below to the bit rate of uncompressed music on a CD, which is 1411 kbps.

Here are some examples:

• A solo harpsichord work by Johann Sebastian Bach: 902 kbps
• A solo piano work by Johann Sebastian Bach: 554 kbps
• A movement of a string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven: 565 kbps
• A choral work by Johann Sebastian Bach: 690 kbps
• A piece for jazz piano trio by the Brad Mehldau Trio: 687 kbps
• A live recording of a song by the Grateful Dead: 796 kbps
• An excerpt from Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians: 597 kbps
• A movement of a symphony by Franz Schubert: 645 kbps
• A song for male voice and piano by Robert Schumann: 446 kbps

Again, these figures are in no way absolute, and for each piece of music, the resulting level of compression could be different if the tempo, volume or instrumentation varied. But what they do show is that some types of music – notably solo harpsichord, which has a high level of harmonics at high frequencies – compress less well than, say, solo piano or voice and piano. The range of compression for these examples is from 36% to 68%, with the majority of the examples clustering around the 50% level.

Note that I haven’t tested much rock music, and especially not much recently recorded rock or popular music. With many recent recordings having high volume and using compression (not the type that reduces data size, but the kind that reduces the dynamic range of music), file sizes can be much larger. If you listen to recent recordings of such music, you’ve probably noticed that they are often very loud, compared with, say, recordings from a couple of decades ago, and these will result in higher overall bit rates when using lossless compression.

Death to “Bonus” Tracks

In the music industry’s never-ending quest to get us to pony up our money for the same music over and over, the standard method is to re-issue some music with bonus tracks, hoping that we’ll re-buy the same CD, or, even better, a whole slew of CDs in a box set. This trick is often combined with another one, that of remastering. Sometimes remasters can be good, but other times not. So bands that have been around a long time can re-purpose their material for those die-hard fans who have to own everything they’ve recorded.

The problem is that the real fans are the ones who get suckered into such tricks. Take, for instance, this forthcoming box set of the Brad Mehldau Trio’s Art of the Trio Recordings: 1996-2001. This box set not only brings together the five volumes (six discs) of Art of the Trio recordings that the trio issued, but adds, lo and behold, a seventh disc of “previously unreleased material from shows at the Village Vanguard” that “completes the box.” So, if you have all five original releases, you just have to buy the box set to get the bonus tracks.

Well, to be fair to Nonesuch Records, the box set is fairly priced: it’s currently listed at $38 on Amazon; I paid much more than that for the original releases. But do they really think that I’m going to spend another $38 for that additional disc of music (which is only 44 minutes long)? Ha!

I’m a big fan of Brad Mehldau, and own every one of his releases. But the scam of record companies to get people to buy the same material again, or to, in essence, pay a high price for some bonus tracks, is just too reprehensible for me to accede to. I can certainly find this music elsewhere, and I will do so. As much as I want to support artists, I simply can’t justify the greed of trying to get people to buy the same music over and over. The music industry managed to get us to do that when we shifted from vinyl to CDs, and I accept that the change was positive: better sound, no pops and clicks, and, in many cases, much longer timings on CDs than on LPs. But when they come out and scam fans with a few extra tracks on a re-issue, well, that’s just a swindle.

Alas, I am sure a lot of people will buy this set; mostly people who don’t have more than one or two of the original releases, or even none at all. This sort of budget release is a great thing for artists who have moved on and who don’t sell a lot of back catalog, and for fans who discover artists later in their careers. If Nonesuch sold this box simply with the original releases, I would applaud. But by adding “bonus” tracks, they’re just scamming their customers, as most record labels do.

See also a related article, Death to “Hidden Tracks”