Klarinet Archive - Posting 000763.txt from 2003/10

From: Jeremy A Schiffer <schiffer@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] "A little traveling music, Ray...."
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 12:57:51 -0500

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Bill Hausmann wrote:

> At 04:15 PM 10/29/2003 -0800, Ormondtoby Montoya wrote:
> >Just out of curiosity:
> >
> >What quality in a recording makes it especially appropriate for
> >travelling (vs. other listening venues)? Would, say, Tchaikovsky Piano
> >Concerto #1 be more or less appropriate than, say, Burl Ives singing sea
> >shanties?
>
> Too much dynamic range (difference between the loudest and softest parts)
> can be undesirable. Especially in a noisy car, the soft parts can disappear
> under the noise and/or the loud parts blast your ears off. Much classical
> music, especially recently recorded music on CD, is problematical that
> way.

This is definitely true. For those who are NOT driving the car, I highly
recommend Etymotic Earphones. They're not cheap; in fact, they're
ridiculously expensive, but are absolutely amazing. I use the ER4-p every
day on the subway, with a Nomad Jukebox (6 gig mp3 player) and can listen
to classical music at a really low volume without losing the quieter
sections. For those who have ever ridden NYC transit, you know how loud
it is in the tunnels. The only problem is missing announcements from the
train conductors if there's a service change.

Unlike Bose or other noise-cancelling headphones, these are direct in the
ear pieces that block out external noise by ~15db.

http://www.etymotic.com/ has information, but I wouldn't recommend buying
them unless you can try them out first. The sound is reference quality,
but using them is a strange sensation and wouldn't be for everyone.

-jeremy
http://klezmer.org

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