I was listening to Neil Young today, Natural Beauty

[mix]

and these lines struck me:

I heard a perfect echo die
Into an anonymous wall
of digital sound
Somewhere deep inside
Of my soul.

I remember reading something about Mr. Young despising the digitalization of music.

What is the issue here? Is it analog v. digital? I'm not even sure that those are the correct terms since I am not a musician.

[dbt]

1. In the early CD days, he called digital sound "distortion."

And he was right, though a lot of folks jumped his sh*t for it. Back then, the digital sampling rate was so low that the waveforms had a stair-step appearance--as opposed to the smooth peaks and valleys of analog. The human ear (ESPECIALLY musicians' ears) perceived these "stair-steps" as clipping--which, by definition, is distortion.

He rocks.

[mix]

2. I remember he said that listening to digital sound

was like see the world through a window screen.

Thanks for the explanation.

[dbt]

3. And thank you!

In its infancy, digital sound could be pretty harsh. The audio on the first CD of Pure Prairie League's "Bustin' Out" would nearly make your ears bleed. It would be interesting to hear what Mr. Young thinks of modern-day digital. The Beatles re-masters, for instance, strike me as sublime.

(Having said all that, Buffalo Springfield's "Mr. Soul" on vinyl is still a feral rush.)

[mix]

4. It's hard to believe that Natural Beauty is nearly 20 years old.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y1IF8A9XN4

Amazon you have so much, and so much is gone...