This is composer Jean Sibelius as a young man. There are lots of images of him in his later years as an older man (he lived a very long life), but he's rocking a pretty cool 'stache here. When I started my more disciplined excursion into classical music a few years back, the music of Sibelius appealed to me pretty quickly. I think it was a Leonard Bernstein / New York Philharmonic rendering of the Second Symphony that hooked me in. That was on a compact disc from the Great Performances series.
In fact, when I first started building up a classical library my main medium was compact discs. I eventually made the jump to vinyl LPs - cost effective and a lot of fun, as I described in my last entry. For the most part I envisioned this blog to be an outlet for my discoveries in those mediums, thinking “If anyone found themselves rummaging around old LPs in a thrift store and came across a record I profiled they might take a chance knowing it could be a good listening experience.”
Of course, I know not everybody has a turntable these days (not hard to do, but its not a hobby for everyone). But anyone reading my blog obviously has a computer. And so do I. But I have resisted using it as a music delivery system in the man cave. Truth be told – I have a deep connection to vinyl record culture – much more so than even compact disc culture. Vinyl records have a resonance for me – I dunno what it is. I just respond to the record thing. And, to an extent, I’ve had an unfortunate habit of dismissing newer technology before giving it much of a chance.
Now, there’s lots of debate about the old analog vs. digital issue. As far as I’m concerned – good or bad sound can be experienced in both domains. A lot has to do with the recording itself and the way it gets mastered to the medium. And now with lossless digital files like FLAC, really excellent sound is no longer limited to physical media. And that’s not even taking into account the latest HD sites that deliver Hi-Res files in 96/24 bitrate quality! There are some wicked cool advances taking place!
Anyway – it was New Year’s Day and I was just goofing around the net when I came across this recommendation:
http://www.amazon.com/Sibelius-Complete-Symphonies-Lemmink%C3%A4inen-Concerto/dp/B004Z4ZN4A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1325732397&sr=8-2
This download was priced at $4.99 when I got it, but even still it’s a tempting bargain – all of the Sibelius Symphonies (and more) for that price? Even though the bitrate was no better than a variable one up to 256 I thought – why not? So, I bit. Trouble was – I was no big fan of windows media player or even winamp – at least for listening to music files from the computer.
Enter – FOOBAR2000 ! See that window on my screen below?
This is foobar2000 – finally a user friendly digital media player that is no-frills, does what I need it to do and makes listening to music a breeze from my computer. I can import one symphony at a time – playlists are easy to manipulate. And even this 256 bitrate download sounds pretty reasonable. Yeah – I can tell the frequencies are kinda shaved off the highs and lows, but overall I’m quite enthused!
As I’m writing this I’ve got Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony going and I’m digging it! The nice thing about foobar is I can see the track information clearly both in the larger menu and the playlist menu. Gads – I must sound like an idiot here, but this is a great step forward for me. I know of a few good friends who are laughing their butts off right now as they’re reading this, like “Welcome to the modern age!!” Ha!
Well, I’ll bet there are other great download deals out there. If it helps increase the access to great music I’m ready! Welcome to the New Year! And, of course, I can easily recommend the music of Jean Sibelius. Happy Listening!!!!
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