Mixing my submission for the Clan Analog Heads Tribute Album revealed a limitation in my setup – I have no monitoring to speak of. It’s great having a studio-in-a-laptop but if you can’t hear what you’re doing what’s the point? Well, there’s hearing and there’s Really Hearing. So I got myself a pair of AKG K242 cans. Mixed the track. Sort of forgot about them for a while. Tonight I decided to sit down and have a good listen to a selection of stuff and..

Oh.

My.

God.

What the fuck have I been doing the last 15 years? It’s like someone took the wool, cotton and muslin from my ears all at once. I thought the iPod/iPhone earbuds I’ve been using were pretty good. Not the Apple ones mind you. I used to think they were ok until I discovered Sennheiser CX-300 and more recently the aJays – which are very good – but I didn’t realise just how limited buds are compared to full size ‘phones.

The last time I had an ear-awakening like this was.. hmm.. around ’92 or so. I had my trusty JBL Control 1s mounted either side of my bed (and later with a sub underneath) and lying down with the music washing over me was (still is) a great pleasure. But I was working in a hifi shop and acquired some of that thick speaker cable that hifi mags always promote as being better than the pissy bits of cheap wire I was using at the time. I’m the biggest sceptic when it comes to hifi woo but hooking up the new cable was like opening a door to a whole new world. I’ll never forget listening to Depeche Mode’s Violator album – at that time already a good five years old and well up there in my pop pantheon – as if for the first time. Suddenly the reverb had depth and space I’d never heard before. Lying in bed it was like being in a space rather than just listening to an impression of a space. I remain sceptical of speaker-wire marketing woo but that was a pretty clear demonstration to me that having a bit more metal for the signal to pass through really does make a difference.

So I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess, that the massive diameter of the drivers in my AKGs compared to the earbuds I’ve been unknowingly suffering under for the last decade just.. blow my mind. I just wish I’d paid attention and realised this a long time ago.

Randomly Selected Wanky Audiophile Playlist:

• Genesis – Abacab. If you’re testing speakers of any sort, you have to use some prog rock/pop at some point and this song good as any to start. There’s so much detail I hadn’t noticed before. It actually sounds like 3 guys playing (really well) in a room.
• The Creator Has A Mastertape – Porcupine Tree. Ditto. these guys are well tight – just about any of their stuff would do for a listening test.
• Nervous – Yello. A hifi demo band if ever there was.
• Always Loved a Film – Underworld. I hated the cliche chorus at first but the humungous backbeat wins me over every time.
• William’s Blood – Grace Jones. I don’t care if it’s not New And Different – that album is up there with her best work from the 80s, and the intervening 20 years of studio technology just means it sounds even more amazing.
• Orbital – Otono. Details, details. I can’t describe the level of detail these headphones are revealing.

Simply put, it looks like I’m going to have to go back and listen to every CD I’ve bought over the last 15 years just to hear the stuff I’ve missed. But not now, there’s a doco on black holes coming up that I mustn’t miss. (Popular Theoretical Physics FTW)