Music

Hey world!

First of all I gotta give a major one-up to Lauren. Thank you for reading my stuff. I know Pat reads it too, but to have someone other than your fiancee read your work is special.

Word.

Second, I am currently listening to Mos Def - You Are The One. Awesome song. Awesome album. A lot of the peeps over at the headfi forums are hatin on this album, and to be honest I didn't like it at first either, but I been listenin to it a lot lately (what does that tell you about me, that I been listening to an album a lot lately that I wasn't really feelin: the reason is that I like Mos and really wanted to give this album that second/third/etc... chance. Glad I did.) and it has really grown on me. I mean, lyrically its not Black On Both Sides or Black Star, but lemme tell you, overall presentation is on point. You guys are gonna think I'm silly after I tell you this but one of the reasons I like it is the recurring "boogeyman" slash *whistle* theme. "But Wolfgang, WTF are you talking about?" Well, on this album, Mos likes to just drop a "BoooogeyMAN" every now and again: I don't know if its his new moniker or just a persona for the album. Its recurring though. I like it for some reason. Even more than that, though, is this strange whistle pattern that you hear a few times throughout the album. Lemme pick up my guitar and see if I can tell you the notes... its somewhere along the lines of E-B-G, dotted_quarter_note-dotted_quarter_note-dotted_quarter_note. I dunno. But at the very end of this one song (I'll let you know if it comes up while I'm typing) he does it and theres really no music behind him and I get this vision in my head of the boogeyman whistling up at the full moon in the dead of night. This reminds me of the song Thieves In The Night off of the album Black Star (Talib Kweli and Mos Def) which is my favourite song on the album. I think this is what got me starting the album more.

Anyway I am listening to this album through my new, hi-fi audio system of which I am very proud. I bought some new headphones and a DAC/Amp to properly drive them and, like I said, I am very proud of it. I refuse to tell you guys how much I've spent on it because you'll call me crazy and irresponsible. I was responsible though I promise. You may be wondering what a DAC/Amp is. Let me explain:

[Warning: This next section may be boring. You may skip to the next paragraph if you'd like]
Different headphones have different impedences, which means that they recquire different voltages to "drive". Your standrd "ibuds" probably have an impedence of around 10 ohms whereas same headphones go as high as 600 ohms. The higher the impedence, the more volts you need to properly drive the headphones. If the voltage is too low, you will still hear music but it will sound muffled or just not as good as what the headphones can offer because they were designed to use more juice. So how do you increase the voltage that your headphones get? You amplify the signal of course. This can be in any number of ways, but since you are dealing with a signal that will eventually be interpretted as music, you don't want to distort the signal at all. This is what a headphone amp (or any amp for that matter) does: amplifies a signal while not distorting it. So a headphone amp takes a signal in, amplifies it, and sends the amplified signal out. Now, the signal that it takes in can be analog, which means you just take a signal out of something elses Headphone-out (like an mp3 player) or digital, which means it will need a digital-to-analog-converter (DAC). Now in reality, unless you are listening to vinyl, everything goes through a DAC. In the hi-fi audio world, though, you want it to go through a good DAC, and so you use an external one as opposed to whatevers embedded in your computer etc... The gain in audio quality is debatable by most, accepted by all the hi-fi (high fidelity btw) community. Technically it does have some support I think. I haven't done any tests for myself yet. I've decided to just enjoy my new toy first before putting through the "but do you hear a difference" test. I'm sure that I will hear an increase in SQ (sound quality) but I'm gonna put off doing an tests. I'm happy for now. I won't burden myself trying to prove my happiness

[end of boringness]
this whistle happens at the end of Sun, Moon, Stars - True Magic (track 10). I'm tellin ya, boogeyman whistlin at a full moon...

*sigh* I felt like I had a good flow goin until I got side-tracked by that whistle. And I feel like maybe I should pad this post some for those of you that will not read my "boring" section. Don't think I can do it though. BTW in the song immedietley following that, so track 11, you can hear the boogeyman in the background! At least I like to think its him. I mean come on! Recurring themes man! This album is put together rather well. I didn't like it. Now I do.

Life is great.
I miss Patricia. I realized the other day that my life is much more colorful when she's in it.

wolf out.