I am listening right now to Paul Horn's "Inside" LP recorded in the Taj Mahal. Pretty fucking amazing record. That reverb can't all be from inside the building, is it? Anyways, the decay seems endless. When I listen to a CD or MP3, I feel my heart clenched, like something is there and then not there. I feel abandoned by the square waves. I think most people can feel this disconnect but are not able to do an A/B test with something that is not this way. Most people do not go out to see live music that has dynamic range and isn't digitally processed and is in a venue with decent acoustics. I've been to a lot of shows in living rooms with just the vocals fed into a 60's Shure tube pa. Magic. It's one thing to experience the entrance of a sound, it's another to experience its exit. I think this is what creates the experience of the presence of anything. Being there/not being there. You can tell when something is actually "happening". It's a magical experience. I'm too chickenshit to go all tape in my studio but I feel 24/96 with good converters gets me most of the way there. Vinyl cut off of 24/96 masters is a better option for reproducing this than CD. I am a devout Baudrillardian Post-Modernist, and this fuels my hunger for the "thereness" in my encounters. Growing up in LA makes it that much more necessary to tell someone: "No, I really mean what I say."
Nicholas