LESS IS MORE

I've had my laptop computer for just over a year now, and as a reult have amassed a good collection of MP3 music files, something like 12 days' worth of music. It's common now to be walking around with double this quantity. This summer on a long train journey, I had fun skipping through tracks on my friend's iPod. While I enjoyed listening to parts of tracks by a whole lot of bands I'd never heard before, something remained dissatisfying - few of the tracks held my attention long enough for me to stick around for the few minutes until the end. There was no reason to, since there were so many thousands of others to skip to. I was mildly entertained for a while, then I got my book out instead.

Yesterday, I took my clunky old CD Walkman to work - it was given as a present to me about 10 years ago. And I was listening to clunky old While My Guitar Gently Weeps from The Beatles 1967-70. I was immediately arrested and transfixed by the agility and inventiveness of Paul McCartney's slightly abrasive sounding bass line in the right earphone, which sets off the main melody to perfection. The sound quality, while nothing like vinyl, or even a "real" CD player, is magnificent after a diet of thin compressed digi-gruel. The sounds are bright, vibrant, chunkily defined. I felt sad to remove the headphones as I arrived at work.

Don't believe the hype. The experience of losing yourself in music is about one thing only - sound quality. (And a few albums you love to listen to.)