High End Audio - not just for audiophiles

Computers have made setting up high end stereo systems more complicated than ever. Back in the day, setting up a high end audio system was easy. All you really needed was a good receiver, a record player, and some top quality speakers. Even once the tape deck and cd player came around, it wasn't too hard to set up a really killer high end home stereo system. Nowadays, however, there are so many different audio products in so many different music formats that  it has gotten very expensive and very difficult to figure out what musical system is best for you.

When you first set up a high end audio system, there are some really serious choices that you have to make. The biggest one is how digital you want to go. Every high end audio system, of course, makes some use of solid-state technology, but some them make it more important than others. A lot of serious technophiles, especially the ones who play games on the computer, like to run their entire sound systems through their PC. Other people prefer a more traditional approach, focused around a high-quality stereo receiver. Eventually, high end audio gear will move more and more towards the home computer, but for many reasons the two haven't been integrated yet. For my money, the best way to do it is to set up your stereo around the receiver, But who knows how it will change in a couple years.

Another issue is how you want to use your high end audio system. Do you want to listen to music, or do you want to watch movies more? There are high end home theater speakers that you can buy, but they are designed more around providing realistic soundtracks to movies then reproducing musical sounds. Don't get me wrong - this is serious, high end audio gear that will work well for everything. Nonetheless, a lot of it has gotten very specialized recently. It used to be that good speakers were good for everything. Now, you are increasingly asked what you will use them for.

My favorite high end audio gear to play with is in my car. The great thing about high end car speakers is that they are so simple to work with. A high end car audio system is a pretty unambiguous thing. It will work well for anything you are likely to listen to in the car. I wish that home audio equipment was that simple!

Why are Today’s Pop Music Lyrics so Self-Obsessed?

If you've been wondering lately about how today's pop music seems to be rather excessively about being self-centered, you aren't alone. Industry observers can't help but wonder about how pop music lyrics these days seem to be all about the individual - be it Taylor Swift wondering about why a boy can't see that he belongs with her or Rihanna screaming about why she can't find a boy who makes her feel like she's the only woman in the world, the world of pop music seems to be turning inward like never before.

The reason this seems to chafe with many people of course is that pop music lyrics haven't always been about narcissism or self-love. A study by psychologists in this matter in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts psychology journal feels that whereas songs in the past used to be more about society, about friends and family, about feelings, songs today seem stuck on explicitly making everything about oneself. They call it a 21st century health condition - obsessing too much over the significance of one's own grand self.

Using software to analyze pop music lyrics from all the top 10 songs over a 27 year-period starting with 1980, they found that songs near the beginning of the period they were looking at had a tendency to use words like “we” or ”us” a lot. Today, it's mostly about “me”. But of course, narcissism doesn't just stop at promoting oneself over everything else. People dislike narcissism because it usually comes with a gallon-can of meanness. And that, as everyone knows, is in abundant evidence in today's songs.

Pop music lyrics these days are about anger, about open cursing, foaming-at-the-mouth rage. In fact, rage today, is what young people feel identifies closely with freedom. Kanye West, a self-obsessed personality if ever there was one, makes his narcissistic meanness especially evident with lines like “You can't tell me nothing”; other pop stars like Pink love to rant and curse onstage.

Certainly, pop music lyrics may tend towards narcissism today; but not everyone is buying it. Music sells far less today than it ever did before. And one reason it doesn't sell as well is that there are far more outlets available today for indie bands. And of course, today's top 10 stars cater mostly to the team crowd. There is a vast market of grown-ups who just don't get represented on the charts. They listen to music from a long time ago because they will have no part of faddish bubblegum pop.