What matters more - the sound or the music?

In a week where the planet has seemed rather messed up as a space mission went around the whole of the moon today I'm looking the relationship between recorded music and the means of reproducing it

Originally records were made directly from an artist(s) performing in front of a horn with their exact  position altered to get the best possible balence and often replayed by a gramophone via a horn although by the 1930's electronics came in both directions.

The big breakthoughs were in recording on tape after WW2 that made it possible to redo sections and the use of vinyl rather than shallac that allowed for both much lower noise and higher fidelity.

Around the same time slower speeds 45 and 33 1/3 rpm were used that gave longer playtime which helped with longer works and enable an album to be on just a single disc rather than several heled in a stiched heavy duty album.

That really kicked off what today's hifi industry was all about - getting better sound from your recordings  - from the 1950's where it soon joined by stereo discs and tapes adding more realism.

Tape systems improved to allow multiple tracks to be recorded independently and by the end of the 1970's digital recording came in.

What some do say today is the attention is too centred around the equipment to the point a person doesn't play a cd or record listening to the performance so much as they are listening to their system so much so that the quality of recording matters for them more than the performance.

Alan Parson's is a recording engineer and musician who gave us Dark Side of the Moon and The Air That I Breathe.

For me there's a lot of truth in that as performances generally move us more than absolute recorded quality that certainly makes it sound more realistic but that feel is what artists work on in terms of lyrics and muscial composition.

Even if we heard that on portable radio or your smartphone, it would hold your attention. You may have memories of listening to songs on AM Radio which never sounded great but those songs and memories clearly count for something.

Sometimes audio fans would be better adviced to put that record on with drink in a hand and just enjoy the performance.

kk