I blogged earlier about the Deep Listening roundtable conference in New York. You can now watch it here.

Chaired by Greg Calbi, the mastering engineer at legendary Sterling Sound, NY whose 70’s output alone includes classic albums by Springsteen (Born to Run), Lennon (Walls and Bridges) and Bowie (Young Americans) not to mention later work with The Ramones, Patti Smith and Talking Heads through to Paul Simon and Emmylou Harris – it is a fascinating class in sound appreciation.

In his introduction he touches on why sound is so important to him and why he thinks a lot of people today are missing out:

“This is the challenge in 2008, as more and more people especially young people are missing the opportunity to hear the potential of really high definition audio – distorted live concerts, MP3’s on ipods with earbuds, oversimplified sound from mini systems, musical junk food.

Listening in the modern way doesn’t mean musical experiences won’t be meaningful and wondrous but the door to their imaginations can be open wider. We must promote within our business a product which is truly state of the art, truly satisfying, geared to maximum sonic quality, not just portability, convenience and ease of purchase – which is where our entire business has been going for the last 5 -10 years.
Only by supporting and promoting new technologies – and in the case of vinyl, an old technology – will market forces provide them for us. So, we have to be the ones promoting this with our demand.”

Recommended listening for anyone who cares about how things sound.