This week I was handed the latest in a life of hand-me-downs items; a pair of tall Sony speakers from my uncle no less. This was exciting because that uncle was always a prickly pear when it came to stereo quality sound, and I like things that can do loud if necessary, so when he casually asked me if I’d like to home his old speakers I was pretty much bustling him to his car to go and retrieve them immediately. He didn’t do that of course, but it did lead us into a conversation about fidelity.

‘It was all about fidelity back then,’ he said and I nodded in agreement and my own recollections, mostly the vinyl cover of Marillion’s Script for a Jester’s Tear.

‘The 80’s?’ I asked him and he nodded back, probably imagining whatever piece of vinyl was floating about his mind.

‘Yeah, fidelity was good in the 80’s, John,’ he replied but lingered over the sentiment.

‘Not so good now though?’

A further lingering then.

‘Not so much, John. More convenience I suppose.’

‘Like YouTube?’

‘Like YouTube.’

‘Doesn’t sound good though, does it. Allow me demonstrate.’

I did this by playing an instrumental song through the all dominating streaming platform and then played the same song through physical media in my hi-fi. The whole house could feel the difference because physical media comes with actual depth of sound; not just loud (although certainly that) but also a fullness of that loudness. When I get asked by my family to turn down the music in my study it is always because it isn’t being streamed from online and thus the sub woofer which I have nailed to the floor can do what I nailed it there to do. Woof-woof.

‘Perhaps we haven’t progressed as far as we might have thought,’ I said with my demonstration over and the house taking a break.

‘Well, we clearly have come a long way from fidelity,’ he replied.

‘And that’s why we don’t go reforming things, uncle.’

He rolled his eyes at me like a Church of England native then, but nonetheless, and feeling like I had won the point, I decided that I should choose the next song as well.

Choose hi fidelity. Choose Orthodoxy.

Peace!

JW Bowe.