101s:
No, it is not about highway 101, but rather a gentle introduction to audio/recording technology… Well, not so gentle, but read on, read on….
I assume that you have heard the term “Multi-Track recording”. This is 50.5 for understanding current music recording technology… (101/2 he he…). Otherwise, Google is your friend.
OK, on to the 101…
To tell it like Sivaji… Andha Kaalathhula, naanga ellarum tapela thamma record pannuvoummmmmm…. In those days, recording was done in a fairly sophisticated studio directly to tape. Yummy, analog recording… those were the days… anyways, it had its own pluses and minuses. Tape had a natural warmth, saturation etc., but you couldn’t seek it randomly. You had to re-wind to re-do takes, etc. etc. There are still folks recording to tapes and say “You can pry my old’ creaking Tascam Tape recorder out of my cold, dead hands”. For them, Digital Recording sounds cold and lifeless.
Anyways, slowly we entered the Digital age, where Mr. Computer became our best friend and we entered Digital Recording era. So, ippo enna pandranganna, analog recording is digitized (convereted to 1’s and 0’s using sophisticated algos) and then stored in the hard disk. This way, it can be mangled^w treated using various plugins and make your voice and mine sound like SPB’s in a non-destructive fashion — well not exactly, since NONE == SPB 
How do we sample an analog signal to digital 1’s and o’s. Idhula neraya per PhD ellam pannikirango… So, to put it short, one Mr. Claude Shannon suggested that we need to sample a wave of freq f by atleast 2f to re-construct the wave form, nnu. Purnichikiniya? Adhavathu, human ear 20Hz-20KHznna, we need to sample at least 40KHz… Adhu eppadiyo, 44.1KHz ayidichhi… OK, va?
So, we have our current CD standard 44.1KHz digital signal sampled at 16-bit resolution.
Modern studios (like our Rahmans‘) would be working with even higher sampling/bit-rates — more like 192KHz / 24-bits and then during mastering it will be down-sampled to 44.1KHz to CD Audio Standards. Hope you’re not asleep by now…
Hence, I say…
#1:
A good source is a MUST for critical listening… Forget the crappy low-bit rate MP3s that you boot-legged from CoolToad… I am talking 24-bit, 192KHz sound samples, people… Well, not exactly, 16-bit, 44.1KHz is good enough… You may have heard of this otherwise as “Audio CDs” What a cheap way of referring to it…
This MUST be complemented by a good CD player (I recommend Sony).
So, now that we have a good source to listen to, we need to “feed the bits to our ears”
Hence, I say…
#2:
We need a good set of cans. No, not the petrol can… Headphones. You cannot skimp on this. You absolutely need the 1000$ plus headphones… (yes, such headphones do exist). No not really, but (he he fooled you… serves you right for sleeping through the earlier half of the blog…) but the 5$ ones are definitely off the list.
You need a set of good head phones that will not “color” the music as much as possible and be faithful to the original signal. This kinda hard to do right (hence, the above 1000$ headphone). But a good place to start would be here: Headwize
My personal recommendation: Get a Sennheiser HD-280 or a Grado SR-60. Both are great and won’t cost you that kidney…
OK, so we settled that: Good Source, Good cans next…
#3:
Good listening environment. Avoid noisy tea kadai’s and loud friends’ houses. Find a good calm, spot, turn on your CD player, plugin your headphone and then …
…. Aduthha Varam Ethe Neram
