I went to a lot of concerts in the 1970s and there was always music playing with the house lights on as we all filtered in to our seats. Many times it was Shine On… by Pink Floyd just before the band took the stage. IMHO it was because it built anticipation, but I digress.

I always wondered what they used as a source? It wasn’t a record and maybe it was reel-to-reel? Does anyone actually know versus guessing like me? Maybe you worked for a band or a venue?

This brings me to the point of this post. I’ve been to a few concerts in the last couple of years and noticed that the music before the concert was getting on my nerves at each one even though I liked most of the songs.

I wrote it off to impatience of old age but then I noticed the dissatisfaction and disengagement with the music at every concert except Styx. It was at the Rod Stewart show that it dawned on me that everything was digitally processed and the warmup was probably a CD.

Bands like Styx or Metallica aren’t really natural sounds to begin with so the digital edge doesn’t matter. Both have always been excellent at engaging the listener through a very unnatural sound. But acts like Rod Stewart, Keith Urban, REO, and others weren’t as engaging as they could have been and I blame it on the “digital facsimile” effect. Digital audio isn’t a reproduction of music, it is a facsimile of the music. This might be as much of the reason why music sales and concert attendance isn’t what it once was as the digital music theft problem

I doubt we’re ever going to hear a fully analog concert again because sound engineers and producers can’t put down the crack pipe of the production and engineering simplicity of digital and not everyone appreciates the difference for a variety of reasons and that saddens me.