Still inspired by Annie Savoy's desire to be or at least feel mysterious, I cued up "A trace of grace" from this year's Morgenland Festival in Germany's Osnabrück. I wanted to bask in the haunting glory of Alim Qasimov's soaring vocals which here are accompanied by clarinet, spiked fiddle, bass and the rarely heard serpent. With its own connection to Audiobyte's second S/PDIF output, Midi 150 had parallel signal. Now muting one pair of speakers could play the other and compare on the fly for the utmost in convenience.
This soon felt as futile as LaLoosh trying to save his lost moment. Whilst you'd expect Midi 150 to sound fuller, it didn't benefit from the same boundary reinforcement as Midi 120 had bouncing off my desk top. That functional difference closed the gap. Minus wider staging which again was only a function of setup not intrinsic advantage, Midi 120 in this nearfield job was a virtual stand-in for big brother. In fact, without changing its 3-pole EQ from flat to diminished, its low end was heavier. Remembering Krakow's Kazimierz Jewish quarter where once I had stayed, the next track just had to be Moshe Janowski's famous "Avinu Malkeinu" anthem here with Shulem Lemmer fronting the Shira Choir with full orchestra.
In the same spirit simply transposed to a Hassidic table gathering to heartfelt communal song was the "Nafshi" hit from Levy Falkowitz's debut album Achake Loi.
One needn't be of the faith or understand Hebrew lyrics to feel their power of sung prayer. Crying at the desk can thus become a cherished occasion, one for which Midi 120 was perfectly prepped. But it wasn't just to tap the energetic charge but to lay out audiophile payback with a stereophonically sorted stage that cleanly mapped the many men including shrimp with his pure pre-pubescent high register.
For a third sample to honor Midi 120's particular birthplace, I picked the most moody "Awaiting" from the Cracow Klezmer Band's album De Profundis. Encoded space as triggered by decay bubbles around the performers rebuilt an impressively deep panorama behind my large computer monitor. The plucked bass was rotund and slightly fat, the mourning clarinet appropriately woody, the flageolet tremolo of the violin spectral like lingering ghosts with comet trails.
In short, this wasn't about whining over YouTube's compression to abstain for silly puritanical notions. This was delight over how much can be gotten from concert tracks like Qasimov's which aren't available elsewhere; or this thrilling take on "Akher el Aan'oud" with the two qanuns of Göksel Baktagir and Hend Zouari lapping the joyful voice of Lena Chamamayan. If that's how you exploit YouTube, you need proper acoustic tour guides. You want material that's of routinely poor recorded quality to present to best effect.
What about proper full-fat fare? For that I would revert to locally stored files of at least 1'411kbps i.e. 16/44.1 uncompressed data density. It also meant moving Midi 120 off glass onto proper tripods to cut out all mechanical coupling interactions and take up residence where Midi 150 had just left.
