Sax, stage left...

I've been listening to a bunch of music on Pandora lately. I made a Lester Young channel, and it really has turned out to be quite the relaxing jazz-"lullaby" channel. So I'm chillin' out to all this great old music, and I was starting to think I had a major balance issue in my system. So much of the Saxophone, was always left, which is usually also the prominent instrument.

It's not always left, but it is A LOT, at least in this mix. As it turns out, it's apparently typical.

Lester Young

Dexter Gordon

I honestly think Pandora is pretty sweet, and listening to it with the iPhone4 plugged directly into my stereo with their Apple's little dock (analog) is way better sounding then I could have imagined. I have heard some iPods plugged in this way with varying degrees of quality, mostly not great. For some reason, this works pretty good, and only on a rare occasion do I catch a song that is noticeably compressed. But ok, I do pay for a slightly higher bit rate, once a year, but far from an "audiophile" standard. Ah well, I guess a low res system with tubes, soft domes and doped-paper cones smooths just about everything out. Still music to my ears.