Streaming, Stereos and the Search for Pure Sound

Some thoughts on the ecstasy of music

While I mostly write essays of music criticism, I like to occasionally share something more personal about music. For the below, I thought it would be interesting to try to connect the challenges I had accessing a digital ticket for a Major League Baseball game to streaming music on Spotify and Qoboz to this aspiration I have had ever since I can remember: to feel music as “pure sound.” I had fun writing this and hope you enjoy reading it, and please do share your thoughts about it as well.

Coming up in July will be two editions of Listening Sessions. The first will be a look at the O’Jays breakout album, Back Stabbers, and the second will be another installment of my round-up of new and upcoming music I think you’ll enjoy.

Until then, may good listening be with you all!

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Streaming, Stereos and the Search for Pure Sound
By: Robert C. Gilbert

A few weeks ago, I was called a Luddite. It’s not like it was the first time I’ve been called one either directly or indirectly. It had to do with a baseball ticket. It had been transferred to me for a game featuring the Toronto Blue Jays and the Philadelphia Phillies at the Rogers Centre. The transfer was to the email address connected to my Ticketmaster account. It took just about a minute to complete. I then went to the Ticketmaster app to see if the ticket was there. It wasn’t.

A link I had been provided took me to a page on the Ticketmaster website connected to the Jays. Here, I found my digital ticket. I could transfer it to another email address, give it to someone as a gift or sell it. Everything except actually using it to get into the ballpark and see the game. For that, I had two options: download the Major League Baseball (MLB) Ballpark app or Google Wallet.

Google Wallet? Even though I’ve been told—more than once—that it’s secure and my personal information would be kept under strict digital lock and key, I don’t want anything to do with it. Quite frankly, my phone already knows enough—probably too much—about me. So off I was to download MLB Ballpark to get my ticket. An hour later, I was stuck in a digital doom loop, never getting beyond the login screen. Begrudgingly, I downloaded Google Wallet to get my ball ticket. By the fifth inning of the game, Google Wallet was gone from my phone. So help me God, it shall never return.

As a way to get the angst of it out of my system, I posted about the whole escapade to Substack Notes, noting that adding Google Wallet to my phone was “a dark day” and that “at the risk of sounding like the oldest man on the planet, give me back the day of the paper ticket.”

Reaction was mixed. Ross Barkan replied, “paper tickets were far better. I hate how it is now.” Kevin Alexander kept it simple, “Yes!” Courtney Walker noted, “I hate digital tickets. For years I collected ticket stubs in a binder. A lot of the times I’ll go to the window and tell them my ticket isn’t loading and have them print it out. It doesn’t work everything. But that will not stop me from trying.” A chap by the name of Brad Lewin shrugged, “that’s just the way it is,” after opining, “think you’re being a bit of a Luddite.”

Ouch, I guess. As someone who grew up being made aware, often painfully, of how out of step with the times I was to slowly embracing being out of synch to now blissfully marching to the beat of my drum, following the herd is not my bag. Being forced to conform? Well, I’m liable to get a little uptight and crotchety about that. I read print books. I subscribe to a print newspaper. Oh sure, I read digitally, particularly the Substack newsletters to which I subscribe but the urge to skim as opposed to deeply read on a phone is powerful. If there was a way to get all the dispatches that come in daily here in paper form, I’d be knee deep in eight-and-a-half-by-eleven and loving every minute of it. For my own writing, I draft everything by hand in pencil before moving to the computer.

What does all this have to do with music? I think it’s at the forefront of the tension of something as seemingly trivial as trying to access and use a digital baseball ticket. To be tactile connotes value. There is nothing really tangible about digital. And if a ticket has been purchased and can’t be used to obtain admission unless it is a retrieved in a specific way, what value does it have anyway?

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Recorded music presents a unique challenge in this regard. Its physical form doesn’t manifest its content. A book contains the words that form the story or narrative or argument or thesis. A DVD when played shows the imagery of the movie or show. A record, on the other hand, when played, produces sounds that are ineffable. Like the air, the music is there, not seen. Unlike the air, though, it is heard. Indeed, I suppose that’s why experiencing recorded music through a tangible form has a strong hold. An album cover, liner notes, credits and photography all give shape to what comes out of one’s speakers. But what to make of what is heard? That power comes from the listener upon whom the artist confers complete agency. It’s ultimately up to you to decide whether an album is transformative, meaningless or something in the wide in-between.

Even though my musical tastes have largely always been one to two to now maybe three generations behind, I was still born at the right time I feel. In the eighties, homes were still full of music and books, pointing to the possible avenues of inquiry for me. For music, inquisitiveness was also accompanied by wonder, a pondering as to what a particular piece of music might sound like and how might it make me feel. There was no such thing as an instant answer back then. Consequentially, to long to hear a piece of music could lead to dreaming, trying to construct it in one’s mind, considering the possibilities and making a guess.

This still happens today but often only during those few seconds between selecting an album to stream and pressing play. That can be a portal to transcendence but it also puts music squarely into the category of just another disposable household item. When it’s an album you’ve pined for, perhaps scrapped the money together to purchase and satisfy the longing to hold in your hands before finally pressing play and unlocking its mystery, music turns into a valuable household item, something that ennobles an abode, turning a house into a home even if that first listen is overwhelming or something vastly different than what was expected.

Because this was how my musical education went for years and years, streaming was always something that never interested me. Having everything, or a collection of music relatively close to everything, held little appeal. Better to amass a collection of recordings that tries to express who I am. And yet, for Christmas 2017, my brother and family gave me a one-year subscription to Spotify.

I dutifully dug in and it quickly became a boon companion for listening. Travelling to and from work, at work too, when walking and when reading. When the pandemic hit and work from home became the norm—happily, for me, it remains so—Spotify was on all the time, fulfilling my long-held wish to listen to music all the time while working.

From the very end of 2017 to June 23, 2025, I have listened to a total of 60,908 individual songs by 9,953 artists from 24,495 albums on Spotify. With repeats added, I’ve accumulated 208,358 plays for a total listening time of 14,245 hours and 51 minutes. That’s 593.57 days. Assuming I have slept an average of seven hours a night since starting my Spotify account, 30.6% of my waking life has been spent listening to it. It would be even more if podcasts were factored in and then there’s all the time I spend listening to my LP and CD collection. No understatement then to say that music is my life.

There has always been a pull for me to experience music ecstatically, not passively. When I was very young, I developed a habit of moving my feet—my right one especially—whenever an up-tempo rock and roll number came up on my father’s stereo or the radio. It was not necessarily about keeping time. It was more about keeping up a nervous undulation, a constant shaking up and down. Throughout the years, my repertoire of moves has expanded. Handclaps. Head bobs. And if I have a pencil in my hand, I become Roy Haynes or Hal Blaine or Bernard “Pretty” Perdie or Buddy Harman. I do all this privately, but often in public too and why not? If the music is cooking and I’m feeling it, why not give into it and make like Donald “Duck” Dunn and nod in hip merriment to the beat. It’s not against the law and even if someone sees me enjoying the music and may think I am having an episode, perhaps someone else will see it and be heartened by the joy behind it all.

I’m not sure the music has ever sounded as good as it did when pouring out of my father’s stereo system in the Scarborough two-bedroom condominium where I grew up. The immediacy of the vinyl transmitted through the stylus of the tonearm of his Technics turntable fed through a Marantz receiver and transmitted through two wood speakers (manufacturer long since forgotten) imprinted two ideas: the first being to one day have my own stereo system and the second being what I call “pure sound.”

For the former, that became a reality when I was 14 when I connected a Panasonic portable CD player to an old receiver and speakers from my father and pressed play on a Beach Boys compact disc. For the latter, I’m not meaning amassing the type of equipment for which audiophiles shell out serious change but instead, a feeling of all-encompassing nirvana. It’s here that I am reminded of a very astute observation from pianist and critic Ethan Iverson: “How do you get away from first love? Early moments of initial contact can never be undone. Youthful passions afflict our every judgement. It’s the only real reason any of us are in game anyway. We are still chasing that germinal intoxication.”

For me, that’s the fullness of the Nashville Sound surrounding Elvis Presley on something like ‘The Girl of My Best Friend’ on my father’s system when I was four. Or the apocalyptic ramping up of the orchestra two times during the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life.’ Or finally discovering what Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way was all about.

I think, as Iverson observed, every time I listen to something new, I hope to recapture that feeling. It’s hard to do, of course, especially as I think part of one’s early immersion into and amazement at music is about discovering the variety and elasticity of musical expression more than anything else. In other words, it’s about learning the language and that there are few limits to it. But, it still happens for me and even when I am auditioning albums on Spotify for my work here.

Now, pure sound is something you won’t hear on Spotify. It’s the compressed, digitized variety that I suppose all ears are accustomed to now. Oh sure, Spotify keeps dangling the prospect of high-resolution audio but so far, it’s all talk and no action. A couple of months ago, Chris Dalla Riva, a data analyst, musician and soon-to-be-published author, featured an interview with the managing director of Qoboz, Dan Mackta. The big distinguishing feature of Qoboz is that, unlike Spotify, it features high-resolution audio where available and when it isn’t, offers the option of CD quality sound as opposed to MP3s. Equally important, it produces editorial content, makes it easy to find new releases and doesn’t include podcasts or videos. There’s just music. Intrigued, I decided to give it a shot.

Using a nice pair of Bose wireless earbuds, I wanted to see if Qoboz’s superior sound was also pure. For that, I stuck to the old favourites, the pieces of music I know backwards, frontwards and every other way; the better to see what exactly hi-res audio means. On Qoboz in hi-res, the transition to the third verse of the Beatles’ ‘Getting Better’ felt almost three dimensional with the blanketing reverb of the tamboura. The thrust of the New York Philharmonic as Leonard Bernstein conducted them at a galloping piece on the ‘Hoedown’ section of Aaron Copland’s Rodeo from Bernstein’s legendary 1960 recording of the piece felt palpable. The woodiness of Paul Chambers’ bass on the shift into tempo on Miles Davis’ 1958 version of ‘Stella By Starlight’ was dazzlingly tactile.

The survey I took of Elvis Presley’s sixties recordings from Nashville revealed textures and layers that either were not there before or were ones I hadn’t noticed. Here’s two examples: how guitarist Harold Bradley plays a variation on ‘Wonderful Time Up There’ during the chorus of Presley’s ‘Witchcraft’ and the throughline of the Jordanaires and Mille Kirkham’s backing of Elvis for the resolution of the verses on ‘I Want You With Me.’

That song is from 1961’s Something for Everybody. I was lucky once to find a copy of it in mono for a decent price. Having my eyes opened to the expansiveness of Qoboz’s hi-res audio, I expected to be underwhelmed by the narrowness of monophonic sound when I recently revisited it on my system of a Goldring turntable connected to a Yamaha amplifier transmitted to four Cerwin-Vega speakers. As ‘I Want You With Me’ came around, it sounded smaller but also tighter with everyone and everything coming through as if all mashed together. Sure, it didn’t sound as clear as hi-res but it felt just a little more real. Kind of like how it did forty-plus years ago when it was new to me. I decided to let my Qoboz trial end. I didn’t take out a paid subscription to it. I still stream on Spotify but my real listening remains on my turntable or CD player. Maybe I’m being a Luddite here but I don’t care. I’m still trying to reach pure sound.

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