O FLAC File, Where Art Thou ?

I could probably think of a few acronyms for FLAC files due to the fact that it starts with the letter F, but I will leave that to your imagination. F-Bombs aside, F could also stand for frustrating because of the unpredictable and temperamental nature of the whirring, and oft times, overheating machines that we now use as a music source.

Unless you have been living on Amish farm for the last 30 years sawing wood by hand and pooping in outhouses, you have interacted with a computer. Hell, they have even wi-fi in Antarctica. Computers are ubiquitous and inescapable, so much so in fact, that should someone decide to eschew them altogether, they would be viewed as dangerous subversives, crazed Luddites or mountain men who eat live otters.

It has been a rocky road and a steep learning curve. Perhaps one can attribute this to being a generational problem. For people who grew up in the age of analog electronics and mechanical devices, the transition to the inscrutable and baffling logic of computers was one fraught with frustration and cursing. Lots of cursing.

Emergency room statistics might show an increase of self -inflicted injuries over the past few decades, probably due to leagues of frustrated computer users literally banging their heads against walls. There might have also been an increase of injuries which resulted in CRT screens being punched and the resulting phosphorous-laced implosion.

I won't go into detail about work-related angry outbursts when using something as stupid and useless as Excel, trying to navigate the quagmires that are government websites or even the total desperation that sets in when the internet is down ( way worse than when cable TV would go down). I often wonder how computers and music became inextricably linked and what happened to all those music files that mysteriously disappeared.

Long ago, no one seriously thought that computers "were a thing". They were relegated to science fiction and often anthropomorphized and given evil personalities. They had almost cartoon-like qualities and who in their right mind would take 2001 A Space Odyssey seriously?  They entrusted a very expensive and complex space mission to a psychotic computer who turns into the galaxy's biggest asshole...oh wait..

OOOOO-I hates rabbitz !

Often, the general populace would  think of computers as government research projects aimed solely at academics, and whose actual purpose was largely theoretical. The more tech-savvy demographic might read about these in Popular Mechanics, but other than looking cool, they did not seem to have any discernible purpose. An early example is Eniac, pictured below. It ran on 64,00 vacuum tubes ( valves) and woe to the programer should only one of tubes blow ( which they invariably did). Nobody really knew what its purpose was, because this rat's nest of wires could barely add 2 plus 2.

The answer is ham sandwich

Years ago, I had an electronics instructor who was obsessed with the emerging personal computer. Even though I still know Ohm's law, much of what I learned is now obsolete and useless. He would prattle on incessantly about his stupid Radio Shack TRS-80. None of my classmates and I gave a damn. We wanted to learn how to build massive amplifiers or how to electrocute annoying classmates. We couldn't give a rat's ass about computers. He would praise the virtues of this magic machine and we failed to fathom its use. When asked what is was used for, he offered that inane catch -all answer that all computer geeks gave: " Anything". "Whaddya mean anything?" we would ask as our frustration mounted. He would mumble something about storing recipes. I think that it had to 56K of memory and the programs were stored on a freakin' cassette. You could probably die of starvation by the time thing primitive device would display any of your recipes.

Cost 2 grand and blows up. Surprise !

When I started working in audio, the most advanced piece of technology that we had was Pong. By today's standards it seems like two sticks rubbing together. I spent many an hour in that shop playing this game and I sold a lot of them ( instead of big ass stereos, which annoyed me). My boss conveniently omitted the fact that this primitive device would cause extreme screen burn-in on the customer's Zenith console TV finished with authentic fake wood.

As time went on, I was able to completely ignore computers for many, many years and was not obliged to interact with them under any circumstances. As I moved on to various office jobs, everything was done manually and hand-written. I recall hearing vague references to computers and "mainframes". I was also told in no certain terms to never go into the mainframe room ( I , of course, went anyway when the boss wasn't looking). The room was climate controlled and if you so much as farted the whole system would crash. This might explain why everyone's paycheques were constantly riddled with mistakes.

At another office there was a computer that was the size of two refrigerators. Everyone at the office was constantly reminded to never, ever plug calculators into the mains plugs that were situated on the same side of the wall as the computer. If you did ( as it did happen a few times) the computer would go completely nutso. Taken down by a lowly calculator.

Bring it on, computer !

As the new millennium approached I was still computer-less. I was blissfully unaware of the frustrations associated with owning one and was concentrating on upgrading my Linn audio system and calling my friends on a land line.

I had decided to attend the world's biggest rockabilly festival called Viva Ls Vegas. I used my land line to locate a Day's Inn in Vegas. As I dialed the long distance number, I knew it was going to be an expensive call, but I had to secure lodging. The pleasant desk clerk at the hotel took my reservation over the phone. No computer, no credit card, no nuthin'. Simply on my say-so. When I  got to Vegas six months later, they had my name written down on a little index card and simply took my cash.

After several days and many bands it was time to return home. My bag was stuffed with many CD's. I had also acquired a bunch of e-mail addresses. Great. " What the hell is an e-mail address? I hadn't the slightest clue what to do with those.

I went to see my buddy who ran the local Linn dealership. I knew he had several computers ( but no idea what he used them for). I explained that I had some e-mail something or other. He showed me how to send an e-mail. It took me a couple of hours and I somehow managed to crash the store's entire system. That was the catalyst for me making up entirely new curse words.

My cursing and temporary loss of sanity was accentuated exponentially when a well-to-do friend gave me a old Power Mac. It used a modem with dial-up. I'm sure many people can recall the horrid screeching those made while one waited a half hour for the damned thing to actually connect to something. It never dawned on me, at this point, that computers and music could somehow be related.

A few years previous to this, I had been working at a local hi-fi shop that sold Pass, Levinson Totem and such brands. I remember a slightly confrontational customer coming in and adamantly stating what he was looking for. He wanted a sound system that was" controlled by a computer". As the laughter of the whole staff subsided, I simply asked "Why?" with the slight contempt usually reserved for those asked for equalizers or wireless headphones for Walkmans. No answer.

Some of my more computer-literate friends ( who were using PC's by the way) were acquiring CD burners. They were expensive and had to be purchased separately. An entirely new phenomenon arose. " I'll burn you a copy" or " Hey, can you burn me a copy of that?" became familiar phrases in everyday idiom. What many of us failed to remember was that this was very similar to having someone make you a cassette. That was a monumental pain in the ass because a one hour mixed tape took several hours to put together. CD burning was more convenient, but not by much. It was still a relatively complicated process, sounded terrible and to complicate matters, my Linn Karik transport would refuse to read these things.

Like cassettes, we didn't have many moral qualms about recording copyrighted music. " Who's it gonna hurt ?" Little did we know. I had heard of MP-3's a few years earlier, but paid it no mind. As I started reading about it in the media, it seemed that a storm was brewing, and this storm eventually developed into a hurricane. I won't discuss the ramifications of downloaded music, but suffice it to say that it profoundly changed the music business model and the way society as whole interacted with music. My CD burning friend had a neighbor who would brag about having 10,000 MP-3's on his computer. I already thought this person was an idiot, and this statement only deepened my disdain for this fool. I was kind of old school, and thought this to be inherently uncool ( and maybe morally reprehensible).

Technology progressed at an alarming rate soon after that and bit torrent sites were proliferating. Many lawyers took on this challenge but that was here to stay. Hard drives with 1 TB of memory could now be had for a hundred bucks and downloads soon became available in lossless formats such as FLAC. Even though they employ a certain level of compression, to over-simplify,  they are the same as a CD . No furious debates please, I just want to illustrate my point.

The almost complete disappearance of retail outlets selling CD's certainly helped accelerate this revolutionary new way of looking at music. There are now many legitimate sites that sell lossless files. There are many bit torrent sites that also offer pirated FLAC files. Again, I will not make any moral judgements. As for myself, maybe I acquired music from torrent sites, maybe I didn't, but as certain business men in suits have been saying since the days of Prohibition ," I don't know nuthin".

I started off in computer audio with an Arcam USB DAC paired with a Kimber USB cable and haven't looked back since. I still have a Linn CD Player, but it doesn't see much use these days, as much as I hate to admit it. I ripped all my CD"s onto my hard drive, and must reluctantly concede that I truly enjoy having all my music at my fingertips and the pretty pictures of the album covers coming up on the screen as the song plays.

I still occasionally curse at my computer, but it longer confounds me. I had to get with the times, like it or not. In my opinion, a Mac computer was a much better choice for an old school analog person such as myself. A simple, non curse-inducing free program called XLD easily converts FLAC files to the Mac-compatible AIFF format. I like I-Tunes for its ease of use and have augmented it with a music player to get even better sounding music files.

 http://audirvana.com/

Mac's ease of of use and intuitive user interface keep the learning curve shallow and the cursing and self-inflicted injuries to a minimum. I am in the process of buying a new Mac Mini and will keep the old one for low bitrate internet radio streaming only ( that, or a square frisbee to throw at the neighbor's cat).

Even Linn has ceased the production of CD players altogether and now offers a complete line of digital streamers, probably the best on the planet.
http://www.linn.co.uk/all-products/network-music-players/klimax-ds
We seem to have lost sight of one very important factor however. All your music is now stored on a hard drive, an inherently flawed piece of technology. A hard drive has lots of moving parts, does not like being shaken around and, like a crackhead stealing your bike, can really ruin your day. By ruin your day, I mean disrupt your life to the point of wanting to bang your head on the wall like the bad old days. Ask any computer basement-dweller and he will tell you that it's not a matter of if , but when your hard drive will fail.

Imagine, if you will, that you are sitting in your living room minding your own business and listening to music. Imagine that you are listening to vinyl or CD's. You are enjoying yourself as you look at your music collection proudly displayed in row upon row in shelves on the wall. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Then for absolutely no reason, your entire collection catches on fire. And you don't have a fire extinguisher. All you can do is stare in horror as your collection is reduced to a large melted blob in the same amount of time it took you to say " What the fu...."

This what happens when your hard drive fails. Even Apple knows better, as they retired their hard-drive based iPod Classic. Apparently hard drives don't like jogging or being repeatedly dropped.

I-Tunes is also quite finicky and doesn't seem to mix well with booze. You know when friends advise against updating your Facebook status while drunk? Good advice. Or maybe you ignored that piece of common sense and lived with the consequences in the cold grey light of day. The same applies to I-Tunes, one Bourbon too many and 800 albums have mysteriously disappeared. Naw man...that never happened to me...that's right, never happened.

I still have some old school analog tendencies. I occasional hit things with a ball peen hammer to fix them, think that if you stare at a car engine's long enough it will fix itself and like to freak my friends out by actually calling them rather than texting. And I still don't trust hard drives. Some people recommend storing your files in the Cloud. You are still trusting a hard drive and it's likely on a server in someone's barn in Idaho.

Call it an idiosyncrasy if you will, but I make back-ups of all my AIFF files on a CD-R. I used to get strange looks when I was purchasing CD's in the waning days of HMV. I still get the same looks from retail clerks, usually reserved for weirdos who sniff Mennen speed sticks, when I buy those big tubs of CD-R's. It might involve a bit of parnaoia, but I feel secure in the knowledge that one day I won't be dumbly staring at a blank i-Tunes folder that says 0MB. I will also save a lot of money in drywall repairs necessitated by excessive head banging on walls.