Of course the Japanese had this concept figured out.
I do this thing with a small group of friends, where we drive like 3-4 grands worth of speakers and room correction DSP (Genelec and DSpeaker) to a summer cottage every 6-8 weeks or so. The place, a big log cabin, happens to have wonderful acoustics.
And we just sit back, mostly STFU and listen to a selection of music for an entire evening, DJ:ed by me (I accept requests), and we eat good food. There's no background music, when we cook, eat or clean, because we want to rest our ears for the main sessions.
The next day, we drive back, I check everything we listened to from Last.fm, and I create a Spotify playlist of the event, which we all save.
Most people look at me like I’m insane when I describe this activity.
Just from reading your comment I felt like I went on that trip a little bit and it was amazing. Love the playlist afterwards so you can remember it and go back to the music and experience.
I think a lot of people are more open to this kind of thing than they think. Purists can complain all day long about Bluetooth audio (I say ABX blind test AAC/AptX transcoding or GTFO), but I'm blown away by the potential brought along with the popularity of premium wireless closed-back cans with active noise cancellation.
These are oftentimes bought for reducing or avoiding stress, but they have great potential to counteract the awful trend of people not even having typical 90s micro stereo system at home, but using exclusively laptop or TV speakers, or mono BT speakers.
So, I'm not grumpy: I like a lot of trends in contemporary personal music listening, mainly streaming for decent quality sources (I equally devour albums, curated playlist and algorithmic recommendations). I've had Spotify Premium since March 15 2009, and it has done so much for my appreciation of music.
Oh wow, got dozens of subscribers to that latest hifi cottage playlist. That's a lot by my standards. Thanks for the interest, people. I hope you all find something fun in there: I really enjoy doing this.
With this development in mind, I'm going to keep this playlist current over time with our new adventures in hi-fi. I'll move the previous content to separate playlists for archiving.
Bummer that Spotify hid playlist subscribers a while back so I can't see who all of you people are!
really enjoying mistape and thought to make a recommendation that I suspect you've already come across - Meg Myers, an incredibly talented singer, covered Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill on her NPR Tiny Desk:
At this level of quality of speaker the accoustic properties of the room (and the location of the speakers) will have a bigger impact on the quality of the sound than spending more money on kit.
I have the M040 which are a newer and more environmentally friendly model aimed at bedroom producers (i believe). There is also a cheaper M030 model.
The M series offer only basic room response controls (e.g. if the speaker is located near a wall or in a corner). The parent alludes to much fancier calibration achieved with the use of a mic and DSP's in the speakers.
The other thing worth noting is that genelecs are very neutral sounding speakers and also (as they are designed as nearfield studio monitors) have a relatively small sweet spot. So maybe not the best choice to fill a big room at a party, but I love them very much :)
You probably don't want to buy Genelec "just because musician X swears by them or Steve Jobs had a pair at his desk". See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20587970
The cheap Polks I have in my living room make a whole lot more sense for that use case than any smaller Genelecs I could've gotten at trice the price. One of the few residential use cases where Genelecs make sense is as actual 'computer speakers' where you get to enjoy the intensity of that near-field sweet spot.
Even the G Ones plus the F One sub are terrific for this, but at a price where you could get a pretty nice basic home theater.
The pair of Genelec 8330A we use at the cottage are just big enough to be enjoyable for our sessions of couchlock debauchery, where we also turn up the volume, and take breaks in order to do so. And the room is super good sounding, too.
My musician friends are usually horrified when I say we listen to Genelecs (or any near field monitors) for fun. This kind of speaker are precision tools, made to be used in specific settings, to painstakingly obsess over adjustments in audio mixes.
Near field monitors are unforgiving and harsh sounding if set up wrong. And they will absolutely not flatter your source material. You usually need a companion subwoofer if you get near field monitors of any size, because they're deliberately made to give a flat frequency response, not to sound beefy, or give a room-filling sound at lower volumes.
Not insane at all. This is such a lovely and decadent way to live.
A pair of Devialet Speakers (about 1.5K USD each) which are about 25lbs (11kgs) each, is a surprisingly easy and satisfying way to achieve this. The sound is rich, satisfying and similar to what I normally associate a 15-20K USD setup with.
Someone mentioned Genelec, wanted to add an another option.
I feel your friends would enjoy hanging out in my lounge listening on a pair of Devore Orangutan 96's, Totaldac d1-direct and Leben tube amp. My dream setup and can't believe I have this in my home to enjoy everyday.
They have a similar setup at Bar Shiru in downtown Oakland but its too noisy to appreciate the setup they have.
It's a shame when the crowd noise overwhelms the system at Shiru. I've found that the sweet spot for dropping in to be around 2pm Sunday. Happy bartenders, quiet patrons, good music.
That sounds lovely. As a music collector and enthusiast, I find it hard it indeed hard to share this passion as it ahs become a rather niche interest. I think it's a shame that music has been reduced to background noise these days, a thing you passively and at best semi-consciously consume while doing something else.
I'd love to find a way to have something like a listening session among like-minded people without geographic limitations since it's hard to find other nearby people, let alone actual friends, interested in the same deep and niche genres - a barrier that is easily overcome online where like-minded enthusiasts are listening to the same hidden gems, enjoy the selection of well-regarded curators and browse the same hard to find records on Discogs - unfortunately all of that happens rather isolated in their home. And while I can (and do) broadcast my taste and selection via Soundcloud, Mixcloud or any number of channels and services, I'd love to see something that allows music lovers to come together and share/stream their picks, taking turns, discussing the records in a live-setting. A lossless, audio-streaming chat room if you will.
This is a great idea to do with friends. I go to many of these venues when I’m in Tokyo. Little things like this are actually popping up all over too. In SF there is https://www.envelop.us/sf-events a very thoughtful and intentional audio experience. Also, https://secular-sabbath.com/about (put on by Mike Milosh and some friends) is great.
I haven’t drank or done drugs in a long time, listening to and making music is my drug. That said, I did do a couple very small micro doses while in Tokyo with the intention of walking through from one listening bar to another. That was quite a trip.
Thanks for posting your playlist, long time DJ here and we have similar taste. ;)
That sounds awesome! If you're interested it would be cool if you put on an event for us all on JQBX [1] one day :) shoot me an email if you want and I can set it up.
https://www.jqbx.fm
Sometimes I really miss how "closed" Apple Music is, all the integrations are always for Spotify. Do you know if it's an API limitation or a market share / prioritization? If I'd have to guess I'd say the former.
Yup, and that Genelec sub (superceded by the F One) we use cost like EUR 600 in 2012 or so.
The Genelec 8330A, which has programmable DSP, can be found at under EUR 800/piece these days from Thomann, a major German music online story that ships across Europe. I think my friend paid like a little over EUR 2k in total for his pair a couple of years ago. https://www.thomann.de/gb/genelec_8330_apm.htm
Here in Finland, everyone loves Genelec to the point of misplaced national pride. Non-audiophiles sometimes buy them as design pieces for living rooms. Of course, they're nice looking active speakers, and everyone hates receiver/amps and the crafty bullshit that goes into passive speaker wiring, so they solve a problem.
The smallest Genelecs are the G Ones, they cost like eur 700/pair. They're light, durable and pretty. They're still near field monitors, and have a lot of that mid range niceness I love in Genelecs and are super sweet if you listen to music at your desk, especially if you also get the F One sub. Steve Jobs would likely approve, as he did with his older Genelecs https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/2wj9ly/genelec_...
But obviously the G Ones aren't ideal in any but the smallest living rooms, or with ceiling mountes in restaurants, because they're not made for that. They end up sound sound anemic, as you'd expect.
Basically, we're using the corner of the L-shaped kitchen+living room space to our advantage by moving the couch a bit and pointing the speakers there. The sub sounds super clean anywhere near the convex corner with the fireplace.
I find that the biggest challenge is the stereo sweet spot, which always is going to be annoyingly garbage and narrow with two-channel stereo. The subtle room reflections help a bit, and we rotate seating to make it a bit more fair.
I read renowned Harman researcher Floyd E. Toole's 'Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms' and he seems to agree that there's not a whole lot that can be done about two-channel stereo. In fact, Toole rants in favor of three front channels quite a lot, and well as mocking audiophiles who think their rooms are going to be likely to not need basic tone controls on reproduction gear. https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Psychoacoustics-Lo...
But back to business, with this nice house we don't really need to do much. The log walls absorb a lot, while leaving a nice little lively touch that makes it not feel like a padded room (one of my friends had a padded room before for music, and I've decided I definitely prefer a room that feels a little bit alive).
The Genelecs are both compact, durable and easy to transport, and we have telecope model stands for them. They have a super nice mid range for guitar and the human voice, and they're also quite nice to look at.
When we set up the space, we basically let the DSpeaker box do its frequency swipes for ten minutes or so. We'd be fine without it even, but it just clears up the bass so nicely.
I'm very skeptical about treating acoustic issues using eq.
Since you're into this kind of thing, I will share an experince I had. For a couple of years, I used to do various kinds of audio production work. One thing that I was always curious about was the way acoustics work in the room.
So I started getting a signal generator and just sending that through the system. I'd send out an 80hz sine wave, and walk the room, and then 90hz, and same. If you do this, you'll get a lot of interesting results as you hear the room nodes, both additive and subtractive.
It's even more interesting when you're in a very reflective and "regularly" shaped room. But you will still find nodes (likely) in any space.
It's a fun experiment, IMO, because you really get an idea of how big these are.
You also get a much better idea of how hard a problem it is to solve, because they aren't all at the same places in a room for different frequencies. So room correction eq has a lot to do with where your measurement mic is placed, but even 1-2M away from that mic can have very different results.
The most interesting thing to me was when I did this process in a specific room (a studio control room) and started to try to treat specific modalities that seemed worse than others. As I went through this process and added physical treatment (in this case mostly fiberglass batting at specific locations), the nodes started to diminish.
At that point, even my very inexpensive Event near field monitors were very clear and easy to make mix decisions on.
Well, I'm not really an expert, but room correction seems like an imperfect solution to an annoying problem in situations where you don't feel so crafty. I'd agree that obsessive room treatment is the way to go if you can plan a space for audio with the time, resources and dedication needed.
It obviously makes sense to turn room correction on and off and check the difference over the range of seating being used in any given situation. Do no harm, etc.
The run-ins I've had with room correction, with my own cheap hi-fi gear, as well as the and higher end stuff my cool friends have, indicate that room correction can be very handy.
Even the room correction built into the 2018-model EUR 400 Yamaha amp I have at home does more good than harm, with the little Genelec sub and Polk satellites. That is, in a regular residential setting, where everything doesn't happen on the terms of audio reproduction, to put it politely towards other concerned parties.
Similarly, this cottage thing revolves around my synesthetic friend's family owning and keeping up the place in a multi-generational social dance of compromise, which this very stylish friend finds annoying and moderately embarrassing.
There's not exactly the tasteful minimalist decor my friend would prefer, but a type of deliberately shabby, cartoonishly frugal kitsch you'd typically find in Finnish summer homes, where people just want to feel freed of suburban respectability norms. More to the point, my friend's mom wouldn't take kindly to acoustic treatment interfering with her live-laugh-love game.
I on the other hand have done the political hand wringing required to have my living room seating arranged for audio in the small apartment I share with my SO. And the sub is placed behind my couch where there happens to be a sharp, little corner that nicely traps bass resonance elsewhere than the couch, so DSP makes smaller adjustments.
Likewise, my Yamaha amp's room correction saved me that hour-or-so of annoyance of flipping DIP switches back and forth on the bottom of the Genelec sub to manually listen for the correct phase setting, or whatever it's called.
Oh, trust me, it's an absolute delight. It's tingly, ASMR-like and you hear stuff in a completely different way.
One of my friends just goes to town with his synesthesia and usually keeps his eyes shut for a big part of the evening.
One of the most mind-blowing experiences I've had there with a well-known piece of music that many can relate to: the bass on the 2018 mix of The Beatles' 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'. In a room with almost no resonance it's just so nice and warm.
Similarly, with the clean bass, you fall for these hidden gems, even among contemporary top 40 pop, like Dua Lipa's hit 'New Rules' from a couple of years back. Also, a fair chunk of pop sounds quite airy and nice compared to ten years ago.
My point is though that it's very self-selecting crowd we've attracted. Not even everyone who loves music enjoy sitting still and quiet for an evening, save for our quick remarks and giggles of pleasant surprise, for example when we describe how good some cheesy 80s pop tune actually sounds. There are no guilty pleasures if the production is good :D
Now with the Tool discography coming to streaming tomorrow(!!!) I suspect our next session is going to be quite the orgy.
My favorite bar in Tokyo (in the whole world?) was a place like this, called Track Bar in the Ebisu neighborhood. $8 seating charge, no photos or talking above the music allowed, then you can sit at the bar and drink inexpensive but quality whiskey all night and listen to whatever the bartenders/DJs were playing. Lots of rare cuts from the 60s thru the 00s. I also ended up having nice conversations with plenty of other patrons. Most were there for the music as well, a mix of locals and tourists, very friendly vibe. I wish I had a comparable place in NYC.
As a side note, the secret to drinking in Japan (or anywhere), known to alcoholics but not to many regular folks, is starting or finishing your night with a little bottle of vitamin C drink. Helps your liver digest the alcohol. I started buying Emergen-C packets when I got back to the States and it's been a game-changer. Routine colds also seem to be less intense...
Somewhat related, my brother is a musician (playing what you might call experimental music) and says Japan is an amazing place to play as the audience pays close attention to what you're doing and remains quiet whilst you're playing. It seems the culture there is that it's music lovers going to these venues for the primary purpose of experiencing the music. Whereas in a lot of places I've been people are going to hang out with friends and the music is secondary.
that has less to do with japan and more to do with the fact that niche music doesn’t attract laypeople. you can find the same kinds of shows all over the united states for example
For the local music scene in my city (Kitchener ON), if you want a quiet, respectful, focused environment in which to enjoy, skip the pub sets and go to the house shows instead. Almost all the local artists play them, and there are a lot that are pseudo-public. Like, they're not advertised openly, so you need to ask the artist to find out, but you also don't necessarily need to know the hosts— it's very much a friends-of-friends type affair, and in my experience very welcoming.
I think Japan might actually be different in regards to music performances. I know folks from a few lesser-known punk bands, the kind that might get 50 or so folks at a typical club show on a good night in the US, that did tours in Japan. They described the same kind of reverence at their shows in Japan, and punk isn't exactly known for reverent crowds. This was 10 to 15 years back, so things may be different now?
If it was just because of the genre, their brother would notice that anecdote everywhere and not just Japan. The drummer in my current band plays with several groups (very common for a skilled drummer in NYC), and he just got back from a 2 week tour in Japan and had the exact same things to say. Crowds were way more respectful and focused on the music.
I agree though that in general niche music is more respectful than more mainstream music, at least in the USA. Harsh noise and stoner sludge/doom shows have had the most polite people in the mosh pits in my experience.
As someone who played in piano bars and bar bands, this does kind of sound amazing. With either case, it really depended on the venue, but usually it was a 30/70 split of people paying attention vs just having background music unless we did something like "Piano Man" or one of those classic bar songs like "Keep Your Hands to Yourself". (this was in TN and KY, although almost never in Nashville)
I find it really fascinating how small local decisions like how many square feet a store can be, influence what kind of companies form, and thus, how good your local breweries, cafes, bookstores, restaurants, groceries are.
Like they hint at in the article, I guess small store footprints make it not worth large "faceless" corporations opening shop and therefore the stores that do pop up are run out of more passion for the thing (some, at least).
Traveling in EU a bunch, I was always interested why in Italy, for example, small restaurants are on every residential block run by essentially mom and pops, and still surviving, serving up reasonably good food. Versus this kind of restaurant has largely been displaced (if not number, at least in consciousness) in any of our US large cities by corporate backed entities.
Versus if your zoning allows big box 100,000 sq ft stores, you're just by nature going to get something a little more bland.
> Traveling in EU a bunch, I was always interested why in Italy, for example, small restaurants are on every residential block run by essentially mom and pops, and still surviving, serving up reasonably good food. Versus this kind of restaurant has largely been displaced (if not number, at least in consciousness) in any of our US large cities by corporate backed entities.
Population density.
Thinking about one of the restaurants I was in in Paris, it had seats for about 40 people (tightly packed!) and remained filled for about 4 hours and we turned about every 2 hours. So, about 80-100 people a night roughly 6 nights a week.
So, call it 400 people per week being dinner customers of that restaurant to keep it alive.
That's roughly 200 apartments or houses nearby needed to keep that restaurant alive.
You don't need many of those restaurants before you exceed the local suburban density in the US.
In Paris, that's probably exceeded by the number of people on a couple blocks.
I visit Japan every year and spend a lot of time at these venues and at the so-called Jazz kissas (ジャズ喫茶).
These places are amazing. Usually operated by older Japanese women and gentlemen, they have walls lined with records - many of which are out of print. They include obscure, but excellent, Japanese jazz of which there is plenty. The patrons sit quietly and focus on the music while sipping whiskey and/or smoking a cigarette. It is interesting to not that most of these places include detailed specs of their audio setups on their business cards.
My friends and I often have listening parties at our lodge in the woods near Yosemite. My Jazz playlist for any who wish to enjoy. Please listen on shuffle, and no skipping!
Thank you for sharing! I remember reading about this years ago, and it's nice to rediscover this article.
> "The aim from the beginning was to play non-dance music, whether it's jazz, prog-rock, experimental and avant-garde," Shimizu says. "Nobody understood this kind of listening party at first, but we just continued doing it. Then a few years later, some younger DJs began to follow our lead, and they started similar parties at the other venues."
One just opened near me, but you can't go to just enjoy the music because most patrons see it as "just another bar" where they can loudly gab with their coworkers, sometimes even yelling to one-up each other. It's super annoying that they're not getting the purpose of it, because I was excited when it opened. Now I might as well just go to the sports bar because I'm less frustrated.
Makes going anywhere there's going to be more than a handful of people incredibly tiring. That's probably the introvert in me talking, but it's got to be possible to be an extrovert without giving every outing a frat party vibe.
> The Bay Area’s first hi-fi vinyl listening bar. We focus on playing records in their entirety on a fully analog sound system in a space that was built with acoustics as a first priority. Our aim is to provide every guest with a unique and intimate experience that allows for both intentional listening and conversation at normal volumes. If you like good music, good drinks and good company, come through, we’d love to see you!
I used this list as a starting point when I went to Japan last year, ended up visiting a few of the ones on the list and a couple of other "music bars" as well, including a hip-hop/funk/soul bar in Shinjuku ("Bar Box" I think it was called) one in Osaka dedicated to 80s rock and hair metal, "FREAK." If nothing else it's worth it to listen to one of these hi-fi soundsystems if you (like me) spend your time listening to compressed audio from a streaming service on a normal pair of headphones... the difference is night and day.
Just adding my experience. We found ourselves in one of these places in Kanazawa. There was only us and another couple in there. Of course there was plenty of music that I'd never heard before but very much enjoyed, but Sting's "Englishman In New York" always instantly takes me back there.
How did you end up in Kanazawa? Is it worth exploring?
I would love to see more of Japan (have been to Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Sapporo, visited lake Toya, Hakone, Himeji castle), but unsure where to go / what to see next. Any ideas?
long time lurker, just created my account to reply to your comment!
I just got back from a Japan tour so it was my first time in the country, but Kanazawa was one of my favorite parts of the trip that I wasn't expecting! The city has a nice blend of history as well as a decent downtown area. I think it is an authentic destination and seems like more of a spot for Japanese tourists than for the usual gaijin. All of the schoolchildren I saw tried to speak English with me and said "hello" which would never happen in the big cities! I also saw the smallest bars and restaurants I have ever seen in my life, with room for 4 people, in the back streets of the downtown area.
There were many good things to see in the city. The Kenroku-en Garden was a huge and beautiful park that you can meander about, that's on top of a small mountain. It is also connected to Kanazawa Castle which had the largest lawn I ever sat on. I also enjoyed the Museum of Contemporary art. The fish market is also famous, as is the Higashi Chaya District.
I can't recommend Kanazawa enough! Anthony Bourdain also visits Kanazawa in the beginning of the episode "Japan with Masa" on Netflix if you want a glimpse of the city.
Second this, since 2015 the Hokuriku Shinkansen gets you there easily and the garden and castle alone are worth the trip. If you can make it sometime during the cherry blossoms it is insane.
When you visit somewhere what do you enjoy seeing or doing? Nature? History? Culture? People (as in people-watching)? Local cuisines? Unique activities? I wouldn't recommend Yoyogi Park on a Sunday afternoon for people who aren't that into people watching and don't care to see the Rockabillies dancing. I equally wouldn't recommend any particular temple or shrine to a person who's attitude towards them is "Seen one, seen them all." I have a particular soft spot for Inari shrines and go out quite of my way to visit many of the smaller/local ones.
I also second Jack's recommendation of Nikko. It was one of my favorite places I visited. Lake Chūzenji was beautiful in the spring when I went.
Cool article. I was fortunate enough to experience some places similar to these first hand during a visit to Tokyo. One of the most impressive things to me was the bartenders’ uncanny ability to pick the perfect next song. In a sea of old, unidentifiable records, they were able to pick out exactly which record and subsequent song they wanted. And the timing of their transitions between songs...incredible. All while serving you drinks.
I'd like to add one to this list: La Crema, in Taipei (克立瑪咖啡). It's technically not in Japan, but the concept is exactly the same. The owner has run the place for 30+ years, and he's fanatical about two things: coffee and his custom-built tube amp audio system. Worth a visit if you are ever in Taipei.
I went to a place like this in Sasebo. Very cozy venue, warm atmosphere, and quiet conversations amongst the jazz in the background. I didn’t realize there was a term for “Jazz kissa”, so thank you to the author for providing a stepping stone to research more pleasant experiences like this.
I do this thing with a small group of friends, where we drive like 3-4 grands worth of speakers and room correction DSP (Genelec and DSpeaker) to a summer cottage every 6-8 weeks or so. The place, a big log cabin, happens to have wonderful acoustics.
And we just sit back, mostly STFU and listen to a selection of music for an entire evening, DJ:ed by me (I accept requests), and we eat good food. There's no background music, when we cook, eat or clean, because we want to rest our ears for the main sessions.
The next day, we drive back, I check everything we listened to from Last.fm, and I create a Spotify playlist of the event, which we all save.
Most people look at me like I’m insane when I describe this activity.