505

… strange world it is, pals… the cold, hard facts: last Saturday,  my wife and myself at lunchtime… at the radio, a program where different public people, usually Italian singers or anchormen, introduce their playlist of choice…

A simple format but where sometimes seldom listened or air-played music is heard… sometimes…

Anyway… last Saturday the disc-jockey-in-charge was Carlo Conti, a famous evening programs anchorman with a past as a radio disc-jockey in some obscure small radio station during the ‘80s.

What happened was a common scene, a couple chatting and having lunch together with some background music… nothing special, you know…

Special was what happened next… the voice introduced an old, beloved hit by Lucio Battisti's “Emozioni”, a song which me, my wife and zillions others in my country, back in early ‘70s… well: it was THE song two young lovers listened in the dark, somewhere in our tiny, tidy rooms, hugging and kissing, dreaming of more to come.

After the short introduction, music began to flow… and… the guitar, luscious strings and voice reached our ears and, unison, our eyes met and we exclaimed: “WOW! Listen… listen to this… THIS…” and “it’s just PERFECT!”… and “WOW!” again…

We stopped chatting and remained still, silent for the three minutes long song… nothing strange, don’t you?

The REAL strangeness was that we both experienced such a quality and a perfection of sound coming from a shitty 4 inches speaker in my Brionvega 505 FM radio, where the guitar was airy, the strings soooo sweeeet and voice, ambience, and, most of all, emotional involvment, were, unbelievably enough, true to life and shivering and goose-bumping.

As same happened to my wife, who only likes music occasionally and sure isn’t an audiophile, I placed this experience among the few E.S.P. had in my life, musical or not.

The radio was positioned in a corner at about 3 meters from the table we sat… maybe the distance and the corner positioning supported frequencies or something…

We further elaborated about the above… the pleasure of listening to a well-known song was GREATLY enhanced by the rightness of the listening; the old, seventies style recording was also a beauty, natural reverberation and the best mikes, mixers and instruments were undoubtedly used by RCA, the record label, if I correctly remember it...

Like a knight waiting for the deadly sword stroke, it timely and innocently arrived… my wife hit me very near to my heart: “… just asking if you experience our same enjoyment and pleasure, while listening to your monster audio system, uh?!?”

Speechless, I honestly had to admit It really was an extraordinary listening/musical/memory experience… was it high fidelity?

Now, a few days after the above happened, can say “Yes, it was…” as the memory will store last Saturday “Emozioni” airplaying among the best, deepest, aurally pleasing of last years…

Is hi-end dead?

Maybe… but music will survive to this.