Does anyone have a digital system that is as involving as their analogue front end?

@newton_john @daniel25 

I have wanted to be many things if I could start from youth again. A conductor is at the top of the list, but I don't "understand" music as a musician or conductor must. I learned to paint. When I say "learned," I mean that I was able to get past my conscious mind and allow my unconsciouos to take over. The same with writing and poetry. I can mostly get out of my conscious mind to hear music without symbolic thoughts (chatter in my mind) to interrupt my enjoyment. The more music sounds like the real thing (live) the easier it is for me to get involved, especially with rock n' roll.

One of the things I would have really liked to do is to study philosophy and write about asthetics. Music is a wonderful example. Great composers are not simply tapping into their unconscious minds, they are influenced and inspired by non-symbolic structures we all share. So, if I'm listening on my Tivoli radio and I am able to tap into those structures perhaps from Jung's Collective Unconscious? (I have not been able to do the rigorous study I would have liked to do) or something more Divine? all humanity seems to be able to share those structures that I will call transcendental, because I can't go back and study philosophy and find a more exact word. 

@audphile1 

My MA3i is coming Monday. Would you suggest that I burn it in first, or that I just burn it in while listening to it, which is what I usuallly do with new equipment? But if its sound without being burned in will give me a negative opinion of it, I will burn it in silently. 

@audio-b-dog 

It’d be nice to have more than one life, to follow more than one path. My alternative would to have been to be a musician, but I wouldn’t want to have missed out on the other things that I’ve done.

I was fortunate to pick up the threads again in my forties. And joined my first band at nearly fifty. It was actually more like being press ganged than joining. I found the great thing about playing with a band is that it doesn’t really matter what you do because the other guys carry on regardless. So you get the opportunity to allow your unconscious to take over and improvise. 

I learned to paint

Is it like white washing a picket fence? 😉

It’s wonderful that you took up a hobby that’s great for your mental health and soul. 

@kennyc 

It kind of took me up. I’ve never been good at drawing and so in high school thought I could not be a visual artist. I took an art class at Berkeley just for fun. I was an English major. I had a lot of trouble with the drawing part. I was drawing a nude modell, frustratingly pushing down hard on the charcoal. My teacher came up behind me and said, "Loosen up." That made me all the more tight. She started throwing coffee on my drawing and it made me so angry that I just started wildly swinging around my charcoal. And the model magically appeared. Out of my right brain where we see images. Our left brain awkwardly tries to measure and use symbolic strategies. The right brain just sees things.

Beginners in poetry try to tell people things, like philosophers. It’s when you learn to paint a picture in images without any philosophical (left brain is logic) underpinnings that the right brain’s brilliance comes out.

I am sure it is the same in music. Mozart, probably the most prolific artist year for year of output (Haydn is up there) was probably just able to let his right brain flow and bounce back and forth with his left brain. A very difficult thing to do, but artists must learn. I write a poem or paint a picture trying to stay in my unconscious and then later mold it with my conscious mind. It’s a very difficult balance. And why great artists are owed our admiration.

I do envy you for being in a band. I bet the other players help to generate your creativity.