Everyone who knows the relationship between a regular old pencil and a cassette has, at the very least, a latent awareness of sound degradation. Waiting for the announcer to stop talking over the track with your finger on the pause button of the trusty double tape deck with in-built receiver. Or perhaps it was finding just the right angle to hold the headphones from the radio over the mic of the separate portable tape recorder. We wanted the music we loved to come with us and play on command. As long as it was recognisable enough the quality was irrelevant.

As someone who has only ever owned very few albums on vinyl, it wasn’t until I finally had a system good enough to hear the difference between the hand-tracklisted cassette copy of Roots made by a friend to the newly purchased CD version that I recall hearing it first. That effect of the familiar sounds opening up in all directions. Later Isoleé through a pair of HD-25s and the focus of the details edging as close to synaesthetic as ever experienced; textures rising and walking, full of personality and purpose.

To have your ears opened is a magical experience. To have them dulled is a deep sadness but only conspicuous if it’s immediate. Recently I’ve come to realise that my auditory expectations have become deadened by the insidious dual-headed fraudster of technology and convenience. Without ever bothering to look into it, I’d assumed that a 320kps mp3 was at least on-par with a CD recording, and that 120kps wasn’t even to be farted at. That gap of 200k was somehow the difference between a Bieber fan and an Electric Wizard connoisseur.

Recently, between a rant from an old friend, reading his eloquent missive about same and watching enthralled as Tony Andrews slowly dismantled my modern auditory assumptions, one thing has become clear: at least one of my senses has verifiably been inhabiting a poor facsimile of actual potential.

Thank you all for the slap in the ear.