Tin Speaker

Maybe you’ve heard of Kid 17, in which one begins playing Radiohead’s Kid A, and then seventeen seconds later begins playing it again on another media player or set of speakers (while keeping it playing on the first one). It sounds pretty cool for Everything In Its Right Place and a few other songs, too. Well, this is a million billion times cooler.

Ah, so you’ve dared to make the jump and find out this unbelievable coolio thing that I’ve found. Wise decision, dear reader. I came across this wonderful happenstance by chance. I was listening to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians (a post about which is forthcoming in the next few days, so get ready for that) in .flac format, using the foobar2000 media player, and I wanted to compare the sound quality with the 192 kbps mp3 version on my iTunes. So I played it on foobar, then on iTunes … then I played it on BOTH AT THE SAME TIME! EXCEPT THE FOOBAR ONE WAS TWO SECONDS BEHIND! AND IT SOUNDS COOL AS A MOTHER! I can’t believe I didn’t try this before. It’s actually not surprising at all that it would sound good, given the repetitive nature of the piece and the fact that much of Steve Reich’s early works focussed on tape loops and piano phases, &c, going in and out of sequence with each other, but I’m still excited. I can’t wait to try it with different intervals between the starting on each player. Please do let me know, respected reader, if you find a gap time that is particularly satisfying to your individual sensibilities, and I will gladly try it out.