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What the loudness button on a vintage receiver really did
The loudness button boosted bass and treble at low volume because your ears miss both when it's quiet. Here's when it still matters.
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Desert island album: Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, not Rumours
The pick is Tusk, the 1979 double LP Fleetwood Mac made instead of Rumours 2. The case is simple: Rumours is a flawless record you eventually stop needing, and Tusk is a strange, uneven, deeply human one you never fully use up. You know the story even if you weren&
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Murmur is the desert island pick for people who never got the words
Murmur never asks you to understand it, only to sit inside it. The production choice that makes it R.E.M.'s desert island record.
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The noise gate accident that built the 80s drum sound
The gated reverb on that famous drum fill wasn't designed, it was a talkback mic mistake at Townhouse a year before Collins showed up.
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Oxygene, 1976: the rig, the sales, and radio’s blank stare
Jarre built Oxygene alone on scavenged gear, no lyrics, no band photo, and it outsold French rock in 1976 while US radio just shrugged.