Every year before Easter, I listen to the original Jesus Christ Superstar recording from October 1970. My parents gave me the double album for Christmas 1971 and regretted it. Mom begged me to stop playing the rock opera over and over again. I obstinately continued. (She preferred Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, and other well-known Country Music artists of the time.)
JCS is the background music for this post, but in different fashion than more recent years. Rather than listen to the digital download, I dug out the two-set CD that I purchased decades ago. Physical media is all the rage, suddenly, and we still have all the accumulated discs—thankfully.
I listen from FiiO DM15 R2R Portable Stereo CD Player, with wired headphones no less: Audio-Technica ATH-R70x. Our daughter inherited my beloved Grado GS1000e many holidays ago; she still has them. But I wouldn’t complain about the R70x, which are marketed as reference headphones for delivering flatter rather than bassy or punchier sound. I love them. Especially playing a CD, there’s clarity and purity that cannot be appropriately described.
I hadn’t used the DM15 until this evening. The retro/modern styling is appealing, as is the audio. The manufacturer explains:
In order to recapture the classic audio character of vintage portable CD players, the DM15 R2R is equipped with a proprietary four-channel, fully differential 24Bit R2R resistor arrays DAC. It is built using a grand total of 192 precision thin-film resistors (48 per channel), carefully selected for their 0.1-percent accuracy and low temperature drift (30ppm). The result is a nuanced, warm, and organic analog sound.
The last sentence pretty aptly describes my listening experience with the Audio-Technica headphones attached.
That said, nothing is more authentic than live music. As part of the 50th-Anniversary U.S. tour, “Jesus Christ Superstar” played here in San Diego in mid-November 2019. My wife and I attended one of the performances.
I used Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra to capture the Featured Image. Vitals: f/1.4, ISO 1000, 1/120 sec, 23mm (film equivalent); 8:08 p.m. PDT.