Greatest musical invention of our age is the compact disc and its portable playing machine powered by a couple of AA dry cells. Quality of reproduction through the matching headphones is truly excellent, making possible the enjoyment and study of fine music anywhere at any time.

It is essential that you attend live performances whenever you can because, despite the excellence of digital recordings, subtle nuances are lost in the process. An example of this was recently experienced by Fu-Manchu who went to hear the American Chamber Players perform Carl Maria von Weber's Trio in G-minor for flute, cello, and piano, Op.63; live, these performers produced a tightly-integrated sound in which all instruments had equal presence, among which the music flowed smoothly back and forth; in a recording of the same piece this facet of the experience was lost, probably caused by placement of the microphones and subsequent audio mixing.

Hearing live performance enables one to determine the quality of recorded music. With chamber music this is particularly important since it is a much more intimate experience. It is the difference between the concert hall that seats thousands and the small venue that seats two hundred. Most important of all is the acoustics of the auditorium; Fu-Manchu was once disappointed by hearing chamber music played in an acoustically dead environment.