Treble Versus Bass in the Earbud Decade  By Alexis C. Madrigal
1. Treble strikes back against the forces of bass in the age of
the drop.  "At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first
century, with the possibilities for high-fidelity recording at a
democratized high and 'bass culture' more globally present than
ever, we face the irony that people are listening to music, with
increasing frequency if not ubiquity, primarily through small
plastic speakers—most often via cellphones but also, commonly,
laptop computers and leaky earbuds. This return to 'treble
culture,' recalling the days of transistor radios or even
gramophones and scratchy 78s, rep- resents a techno-historical
outcome of varying significance for different practitioners and
observers, the everyday inevitability of 'tinny' transmissions
appearing to affirm a preference for convenience, portability,
and publicity, even as a variety of critical listen- ers express
anxiety about what might be lost along with frequencies that go
unheard (and, i