Copper

Thoughts On Triage

(As mentioned in the last issue, David Baerwald’s Triage was a remarkable work, alternately rageful and lyrical in its view of the America of 1992. Baerwald’s sardonic view of LA had first been heard...

Vine and Window

Terri and I were vacationing in France a few years ago and had stopped at a roadside vineyard for lunch. I spied this great art of old vines creeping up...

Welcome to the lucky thirteenth edition of Copper!

As is probably clear by now, we’ve decided to shake things up a bit. Our new format is designed to be more readable and more manageable. It will also allow...

Points Of Pickup

The point of contact between the cartridge’s generator system and the actual moving vinyl record is of course the stylus, mounted on to the cantilever. The stylus has to cope...

Issue 14

As we draw nearer to the time of the World Series, we have several series featured in Copper #14---two concluding, two beginning. Paul McGowan begins a new column, Back to Basics, in this issue....

Diving into Opera, and Surfacing with Joy (Part I)

Perhaps I am one of those increasingly rare birds who never had to learn to love opera. When I was all of 11, my father brought home a deluxe, faux...

Letting Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story

If the internet is good for nothing else, it’s great at destroying a good story by providing factual evidence to the contrary. The flip side is that by widely and...

More About Tinnitus

Pleased to read the article regarding tinnitus. Tinnitus is a problem that confronts many people with or without hearing loss. There is no one cause for tinnitus; it can be...

Up the Ladder

I am responding to the recent article on DACs and the quick brush-off of ladder DACs. (Richard Murison’s “My Kingdom for a DAC”, Richard didn’t brush off ladder DACs so...

Issue 13

Conversion Conversation

Today’s DACs, with a few very rare (and expensive) exceptions, all use a process called Sigma Delta Modulation (SDM, sometimes also written DSM) to generate their output signal.  A simplistic...

Italian Window

Canon 5D

Jaco

When I started out playing bass, like all novices I was pretty lousy. Luckily, you always played in the back behind loud guitar players, best friends who talked you into...

Capital Audio Fest

The Capital Audiofest was held the weekend of July 8-10 at the Hilton Washington DC/Rockville, in Rockville, Maryland. Know for its friendly, informal atmosphere and DIY roots, this year the...

Issue 11

Andrew Norman: Pinball Wizard

As I write this, I am sitting in a grade-school art teacher’s classroom in Poughkeepsie, New York. It’s deserted except for me and my laptop, but in classrooms all around...

Caribbean Shutter

Canon 5D

Jensen: The Man, the Company, Conclusion

In Parts 1 and 2 we discussed Peter Jensen’s journey from his birthplace in Denmark to California, his involvement in the creation of the moving-coil loudspeaker, and his role as...

My Kingdom for a DAC

One of the nice things about digital audio is that it’s so simple to understand. We ‘sample’ (measure) the analog waveform many tens of thousands of times a second and...

Encountering The Kutandara Tribe

It’s hard to not stare when you meet a new tribe. You know what I mean: you see a group of people, different from the norm but tightly-knit, and you...

It's No Contest

The long-running television show American Idol was often accused of single-handedly destroying American popular music. In its fifteen seasons AI (no, not “artificial intelligence”, although that might seem apropos) yielded...

John Hartford

One day about twenty-five years from now,When we’ve all grown old from a-wondering how,Oh we’ll all sit down at the city dump,And talk about the Goodle Days.Well you’ll pass the...

Stan White: Visionary? Or…?

This column is different from previous installments of Vintage Whine, in two ways: 1. Previous subjects were pretty well known—for anyone familiar with the history of the American audio industry,...

The New Old Way

We can all remember those moments when everything in our systems comes together --- when everything just WORKS. The last time I recall it happening with real clarity was when...

What Is a Song?

Warning: more Beatles content. Of course, they’re many people’s favorite band (including, obviously, mine), so it’s not a surprise, but there happen to be a number of Beatle-related events around...

Issue 12

The Shock of the Old

What’s Old? In classical music, everything and nothing. Steve Reich is 80. Bach is dead; so are Cage and Satie, Ives and Varèse, Morton (Feldman) and Milton (Babbitt). So what?...

Is It Worth It To You?

During election season, we hear a lot of talk about “values”. We are not (thank goodness!) going to pursue the subject of personal values, the much-abused term that is at...

Cocktail Party

You will all know the old chestnut where, if you focus clearly, it is often possible to pick out one individual conversation from among the hubbub of a noisy cocktail...

Opening Salvo

Welcome to Copper #11! Wherever you are, we hope it’s not as hot and dry as it is here in literally-on-fire Colorado. Here in mid-July, most folks are approaching some...