Issue 201

The Audio Den has been one of the New York Metro area’s top dealers since 1976. Like so many other retailers, they expanded into home theater and custom installation in order to meet a growing market, and accommodate changing times and economic realities. But their roots are firmly in audio.

In fact, I bought my first good speakers from them when I was in college. If I may digress: they were a pair of EPI M50 small two-way bookshelf speakers. I liked the clarity of the tweeters and the overall tonal balance. I don’t remember what others I listened to but for me the EPI (for Epicure Products, Inc. of Newburyport, Massachusetts) stood out. I asked the salesman to play “International Feel” from Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard, a True Star LP and was sold. At the end of the track, the sales guy asked, “why the heck did you play that as a demo?” The track has an extremely dense, some would say noisy, mix, and I replied, “I wanted to see if the speakers could reveal everything that was going on.”

On November 3, Audio Den hosted an event celebrating their new listening room in Nesconset, New York. The system was based around the Marten Coltrane 3 loudspeakers, a beautifully-finished made in Sweden floorstander with a stunning satin wood front and a curved enclosure made from carbon fiber. The pair on display had an impeccable gloss black finish – it looked flawless. (See the header image at the top of this article.)

The Marten Coltrane 3 is a 3-way bass-reflex design with dual 10-inch aluminum sandwich woofers, a 7-inch ceramic midrange driver, and a 1-inch diamond tweeter. The midrange unit has a “wrinkled” appearance, but this is deliberate, to control dispersion. The carbon fiber-laminate cabinet is 255 mm thick, and the front baffle is 68 mm in thickness. The speaker rests on Marten Isolators, which are impressive in themselves, formidable in size with a mirror-polished finish. The Coltrane 3 is available in a choice of seven wood and painted finishes.

The Marten Coltrane 3 loudspeaker.

Detail shot of the Coltrane 3 midrange unit showing the deliberately-placed "ripples" in the driver. Courtesy of Howard Kneller.

The system also showcased the new NORTH Collection from MOON by Simaudio; the Audio Den rig included the 791 Network Player/Preamplifier and the 761 Power Amplifier. The analog setup consisted of the European Audio Team (EAT) Fortissimo-S turntable (about $10,000), F-NOTE arm (a work of stunning industrial design and execution) and JO N° 8 cartridge, plus an EAT E-GLO vacuum tube phono stage, surely one of the most distinctive of its kind in existence. The system was wired with Sweden’s Jorma Design cables.

The turntable and electronics in the Audio Den main system.

A closer look at the EAT Fortissimo-S turntable, F-NOTE arm and JO N° 8 cartridge. Photo by Howard Kneller.

The MOON 791 Network Player.

Simaudio’s Todd Hurry told me that the NORTH Collection is “the biggest launch in Simaudio’s history.” The products come in three ranges – the 600, 700, and 800 – and incorporate technologies that as he noted simply weren’t available before. He said the company is seeing more and more streamlining in the industry; that is, consumer demand for smaller and more-capable systems, as evidenced by their 791 network player (pricing starts at $16,000), which combines an analog preamplifier, phono stage, DAC, and music streamer. The 761 amplifier (pricing starts at $14,000) delivers 200 watts per channel (into 8 ohms) and features balanced and single-ended inputs.

The Audio Den listening room was amply but not excessively treated with acoustic panels. The rear wall had a large rectangle of Vicoustic Multifuser Wood MkII, resembling a series of wood blocks of different lengths. The side walls featured Vicoustic Cinema VMT, and VicPattern Ultra Wavewood treatments. the front wall had a striking assemblage of white geometric shapes created from Vicoustic Penray tiles that looked like a modern art rendition of an abstract cloud.

The Audio Den listening room used Vicoustic products to treat reverberation time, early reflections, and sound field anomalies like room modes, flutter echo and other considerations. The target was to reduce the RT (reverberation) time between 0.3 to 0.5 seconds between 205 Hz to 4 kHz. Previously, the room's RT ranged from 1.59s at 250 Hz to 2.18 at 4 kHz. With the acoustic treatment, there is an RT of 0.55s at 250 Hz and 0.30s at 4 kHz.

Vicoustic specified a mix of sound-absorbing panels, which control early reflections by taking energy from them, and sound-diffusing panels, which control reflections by spreading the energy evenly across the room, enlarging the effective listening position, and creating a sense of spaciousness.

A Vicoustic Multifuser Wood MkII sound treatment panel.

In small rooms, the prominent anomaly is room modes. Room modes are created in small spaces because of the relationship between low-frequency wavelengths and room dimensions. To control the low end, Cinema Fortissimo VMT absorbers were installed in the corners.

I won’t keep anyone in suspense – the system sounded incredibly dynamic, with a wide, deep soundstage and exceptional clarity. It sounded “big” when the music called for it, and intimate when listening to female vocalists like Melody Gardot, Rumer, or Kandace Springs. I know everyone’s heard Stevie Ray Vaughan’s version of “Little Wing” perhaps way too many times at audio shows (myself included), but on this system I finally “got it,” as every dynamic nuance and subtlety of touch of SRV’s playing just grabbed me.

The system played effortlessly, and let’s just say that there was absolutely no need for a subwoofer. At one point the guys played a track from Victor Wooten’s Live in America album, featuring Miller, Stanley Clarke and Victor Wooten, three of the most virtuosic electric bass players on planet Earth. To say this was a demanding track would be like calling LeBron James a good basketball player. The authority, clarity and low-frequency extension were astounding.

A display of components designed for headphone listening from Ferrum Audio caught my eye. Based out of Poland and headed by former engineers from Mytek Audio, these compact and understatedly attractive products included the WANDLA DAC ($2,795), OOR headphone amp ($1,995), ERCO headphone DAC/amp ($1795), and the innovative HYPSOS power supply ($1,195). The latter is a hybrid DC design said to combine the best features of both linear and switching power supplies, for better dynamic and improved low-level resolution, along with a wider soundstage. I listened through the excellent Austrian Audio Composer headphones ($2,699), which impressed me with their clarity and comfort.

The Ferrum HYPSOS power supply and WANDLA DAC.

While roaming around I couldn’t help but notice what looked like a sort of shelving unit with a number of attractive plants. Audio Den’s Adi Zaltsman told me it was the Audio Garden, a system for growing and nourishing plants. He noted that audio needs to go beyond its traditional role and provide “experiences,” a sentiment I’ve heard expressed in exactly the same way by others in our industry. Considering that Audio Den offers custom installation and systems integration, it wasn’t too far a leap to think they’d be successful at moving into other areas in the home. “You’ll never get this kind of freshness in a store,” Adi noted, and I have to tell you, the edible plants tasted wonderfully good.

"And we've got to get ourselves back to..." the Audio Garden.

Audio Den also offers components from McIntosh, B&W, JBL Synthesis, Dynaudio, Focal, James, Sonos, NAD, Marantz, PrimaLuna, ProJect, and a number of others.

Audio Den
66 Southern Blvd., Suite C
Nesconset, NY 11767
631-585-5600
www.audioden.com

All images courtesy of their respective manufacturers or Frank Doris unless otherwise noted.

Header image: the Audio Den's main listening room.

Michael Fremer needs little introduction to Copper readers. He’s been a stalwart of the high-end audio industry for decades, and is currently the editor of The Tracking Angle and editor at large at The Absolute Sound. He has been a champion of vinyl since long before the days in the early 1980s when the “Perfect Sound Forever” guys would make fun of us analog advocates at trade shows. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on analog playback. Fremer has also been a professional comedian, a voice actor (Animalympics, Felix the Cat: The Movie), and supervised the Academy Award-nominated soundtrack to Tron.

Now he can add a new job description to his CV: record producer. He and co-producer Robin Wyatt have released Rufus Reid Presents Caelan Cardello, an album of spontaneous, beautifully-played improvised jazz. Non-spoiler alert: the sound quality is superb. Legendary bassist Reid and up-and-coming pianist Cardello perform a selection of originals and standards with a relaxed ease, following each other through a variety of moods, tempos and musical paths with a remarkable combination of spontaneity and communication.

This is made all the more remarkable by the fact that Reid and Cardello had never played together before.

We’ll let Michael tell the story.

Michael Fremer: Hello! There was a story on Facebook yesterday that Shemp was the best of The Three Stooges. Can you believe that?

Frank Doris: I beg to differ! Everyone knows it was Curly!

A gentleman never tells his age, but it took you a while before you actually produced your first record album. After all the stuff you've done, how did you wind up producing this album?

MF: Well, first of all, I was peripherally involved in a bunch of other records. Don't forget, I did a comedy album [I Can Take a Joke] that I produced in 1976.

FD: I had forgotten.

MF: Well, you can still find it on eBay and in used record stores. People are trying to get $100, $200 for it now. And then you have to remember that Animalympics, even though I didn't get credit for it, I essentially hired Graham Gouldman [of 10cc] to do the songs. I sat down with Graham and told him what I wanted the songs to be like for the movie. Somebody else got the permission, got credit as being the music supervisor. He handled the legal parts of it, but the concepts were mine and I edited all the music. And then [there was] Tron.

But this is the first record that I really was responsible for from beginning to end. My name's on it as executive producer.

What happened was my friend Robin Wyatt [of Robyatt Audio, distributor of Miyajima Labs, Schroder tonearms, Tzar phono cartridges and other products] knew Jim Luce, who is a concert promoter. Once COVID hit, he was obviously out of work. Last year when things eased up, he decided to run a small concert series at the Klavierhaus, a piano showroom on 11th Avenue [in Manhattan]. They restore and sell pianos, and they have a performance space there that can seat about 25 or 30 people. It's got very good acoustics, and they have a Fazioli grand piano. And so last January Robin and I decided that we would go in and support Jim by attending one of these afternoon concerts. [It was] on a cold day pretty much like today, so I almost didn't want to go, but Robin said, “come on, we owe it to Jim.” So, we go in and sit down and there's about 10 people there. And then all of a sudden, Rufus Reid shows up.

So, Rufus sets up his bass and then Jim Luce gets up and says, “I've known Rufus for a long time, but who's the next cat? Who's going to come along and really show us something new in jazz?” And then Rufus introduced Caelan Cardello.

Caelan Cardello and Rufus Reid in concert.

They start to play. And I wasn't paying attention to anything; I was just sitting there, kind of blasé. And they start playing and within half of the first tune he just hit me. He didn’t sound like Bill Evans, but like Bill Evans in that he took a dark day [I was having] and lightened it up.

And I said to Robin, “it's too bad this isn't being recorded. This is amazing!” He goes, “it is being recorded. Our friend Duke Markos is recording this. He's got this equipment in the back and it's being recorded.”

I told him, “if this comes out good, we have to put this out.”

[I keep listening and the] rest of the program is just as good. After the second tune, Rufus [tells the audience] – and I’m paraphrasing – “Caelan and I have never played together. I've just been following him. We met an hour before the show, picked a bunch of tunes, and that's what you're hearing.” Then he said, “a lot of times, people don't like uncertainty in life, but musicians love it. They love uncertainty because they thrive on it and work through new things through their shared communication with music.”

And then they kept playing together. They played for about an hour, and one song was more spectacular than the next.

FD: Is the album in the sequence that they played?

MF: No. A couple of things happened. They did a very long extended dreamy piece, and Rufus played arco [bowed] bass. To me it was the highlight of the whole show, but they wouldn't let us use that track because they made a mistake. Don't ask me what it was; I didn't hear it. I suppose one of them came in too early or was playing the bridge where the chorus should be, whatever it was. They just said, you cannot use that. And of course, the sequencing had a fit 20 minutes to a side.

We had to rearrange [the sequence] and I had to chop a lot of [between-song] dialog because Rufus was talking a lot. It was great stuff to hear, but it wouldn’t work. [This is where] all the dialogue editing I've done over the years came into play.

Caelan Cardello and Michael Fremer at the Klavierhaus.

FD: The between-song patter does add to the whole you-are-there kind of feel. I think the album would be missing something without it.

Anyway, the fact that the two of them never played together before makes the recording really incredible. As you noted, musicians love walking a tightrope, and it can be a trainwreck, or it can be absolute magic. But there's been so many times when you've seen a performer and thought, oh my god, I wish somebody had recorded this. And of course, they never do. But this time, they did!

MF: I went backstage and Duke Markos had all his [recording gear] in a closet. Duke Markos is a very good engineer. He did stuff at the Kennedy Center, and he did a years’ worth of WBGO live, the jazz station in Newark. And he’d recorded some records for Robin previously of the Cuban piano great Elio Villafranca. The whole thing was [also] recorded to video with multiple cameras. So we go back there and Duke says to the video guy, “I want you to meet a friend of mine, Michael Fremer.” Without missing a beat, the guy goes, “oh, WBCN in 1974!”

FD: It was fate.

MF: Then I walked back to Rufus and said, “if this comes out as good as it as it sounded here, I want to put this out on record. What do you say?” He [answered], “well, we can work something out. You'll pay me and you’ll pay everybody and we'll be good with that.” Caelan was good with it. And Caelan’s father, who was there, was good with it.

A couple of weeks later, Duke had worked up a rough mix for us. And I knew right away it could be great. It wasn't great yet, but you could tell it could be great. The bottom end was a little bit problematic, and I facetiously said to Robin, “as long as we’re paying for this, and as long as it sounds good on my stereo, that's all I really care about.”

FD: You have a world-class system, so you're in a very good position to tell what the recording actually sounds like. What happened between the recording and then actually getting it mixed and mastered? I know you said record producer Joe Harley got involved and Bob Ludwig did the mastering.

MF: We went back and forth with the audio files for a couple of weeks, changing the bass. The bass was a little bit plummy, then it got a little too lean. Once we got the equalization where we wanted, we had to place the instruments [in space]. It's only two instruments, and in recording the piano, the microphones were placed in such a way that the left and right hand were separated. And I hate that. I don't want to sit there and [hear] the left hand on the left speaker and the right hand on the right speaker. So I [asked] Joe, “how would you place the instruments on the stage?” He suggested putting – as well is it could be implemented – Caelan’s left and right hands in a line perpendicular to the soundstage by lowering the left-hand level a bit so it would sound as it looked.

 So there's the illusion of [the sound] being the way it is on the keyboard, but perpendicular to the listening position, which is exactly how it should be. [Then] Duke panned it where [he thought they] should be. He had the audience on a separate track. I mean, he had lots of microphones, and six tracks of 24/96 digital. We got the mix really good, and I said to myself, you know what? I'm just going to send it to Bob Ludwig. I know Bob, and I think he would really dig this, [but] not to [actually] master it, [because] he was retiring. I just figured, he's presented so much great music to us. He might dig this record. So I sent it to him and he got back to me very shortly thereafter saying, “you know what? I want to master this. I want my name on this because this kid [Caelan Cardello], everyone's going to know this kid in a couple of years, and I want my name on this record.”

Bob mastered it, and it came back even better than what we sent him. What did he do? I can't tell you what he did, but it was good, and then it was “finished.” You know what I mean?

FD: That's the magic of a great mastering engineer.

MF: Paul Gold runs Salt Mastering [in Brooklyn, New York]. I asked him why is it called Salt Mastering? He said, I think mastering is like salt. You want to use just enough salt to enhance the flavors, but you never want to taste the salt. And that's what I think mastering should be. You should never “hear” what you've done, but it should just be better. And that's what Bob did to it.

Then we had to figure out who was going to cut the lacquers, and I decided we're going to do all of this at Chad Kassem’s place [Quality Record Pressings]. It'll be a one-stop operation. We'll have it mastered on Doug Sax’s [old] mastering system. Why not? And Matthew Lutthans is doing the cutting over there now, and Matthew has worked with [mastering engineer] Kevin Gray for a long, long time. We got the test acetates back, and they were ideal. It was so good. I was so excited by that. Then we had to get it plated and it was [also] done [at QRP].

Then we had to get the jackets done. This is a whole ‘nother story, so [at the time all this was going on] I'm helping Patrick Leonard with his new record. Patrick Leonard produced all the early Madonna records. Also Amused to Death for Roger Waters, and two of the last three Leonard Cohen records, those fantastic, unbelievable records. What happened was that Patrick, out of the blue, had called me, and this is before any of the [Rufus Reid Presents Caelan Cardello] record happened. He told me, “I'm putting out a new rock record that I produced, and it's got Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull on it, and Martin Barre, and Tony Levin, the bass player. And Jeff Beck was supposed to play on it. And there's other great players on it.”

He says, “so I'm putting this out on vinyl first. I figure that's the best way to get a buzz going. All the synthesizers are Seventies-era. There are no digital synthesizers on it.” He told me he’d finished it, and sent it to Bob Ludwig to master. He’d said to Bob, “this project is so perfect for vinyl. So, what do I do?” And Bob Ludwig said, well, you should call Michael Fremer because he knows more about it than I do at this point!”

That happened before my record. That's why I felt comfortable sending the files [for Rufus Reid Presents Caelan Cardello] to Bob. I mean, this whole thing's gone around in the most incredibly positive circles.

And one day [Patrick] called me and said, “hey Michael, I just got off the phone with Elton.”

FD: Elton who? (laughter).

MF: Elton Schwartz. So that's a whole ‘nother ride that I'm on…

[Patrick] turned me on to this guy, Greg Greenwood, who's a jacket designer. He did a kind of Blue Note look for [Rufus Reid Presents Caelan Cardello.] Then I contacted Stoughton Printing; I know those guys from having spent time with them at the Making Vinyl events. We did the tip-on paper on cardboard jackets with a nice matte finish. I don't know who I would've gone to otherwise, but Patrick helped me with that. So there's so many top people working on this thing.

FD: Aside from the fantastic sound, the pressing is flawless. It's dead quiet and it's perfect.

MF: Yeah. It's very important for a quiet acoustic record like that. I was worried that compared to the acetate, the test pressing would not be [as good], but it's so close to the acetate. Chad's distributing it [via Acoustic Sounds/Analogue Productions]. We pressed 2,000 copies. Music Direct and Elusive Disc are also selling it, and [others].

FD: As of this writing you’re Number One on Chad’s 180-gram vinyl top sellers list.

MF: It's ahead of the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Steely Dan, which is crazy. It's been that way for four weeks almost.

FD: I have to think you might've had doubts, thinking, hey, is this going to do anything? Did I just waste all this money?

MF: We didn't do this for the money, and we don't care if we lose money. This music has to be documented. And we didn't stress over it. I had the money to do it because my website's doing incredibly well now.

FD: You and I, we've paid some dues.

MF: Yeah, we did pay our dues. We did pay our dues.

FD: And it's a great story for people to know: that you should never give up or you should never think that you can’t do anything because you’re…

MF: Old. Never think you're too old. Never think your best days are behind you. Never.

Track Listing:

Side One:

1. Intro: Jim Luce
2. Mean What You Say (Thad Jones)
3. Bolivia (Cedar Walton)
4. Whims of Chambers (Paul Chambers)

Side Two:

1. It's the Nights I Like (Rufus Reid)
2. Stablemates (Benny Golson)
3. If You Could See Me Now (Tadd Dameron)

Album cover photo courtesy of Jacqui Wyatt.

As Frank Doris and John Seetoo noted elsewhere in this issue, AES New York 2023 was a rousing success. The conference always has something for everyone; it’s a trade show with the latest and greatest in pro audio tech, from cables to consoles. There are academic papers for the science-minded, keynote lectures, and presentations, so it’s like a year of audio college wrapped into a few days. Nominally the conference is three days long. At least that’s how many days the trade show runs on the exhibit floor, but there are other events, lectures, and meetings that take the better part of a week.

My favorite aspect of the conference are the lectures and presentations. Ranging from the arcane to the popular, this year the theme was Hip-Hop at 50, and many of the pioneers of the genre were on hand to celebrate the art form, as well as explain how they achieved the sounds they did. During the keynote, Hank Shocklee was interviewed by Prince-Charles Alexander, and it was an exploration of finding what didn’t work properly when played back on audio devices, then exploring those failures. A common theme was that engineers were pursuing clean non-distorted audio, while the musicians, engineers, and producers wanted the opposite – audio with grit, noise, and distortion – so while the audio companies’ R&D was dedicated to improvements, to folks like Shocklee, their mission was to find the flaws in the new gear, while also taking advantage of the new features.

Another session that was eagerly awaited, was Cheryl Pawelski (Omnivore Records) and Michael Graves’ (Mastering Engineer – Osiris Studios) panel, Written in Their Soul: The Story and Restoration of The Stax Songwriter Demos, covering the album of the same name. Pawelski was just nominated for a Grammy for her work on the Stax project. The stories of how poorly the original tapes were handled, including the discovery of some of them being found in a locker covered by mud, with snakes nearby, in the ruins of the Stax building just prior to demolition, showed the passion and dedication that led to the creation of this groundbreaking collection.

Genelec built a surround sound room, available to all attendees, that was always standing room only. Audio luminaries like Morten Lindberg (engineer/producer), George Massenburg (recording engineer), Thomas Lund, Ulrike Schwarz, Jim Anderson, and Jamie Howarth (composer and restoration specialist) were either in attendance or giving presentations. Lindberg’s sessions were jammed, as few engineers or producers have garnered the reputation for immersive audio that his 2L records label have.

Consumer acceptance of immersive audio was a subject on the tip of everyone’s tongue. One of the most practical questions concerned the funding of recordings. What precisely does a label get out of the expense of remastering and remixing audio tracks for immersive audio? This isn’t a question for movie studios, since surround sound has long been part of the commercial and home theater experience, so having a surround mix is a given. However, with the demise of surround sound via DVD-Audio, and the fact that SACD is only present in a small niche market, the question of whether audiences will ultimately embrace immersive audio, whether it be Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality Audio, or some other format, is still open for discussion.

Even at audiophile shows like Capital Audiofest, surround systems are few and far between, with the exception of SVS and a few other companies. Personally, I love surround audio, the love of which began when Mickey Hart sent me some of his DVD-Audio mixes of the Grateful Dead, and his Planet Drum project. Later, Mark Waldrep started to release different mixes of his recordings on his AIX record label for download, and David Chesky’s The Audiophile Society offers different mixes of the recordings in their catalog, including surround versions. Audiophile label TRPTK just released their nine-year anniversary sampler, in surround and stereo as either downloads or SACDs. Chesky Records also pioneered binaural downloads designed for headphone listening. So, high-quality immersive audio is available.

David Chesky (Chesky Records, HDTracks, The Audiophile Society) was in the house to take in the sights and sounds.

In a recent forum, someone posting mentioned that he believed that SACD always sounded better. I don't always agree with this. In theory, SACD or any medium with more actual genuine audio data from the recording process (as opposed to upsampled files from lower-resolution sources in higher-resolution wrappers) should sound better, but I was involved with some record labels at the start of SACD, and found that many folks didn't like playing the SACD versions, due to having to deal with the idiosyncrasies of specific players, or arcane audio settings buried in the player menus. I remember having to tweak almost every setting in early universal (disc) players so that the bass management was handled properly, or else things could sound pretty lousy. Years later, as universal players improved and features became standardized, SACDs seemed to be decoded properly without tweaking, so they started to shine. It was a great lesson in the gap between technology and usability. But, by then SACD and DVD-A were essentially gone.

For example, I remember interviewing Steve Rosenthal, the master engineer and wizard of the Magic Shop NY, after he had completed a big Rolling Stones remastering project for ABKCO Music and Records, and I asked about his enthusiasm for the sound quality of the SACD versions. While I was preparing for the interview, listening to a stack of discs from ABKCO, I found that the normal CD sides sounded better to me. Why? I hadn’t adjusted the bass management on my Pioneer universal disc player. Once I did, they sounded great. But in talking to friends who worked at Tower Records, Borders, and elsewhere, it turns out that few consumers took advantage of the SACD versions of those releases.

When I think of why DVD-A and SACD mostly failed in the marketplace, it was either because a) consumers thought CDs were great; b) didn't want to pay a price increase; or c) were put off by perceived hassles or complications. 

A friend’s wife works for Elon Musk, and they own a couple of Teslas. His argument for owning a Tesla isn't about the cars themselves, which he thought were fine, but expensive to repair and maintain. His argument is that the reason to buy a Tesla isn't the car, but the charging network. According to him, Musk plowed just about every dime the company made in the early years into expanding the charging network, reasoning that if you couldn't charge or "fill up" the battery as easily as pulling up to a gas station, then many folks would just say the hell with it, I'm getting a normal car. Now, there are thousands of Tesla charging stations throughout the globe, especially in major cities. It's ironic since the company’s demographic research shows that most owners have their own homes, and almost every owner charges at home. But still, it was ease of use that pioneered Tesla’s acceptance.

As I’ve noted in previous articles, metadata, metadata, and more metadata is the key to modern life in the computer age, and audio is certainly no exception. I attended a presentation by IMES (Iron Mountain Entertainment Services), which discussed the fact that one of their biggest challenges for managing digital assets is dealing with metadata, that unseen yet critical information that provides the facts about a digital file.

A team from IMES and Universal Music Group presented a prototype scanning kiosk, operated by two people, known as the Automated Media Image Capture System (AMICS). The AMICS helps to take in all the physical information on the outside of a box of recording tape, including handwritten notes, and enables it to be quickly scanned in high resolution to accompany the actual audio recording itself as metadata, speeding up the archiving process. One example noted that the archiving process could be reduced from three months to two weeks. Universal has enormous holdings at Iron Mountain, so any system that speeds up this kind of data acquisition is a huge step forward. For archivists or librarians, the outside of a tape box can provide invaluable information, so preserving that, and including it in the record for each asset is enormously useful. AMICS seemed to be a hit, and other organizations have ordered the system.

A team from IMES offers a seminar on using metadata to properly tag files for future use. On the panel is Bob Koszela, Meg Travis and Steve Hollencamp from IMES, and Nick Allen of Universal Music Group.

AES held a Women in the Mix event, and it was packed. Women have long played a significant and pioneering role in audio production, but often in a difficult working environment, so celebrating their accomplishments was wonderful to witness, and I hope this becomes a regular event.

If, as an audiophile, you are wondering if attending a pro audio show like AES is for you, I think the answer would be yes. To hear the stories of how some of your favorite recordings were made is a treat. The show also emphasizes the human element of the talent and hard work by all involved. If you have spent time in audiophile forums and read comments about recordings that strain credulity, it’s wonderful to actually hear the facts first-hand as opposed to reading fiction and conjecture. Also, and this can’t be stressed enough, AES is fully committed to supporting students, educators, and educational institutions. As such, AES offers a welcoming crowd, people are in a great mood, and the sessions are fantastic, candid, and without pretentions. At the end of one of the show days, we were invited to the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) mixer, and it further reminded us that audio has long been a mixing pot, with people of all varieties, old and young, all contributing to the pro audio industry and its creative endeavors.

When I was teaching photo history, I’d often reference the music and technology of the time as it correlated to the photographic technology of the day. I’m probably the only faculty member who played “Soliloquy” from Carousel to illustrate the role the tintype played in the culture of the time. AES has always had a focus on restoration and archiving, and a push for new technological solutions. Obviously as a photo historian, this is right up my alley, and somehow dovetails perfectly into the show’s celebration of hip-hop at 50. What was once new becomes history, and needs to be preserved.

Here are more photos from AES.

Bob Koszela, Meg Travis and Steve Hollencamp (Iron Mountain Entertainment Services – IMES), and Nick Allen (Universal Music Group), after the Iron Mountain Entertainment Services presentation on their new AMICS Automated Media Image Capture System, during which they discussed the metadata challenges of creating a robust digital asset plan utilizing new technology to greatly speed up information acquisition. It’s not enough to have a digital copy of an audio tape, it’s important that all the information, not only the music, but the boxes, packaging, and tape itself be included in the database. The new AMICS promises to do just that in far faster than before.

Michael Romanowski (Coast Mastering) and Andrew Scheps (Tonequake Records) were just a couple of the notables in attendance. Scheps and Romanowski also lectured in the Neumann Microphones room.

Here are engineers Elliott Senatov, and Lenise Bent of Soundflo Productions.

Copper author/photographer Harris Fogel tries on a Polaroid AES SX-70 frame.

A group photo of some of the engineers and producers at the AES Women In The Mix celebration. From left to right: Jeanne Montalvo Lucar (AES convention co-chair, far left), Angie Teo (advisory council member of the Producers and Engineers Wing of The Recording Academy/GRAMMY Awards), Ebonie Smith (Gender Amplified, in red), Maureen Droney, (vice president, Producers and Engineering Wing, at rear in grey jacket), Falu Shah (GRAMMY Award-winning songwriter, in front), Kenya Autie (El Cerrito Records, with green lanyard), Jessica Thompson (Jessica Thompson Audio, in rear with red sweater), Lenise Bent (audio engineer, producer and educator, with turquoise shirt), and Lucy Kalantari (Lucy Kalantari and the Jazz Cats, on far right).

Frank Wells (audio industry and marketing content director), Bob Moses (BRINC Drones), and Robert Clyne (Clyne Media) take time to relax during a hectic schedule.

The annual NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) conference was right next door to AES, and data storage is always an area of interest. Here's the Western Digital team.

Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia and New York were legendary, both led by the late Joe Tarsia. Here are Arthur Stoppe (Mountain Wind Media), Jim Gallagher, Jay Mark and Dirk Devlin (Sigma Sound engineers), and Toby Seay (Drexel University) after concluding their panel, “Joe Tarsia Remembered: Sigma Sound Studios and the Philly Sound.”

Two attendees, Alejandra Trabanco and Thomas, have the pleasure of talking with famed musician and producer William S. “Spaceman” Patterson.

Morten Lindberg and Christer-André Cederberg of 2L The Nordic Sound Records were finally able to relax, with another AES wrapped up and finished. Lindberg delivered presentations on immersive audio, served on the panel exploring the history of Telarc Records, and was just nominated for a slew of GRAMMYS.

Luminaries abound at AES! Here are Robert Lee (from the Ivorytown Playhouse theater), Dylan Utz (disc transfer engineer), and Jamie Howarth of restoration specialists Plangent Processes.

The Genelec room hosted a series of lectures, and this one on immersive audio by engineers Ulrike Schwarz and Jim Anderson was packed.

Focusrite is a respected brand among audio engineers and musicians, for good reasons. Here, Dan Hughley and Trevor La Due offered some Halloween licorice to entice the author into a making a portrait of them.

The keynote lecture was given by Prince-Charles Alexander, interviewing Hank Shocklee on the subject of hip-hop at 50 to a packed audience.

Two of the nicest guys in the room: hit-making engineer Frank Filipetti (Foreigner, the Bangles, George Michael, Frank Zappa and many others), and John Krivit, past president of the Audio Engineering Society).

Morten Lindberg of 2L records gives a talk on immersive audio in the Genelec room.

Recording engineer Chuck Ainlay (METAlliance) and Mike Franklin of headset maker Clear-Com enjoying themselves.

Panel members for the “Everything You Hear is True – The Telarc Legacy” session: Scott Burgess (Aspen Music Festival and school), Susan Schmidt Horning (St. John’s University), Robert Friedlich (Library of Congress), and Morten Lindberg (2L).

The next generation: an eager group of students at AES 2023.

Engineer Lenise Bent and AES president-elect Leslie Gaston Bird attend the “Barbie Goes to AES” panel.

Anders Nyman and Thomas Lund of Genelec meet with George Massenburg, associate professor of sound recording at Massenburg Design Works).

The DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) Mixer was held at Manhattan's Houndstooth Pub, and a great time was had by all. Here's Cecilia Wu (University of Colorado, Denver), Rebekah Wilson (founder and CEO of Source Elements and sponsor of the event), and Mary Mazurkek (University of Lethbridge). Cecilia and Mary are co-chairs of the AES DEI Committee.

Dave Malekpour threw a party at Quad Recording Studios to celebrate 25 years of Augspurger studio monitors. Here Dave is with recording artist Abdullah White aka FactRap Efrain Quiles (producer/artist), and Mick Oakleaf (a drummer who also manages Dbm Pro Audio Services in Brooklyn).

Hank Shocklee (Public Enemy, the Bomb Squad, producer) and Jimmy "The Senator" Douglass, hip-hop pioneers!

Musician, actor, activist, lawyer and salsa legend Rubén Blades attended the tribute to Jon Fausty, famed producer and engineer for Fania Records.

The “Hip-Hop at 50: Innovating Techniques Across Decades” session featured Angela Piva (audio/mix engineer and producer), Hank Shocklee, Prince-Charles Alexander, Jaclyn “Jackie Boom” Sanchez (audio engineer), and engineer/producer Paul “Willie Green” Womack.

Digital audio and video involves one thing above almost all else, and that’s storage. Seagate is one of the leaders in the field, and their booth over on the NAB side of the show was full of solutions. Mark Anderson, Carly Nelson, Jonathan Bauder, George Becker, and Shawn Chu were at the ready to answer user questions.

Chuck Ainlay and Ebonie Smith (Gender Amplified) at the Women in the Mix celebration at AES 2023.

Josh Rogosin is the host of the popular NPR show, Tiny Desk Concerts. The room was packed with fans.

Header image: Since they're total gearheads, Copper's John Seetoo, Harris Fogel, and Frank Doris always enjoy going to shows like AES.

Photos courtesy of Harris Fogel.

Our original intention was to revise and update the article and interview Ray Chelstowski did previously, to make it current for Deko’s activities in 2023. That updated article appeared in Issue 200. However, in the process, I wound up talking to Deko’s Charlie Calv and Bruce Pucciarello at length, about a variety of topics we thought would be interesting to readers. Here then is Part Two of Copper’s interview series with Deko Entertainment.

As Ray noted in Issue 200, “Deko was launched with the intent of providing a home to legacy rock artists who were continuing to make great music but couldn’t capture the attention of any major label. These are artists that they felt continue to have a vision and a story to tell.

Partners Bruce Pucciarello and Charlie Calv have focused on traditional artist development and a more evolved approach to marketing and promotion, helping Deko quickly grow into an enterprise that very well might be the model for music moving forward.”

Bruce Pucciarello: I think so far we've been true to what we said about trying to really revolutionize the industry. We keep attracting more and more talented partners and it's an important part of the adventure.  Artists should be able to make a living. Today, many legacy artists are told to be happy with very little, when 20 years ago they were packing stadiums night after night and moving a reasonable amount of physical product. Somewhere in between there's a successful business model we need to define.

Frank Doris: What really struck me was the statistic you brought up that indicates that rock music is the strongest-growing category.  You'd think it would be hip-hop or country.

BP: Just using 2022 numbers from the US Census Bureau, 48 percent of the US population is over 40 years old.  The over 40s are the largest music buying group and their overwhelming choice of music is classic rock according the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) Consumer Profile 2023. Because of that, as an individual genre, rock drives tremendous revenue across all platforms. Add to that a growing group of brilliantly talented young rock players: a good example might be Deko’s Dino Jelusick and his band Jelusick, and a core group of young, dedicated rock fans. Many in this group of younger people enjoy physical products – vinyl, specifically.

FD: I noticed you have the new Black Box record player on your website.

Charlie Calv: It's something we're going to try to do to introduce people to vinyl or give 'em their starter vinyl collection. I think for the holidays we might do a bundle with something like three albums plus the turntable for 99 bucks, or just price the turntable at $59.99, so it is affordable and helps folks restart their vinyl collection.

Charlie Calv.

FD: You’re doing some product releases that go outside the realm of releasing just music or albums by artists.

CC: We have a multimedia show that Bruce and I created called Maze Landing based on three songs I wrote with Dave Anderson (Atlanta Rhythm Section, Brother Cane) that are interwoven with videos, narrations, and an original Maze Landing comic book. Then, we have an Imaginos comic book tied to the Reimaginos album by former Blue Öyster Cult founding member Albert Bouchard. As you read the story of Imaginos, you'll come to QR codes that take you to the songs from the album reflecting that part of the story.

The cover of the upcoming Imaginos comic book. Courtesy of Deko Entertainment.

FD: A lot of the artists on your roster are well-loved, from Tiffany to Albert and Joe Bouchard to Kansas vocalist John Elefante.

CC: They are well-loved, and we just need to let folks know that they are still making new music, and good new music. A lot of these artists have been self-releasing, which anyone can do these days; you don’t necessarily need a record company. What you need is a team. That’s what we are here for, to let them be creative and find new delivery systems for their music. We’re just trying to find different ways to help musicians.

FD: People think that musicians are these mystical, untouchable rock stars. But unless you’re Taylor Swift, the economic reality is that it can be tough to get people to buy your records and come to your shows.

BP: It’s constant work. It is a battle. We joke about it, but the audience for legacy artists is, quite literally, dying every day. COVID influenced how many and how often people come out of their houses. As we see tours getting smaller and smaller, what's left?  That's why we are trying to be technologically and artistically more creative than the typical indie label.

FD: Forgive my ignorance, but has anything like this interactive comic book been done before?

CC: Not the way we’re doing it. We are developing our own original technologies to give our artists an advantage. Bands can even take that comic book and use it in the live show, where the images will appear as part of the stage presentation. Imagine what you can do with something like the Sphere in Las Vegas.

BP: We are lucky we get to chat with Lee Abrams regularly, and he is the ultimate media guru.  Are you familiar with him?

FD: The name rings a bell, but I can’t place him.

BP: He was the dude that introduced album-oriented rock to FM radio.

FD: Right. The programmer.

CC: And then he was the very first programming guide for XM Radio that got XM way out ahead of Sirius at first. Quite a bit of what we do is inspired in conversations we have with Lee. 

FD: You noted that the biggest group with buying power is older people.

BP: Charlie and I did a boatload of research; it was the fire that lit a match, made us really look at the music industry holistically and note: well, the numbers are there, but is anybody really paying attention to 'em? It was that simple. Lee kind of stoked that, right? He said to go and figure it out.

FD: On maybe a related note, I wonder if it's going to get to the point where bands are like baseball teams, where you will have no original members but the band will just keep going on.

BP: It's the brand. When you build a strong brand and the original guy moves on, his kid or step kid or a longtime loyal employee, his wife, if they have an acumen for business and they know what they're doing, and they've paid attention to the guy who built it…they’re inheriting the original artist’s environment. Then they’re going to be able to take it to the next level as a business. Most legacy bands do a wonderful job of representing how strong the core work is and a strong brand will design new products while continuing to represent the strongest products from the brand’s past.  If you run a business, and it doesn't prosper when you leave, you probably didn't do a good job. 

FD: Pop music has shifted from being disposable to something classic. Everybody seems to be interested reissuing anything and everything. Maybe it can go on forever.

CC: Not that the fans don't care, but people like the music, and if someone doesn't keep it going, then it's not there for anyone to enjoy anymore in a live atmosphere. I went out a couple of weeks ago with the Sweet and there's nobody original left in that band, but people like [songs like] “Fox on the Run” and “Love Is Like Oxygen.” And they're passionate about keeping that legacy alive for the guys that aren't here anymore.

BP: Charlie is right on point. As original band members move on, they can root for what they leave behind either to fail or to continue successfully. To me, if I have pride in my work, I root for those that come after me to succeed because then my work will live on through others. Isn’t that the most accomplished kind of success?

FD: There’s always been the dichotomy between there's the “artist’ and the “music business.” You get used to the fact that it's a business, but why can't the two coexist, especially in today’s world?

CC: I think they can now. That's kind of what I hope we bring to the table.

FD: You guys are clearly fans. You're coming from this from an enthusiasm for the music.

BP: We're passionate about it and we want to help the artists. We don't need to take advantage of the artists. We want to find success together. A lot of the artists are amazed that they actually get paid when the record comes out.

FD: They should be. That really irritates me as a musician. As a magazine editor, my whole feeling is to promote the enjoyment and the knowledge of music and of high-end audio. If people knew about this stuff, they would like it. Who wouldn't? But artists have been so devalued, even way before streaming. I think the artists provide a more valuable service to society than almost anybody. If you need a neurosurgeon to operate on your brain, yeah, that's pretty high-value. But society doesn't value music and art it the way it should.

BP: I agree with everything you said. What the music industry needs to do is mix it up. Deko’s mantra is, “Art Has Value.” Music is one small picture in a world that consumes big pictures. Everything's multimedia oriented. So unlike other record companies that are “record companies,” we decided to be purveyors of many types of art, with music being the common theme. If somebody writes a book, paints a picture, or whatever it is, if the music is a part of it, we bring our resources to help create a bigger presentation. That'll be what our upcoming Maze Landing project will be like and Albert’s Imaginos project is already.

CC: We produce stuff, we get involved. Bruce and I both write music and play multiple instruments, and we have a ton of connections, so when we're needed, we help.  A lot of the artists that are with us want to continue to do projects other than just music with us. We've never picked up the phone to recruit artists. In four years, we have an amazing roster built through referrals and a dedication to honoring our commitments. 

FD: I like the fact that you're not a reissue label per se. You guys are working with legacy acts, but the material is new.

CC: We dabble a bit in the reissue thing if it makes sense to us. We did the band Union. And to be honest, sometimes it’s to compensate the artist. They don’t own those records, but we can license and reissue them. They technically don't even have the rights to say anything about it, but we try to involve them in it. We'll be doing the reissues for the band Trapeze, and we got original member Glenn Hughes involved. We wanted to make sure he was compensated and that we felt good about what we were doing.

FD: What about working with difficult personalities? I think we've all worked with divas in our time, and I don’t want to work with divas anymore.

CC: We’ve been really lucky with that. And like I said, our relationships stick and grow. We’re on our third record with Tiffany. We just had Kasim Sulton out to Deko for a day. He has the longest, most storied resume. He’s always been in the right place at the right time – Todd Rundgren and Utopia, Meatloaf (Bat Out of Hell), Joan Jett, Blue Öyster Cult, Hall and Oates, Cyndi Lauper – and [he’s] a super stand-up guy. I am fond of our artists, professionally and personally.

Juno award winner Sass Jordan. Courtesy of Deko Entertainment.

BP: I get why some artists get upset and ornery. They know that they have an audience, but the people who control their art ignore it. Legacy artists are told rock is financially dead, but then the big entertainment companies use rock songs in almost every f*cking movie and commercial they make. Crumbs trickle down. It makes me angry. And doubling back to touring and the conditions and restrictions artists endure just to be able to perform can be not only unfair but demeaning!

CC: I don't know that anybody wants to admit it, but the audiences are getting smaller – where in the past, you knew somebody would sell 400 seats, it’s 300 now.

FD: A lot of older people simply don’t want to or can’t go out anymore.

BP: Look at us Zooming now. COVID taught a lot of folks to do more things on a screen. 

FD: I live on Long Island and the local scene took a hit, which it still has not recovered from. So how do you cut through the clutter? To me, it's always been about having a good song, good music.

CC: A lot of artists have been self-releasing for years, which is great. You don't really need a record label anymore, but what you do need is a team of people that are going to work with you. Joe Bouchard of Blue Öyster Cult, Blue Coupe, and others, put out a bunch of records, but they never did any PR or anything. When we first started announcing new releases for Joe, even some of the radio folks and the magazine folks were like, we thought these guys were actually dead. So for us, it's kind of like reinvigorating those fans and letting people know, hey, these folks are still around. They're still making good music and this is why you should go listen to them.

BP: Four years back, undertaking the challenge to master a new part of the music industry, we realized we had so much to learn. But then again, we hate broken stuff, and we really detest clutter, so in an industry that is dying for change, what choice do we have?

FD: Sometimes if you don't know that you're not supposed to or “can’t” do something, or nobody's told you that you can't do it, then you just do it.

BP: Charlie and I have been friends for 40 years, and by nature we're disruptors. We try to be nice people, but we're disruptors. You can't tell us what to do. We must figure it out because if something's not working, we're not going to do what everybody else is doing. And that's how we approach Deko. It is trying to solve the fact that the industry isn't the way it was 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years, five years ago. Can't do those same things. They don't work anymore.

CC: And to Bruce's point about the cannibalization in the music industry, it's like everyone's making money off each other. The guy who did the album cover for $25,000 20 years ago is still trying to get $25,000 to do an album cover, and he's taking advantage of the artist and then the booking agency is taking advantage of the artist, and this one's trying to make money from that one…

BP: …instead of everyone working together and understanding we need more customers. Artists might be surviving by touring, but as tours get smaller, more expensive, and harder to book, what's left? That's going to be a hell of a conversation.

FD: Maybe nobody knows the answer yet. I don't.

BP: Maybe it's going to involve reincorporating music into new packaging systems and delivering it differently. People still make albums based on a format that was developed a hundred years ago. We still make 10 songs that are 44 minutes or whatever. Why do you even need to make an album in that format anymore? The physical limitations are gone.

CC: For us obviously, if people want to just release singles digitally, it's very hard to spend money on promotion because you can't make any money on the digital release. But if you can do a nice lead-up, and you still got something to sell them in the end – some kind of physical thing that customers can purchase or be part of – that's what we're trying to do. We'd rather do three songs, three videos, a story, and a comic book, all attached to a release, and then deliver a multimedia presentation to be able to capture people’s multiple senses, because it’s hard to get people to just listen to an album anymore.

FD: Why not do those things? The technology is here.

BP: I am a computer nerd. I've always been well invested in computers, and I love technology as it comes out. I always used to say, it's only a matter of time, and I want to be the first. If they want to put a chip directly in my head so I don't have to type, and I could just think it…

FD: Maybe it’s coming to that.

BP: Then Deko will be the first to roll it out, connected to a song of course!

www.mazelanding.com

Header image: Kasim Sulton, courtesy of Deko Entertainment.

Octave Records celebrates the holidays with The Spirit of Christmas by internationally-renowned guitarist Alfredo Muro, who brings a heartfelt intimacy and virtuoso performances to a wide range of seasonal favorites. The album is recorded in extraordinary sound, using Octave Records’ exclusive Pure DSD high-resolution audio process.

Alfredo Muro is a concert guitarist, composer, arranger, and improviser. He’s been described as a Latin guitar virtuoso, yet his styles and tastes are far more wide-ranging, from the classical repertoire to folk, jazz, Brazilian and more. He noted, “The idea of the program presented on The Spirit of Christmas was to choose traditional Christmas themes, combined with Christmas music popular in Spain and South America. Many of those songs are connected to my heart – they are part of my childhood in Latin America.”

The selections range from holiday standards like “Silent Night,” “The Christmas Song” and “White Christmas” to spiritual works such as “Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude” (“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”) and “Ave Maria,” and songs that are deeply personal to Muro including “Preludio de Adiós” and “El Noi de la Mare.” Muro’s Paco Santiago Marin classical guitar has a deeply rich tone with a wide color palette and superb dynamic nuances, all captured in remarkable fidelity. On “Villancico de Navidad,” Alfredo is joined by guitarists Robert Chirico, Adam Buer and Felicity Muench and bassist Allen Bossard, to close The Spirit of Christmas on a beautiful and graceful note.

The album, available on disc or via download, was recorded, mixed and produced by Paul McGowan at Octave Records’ studio, with assistance from Jessica Carson, Alfredo Muro, and Terri McGowan. It was mastered by Gus Skinas. The Spirit of Christmas feature Octave’s premium gold disc formulation, and the disc is playable on any SACD, CD, DVD, or Blu-ray player. It also has a high-resolution DSD layer that is accessible by using any SACD player or a PS Audio SACD transport. In addition, the master DSD and PCM files are available for purchase and download, including DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64, and DSDDirect Mastered 352.8 kHz/24-bit, 176.2 kHz/24-bit, 88.2 kHz/24-bit, and 44.1 kHz/24-bit PCM. (SRP: $19 – $39, depending on format.)

I talked with Alfredo Muro about the making of The Spirit of Christmas and his approach to guitar playing and music.

Courtesy of Alfredo Muro.

Frank Doris: Your guitar has such a warm, rich tone. I see from your website that it’s a Paco Santiago Marin. Can you tell us something about the instrument

Alfredo Muro: Paco Santiago Marin's guitars are the perfect complement to what I demand from a concert guitar.

His guitars have already achieved well-deserved worldwide prestige for their high sound quality, great projection, infinite sustain and clear, clean and crystalline sound.

In his guitars the priority is the timbre richness, and its colors, which greatly favor the guitarist who likes dynamics, and at the same time that they are lyrical and have a powerful sound.

He is rightly considered among the best luthiers in the world.

FD: How did you choose the repertoire for The Spirit of Christmas? Are there songs that have a deep personal meaning for you?

AM: The idea of the program presented on The Spirit of Christmas was to choose traditional Christmas themes, combined with Christmas themes popular in Spain and South America. Many of those songs are connected to my heart; they are part of my childhood in Latin America.

FD: How do you approach learning and performing a new piece?

AM: It is a very good question. When one is faced with a new piece, whether classical, baroque, romantic or contemporary, I always like to explore the time and place of each piece to understand the historical circumstances and times of the composer. Many times, the title of a song can say everything, and if there is no story behind the piece, one must be created, in order to give a meaning to what one is trying to express with the instrument.

FD: Are there elements of improvisation or spontaneity in the performances on the album, or are you working from written arrangements?

AM: With the exception of a couple of songs, the other songs always carry my own free and spontaneous stamp. In general, I never play the same thing the same way, and the one who can attest to that is my wife, who knows my repertoire from A to Z. She always notices how much I make changes and improvise.

FD: I like the fact that your arrangements sound very personal, with your own twists on some of them. Some of the chords and chord melodies, for example, in “The Christmas Song,” are more like jazz than classical voicings. Can you comment on that?

AM: I think that the work of the arranger is like that of the decorator. The architect designs the base and the structure and as a "decorator," one tries to fill the structure of the theme with colors and chromaticism.

There is always in my playing a base in classical technique, but with jazz connotations. In other words, my technique is classical but my mind is jazzy.

FD: How did you get started on playing the guitar, and why did you choose guitar as an instrument?

AM: In many Latin American homes there is always a guitar hanging on the wall, since this Hispanic Moorish instrument is the national instrument in many countries.

I come from a very artistic and musical family and there was always a guitar that animated the gatherings at home.

I chose the guitar as my instrument because it is a very versatile and intimate instrument, which despite being a labyrinth of limitations has an incredible polyphonic capacity. Almost everything can be played on the guitar.

FD: You are not strictly a “classical” or “bossa nova” or “Latin” or any other type of guitarist. How did you come to be influenced by so many styles?

AM: Since I was a child, I have always been fascinated by the musical diversity that exists in the world, from a Paraguayan guarania, a waltz from my country Peru, the Argentine tango, the Venezuelan joropo, the bossa nova, samba and choro, the Chilean cueca, the Rio de la Plata milonga, the music of the Andes, Spanish music, jazz, even baroque music. I believe the influence comes from the fact that all kinds of music were listened to and sung at home.

FD: Who are some of your musical influences? They don’t necessarily have to be guitarists.

AM: My reference in music is Johann Sebastian Bach. In my personal opinion he is the most influential musician of all time. We are still learning from him. I also love Debussy and Villa-Lobos, and among guitarists, Agustin Barrios, Baden Powell, Julian Bream and John Williams.

FD: Who are some of the guitarists performing today who you like?

AM: There are many guitarists and talents today. I love the work of Ricardo Gallén, Alvaro Pierri and Roberto Aussel.

FD: How did you get involved with the people at Octave Records? And I have to ask everyone this – what was it like to hear your music recorded and played back with such good sound quality?

AM: I had the pleasure of meeting Jessica Carson some time ago and she offered me this possibility of recording with Octave Records. It was definitely a unique and nice sonic experience! Their sound equipment is super-sophisticated.

FD: You collaborate with two other guitarists and a bassist on the album’s finale, “Villancico de Navidad.” How did you come to know them and get them to play on this track?

AM: I have the pleasure of having very good friends and excellent musicians such as Rob Chirico, Felicity Muench and Adam Buer, and having Allen Bossard on double bass. They loved the idea of participating in the recording of “Villancico de Navidad.”

FD: I see you accept students. What advice would you give to a young person who wants to study guitar?

AM: Yes, I love teaching, it is another of my passions besides presenting concerts. I always tell my students that it is very important to have passion for what you do; work, discipline and resolution. In music, 20 percent is talent and 80 percent is work, or in other words: 20 percent is inspiration, 80 percent is perspiration!

Thank you for the opportunity and such a nice interview!

Octave Records warmly invites everyone to celebrate the holiday spirit with Charlie Brown Goes to The Nutcracker by the Ron LeGault quintet. The band puts a jazz spin on the beloved Charlie Brown soundtrack music and the holiday classic The Nutcracker, recorded with extraordinary sound using Octave Records’ exclusive Pure DSD high-resolution audio process.

Pianist Ron LeGault has been performing his Charlie Brown Goes to The Nutcracker show to packed audiences at the St Julien Hotel in Boulder, Colorado for more than 10 years. Recorded live in the studio, the album captures the confident yet relaxed interplay that only comes from years of playing together, with Ron joined by Andrew Vogt (tenor sax, baritone sax, clarinet, flute), Curtis Fox (trombone), Dave Weinand (bass) and Andreas Schmid (drums). The quintet performs a host of Charlie Brown tunes like the familiar “Linus and Lucy,” the “Charlie Brown Theme,” “Christmas is Coming,” and others, along with jazz-laced versions of pieces from The Nutcracker including the iconic holiday classic “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” Added to the mix, the quintet plays a wry, swinging take on “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”

The album was recorded, mixed and produced by Paul McGowan, with assistance from Jessica Carson and Ron LeGault, who did all of the album’s arrangements. It was mastered by Gus Skinas. Charlie Brown Goes to The Nutcracker features Octave’s premium gold disc formulation, and the discs are playable on any SACD, CD, DVD, or Blu-ray player. It also has a high-resolution DSD layer that is accessible by using any SACD player or a PS Audio SACD transport. In addition, the master DSD and PCM files are available for purchase and download, including DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64, and DSDDirect Mastered 352.8 kHz/24-bit, 176.2 kHz/24-bit, 88.2 kHz/24-bit, and 44.1 kHz/24-bit PCM. (SRP: $19 – $39, depending on format.)

I talked with Ron about the album, the band, and his musical experiences.

Frank Doris: Charlie Brown Goes to the Nutcracker just has a fun feel to it; you're doing this music that's so well-loved. What gave you the idea to do it? I noted that you've been doing this set at the St Julien Hotel in Boulder for 10 years.

Ron LeGault: It's a four-star hotel. It has music five nights a week; jazz, salsa, Latin and rock. It's a really good place.

Ron LeGault. Photo by Dan Kozlowski.

FD: This music is ingrained in American culture and it brings back great memories.

RL: We have a lot of kids that come to the shows now who know the Charlie Brown movie (A Charlie Brown Christmas). How old is that? 30, 40 years old…

FD: Let me check…1965!

I love the arrangements, and the fact that you’re putting your own spin on it, and even quoting from other songs. What inspired you to do this?

RL: I was working in this big band. The leader of the band, Don Elwood, had a Christmas book (a book of sheet music arrangements) and he was trying to get some work, and he goes to this coffee shop in Fort Collins that has a stage and live music. He says to the guy, “we have this big band and a Christmas show.” And the guy says, “nah, nah, I don't think a big band will go over in here. But you know, I always wanted to do a Charlie Brown Christmas show.” So Don says, “yeah, we can do that.”

And he calls me on the phone and says, “Hey, can we do this?”

FD: That sounds about right. (laughter)

RL: I said, “sure, of course we can!” So I think, OK, well, I've been playing piano for long enough to have some stuff like that. I am looking at my Christmas music, and I also have the scores to all of the Duke Ellington tunes on his The Nutcracker Suite album. So I said, “wait a minute, maybe I could put this together.”

The whole idea was two-fold. One is that everybody knows the Charlie Brown stuff and they like to hear it, but it is not new. It's not going to hold your attention, so you kind of need a hook. And so, this gave me the chance to put some [musical] hooks in there. The other thing is that I needed to make it interesting enough for the guys in the band.

FD: Is this your regular band?

RL: I've had this quintet for about 12 years now and of the guys on the record, all of them have been with me at least five years.

FD: The album sounds like it's a band that's been together for a while. It has kind of a looseness to it. Not saying you guys aren't tight, but it has kind of a relaxed feel. I would've guessed that you guys didn't just get together and start reading off the music that day or something.

RL: I have a regular monthly gig at the St Julien. I also do a weekly gig in Denver. So yeah, we get a chance to play together a lot.

FD: When did you start playing, and why piano and not trumpet or something else?

RL: When I was born, my mother bought a piano, because she played piano. When I got into third grade, I was going to Catholic school and one of the nuns said she was going to start teaching piano. My mother [suggested I] take lessons. When I got in the eighth grade, I became substitute organist in the church, playing a pipe organ.

I developed an interest in jazz through my dad. He was a great jazz fan, and he had this great collection of 78s. He knew 'em all, the Dorseys and Jimmy Lunceford and Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington and all those.

I got into high school and there was a senior who could play jazz. I had been studying classical to that point. So, I started studying with this teacher and he developed me into a jazz player. Then I went to college to become an English teacher, but I didn't do that. I studied piano while I was in college. I went to graduate school for accounting, went into business, and was in business until I retired, but I never gave up playing. And in a lot of those years, I had my own groups. I even had my own 16-piece big band for a while outside of Philly.

While I was never a full-time musician per se, I played enough and I never gave it up.

FD: I never really made a living out of it either, although I managed to pay a large portion of my college expenses by playing in a band. But I went to a state school and man, tuition was so cheap back then.

RL: Frank, I did the same thing. I went to a state school, and I used to teach piano and play gigs, and I paid my way through college.

FD: Do you arrange all this stuff? Or is it kind of like half-arranged, and for the rest of the album you do whatever.

RL: No, it's all arranged. Everything is written out. I make modifications [to the Charlie Brown show music] every year, and [make sure the guys can read it]. One of the reasons is that I have to have subs from time to time because my gig is not the highest-paying gig, and the guys in the band can get some monster paying gigs, and I have to be able to let 'em go to do that. So I have to have subs [from time to time], and I have to be able to have a sub just come in and run [the music] down with me for an hour and then not have a problem and maintain the integrity of the show.

FD: How did you meet the people at Octave Records and wind up doing this album?

RL: Paul (McGowan) came up and said he’d seen us a couple of times at St. Julien on one of our regular gigs, and said, “hey, I'd like to record you guys.” And we just said, “yeah, okay.” Didn't pay much attention to it and didn't realize he was [owner of] a label. Right. Typical musician sh*t.

FD: Yeah, somebody comes up to you and says, “I can make you guys big. Just hook up with me and I'll make you stars…”

RL: That was two or three years ago. The guys in the band were saying, “we’ve got to record this because it's just too good.” We made some plans for recording, and then COVID hit. Then we came out of COVID and I figured I would do it this year. The trombone player says, “I've been talking to Octave Records about sound equipment, and they have a recording studio. Why don't we get down and see 'em together?” I went in there to go to Paul's studio, figuring I'm going to hire the studio and hire the musicians and do what you do to make your own record. And the conversation turned around the other way. Paul wanted us to be on the label. I agreed.

FD: It’s a different business model. It's very much in favor of the musicians and not the usual kind of thing.

RL: Well, I know the usual kind of thing. I was the CFO of Polydor Records in New York.

FD: No kidding.

RL: I was [also] the operations manager for East Coast distribution for Warner Brothers for a while.

FD: I should interview you sometime about that. [Ron and I made plans to do that in the future.]

RL: I was there when the ECM label came out.

I got to meet Paul and he [asked when I could] go in the studio, and I said, “I can commit anytime because this band doesn't have to rehearse. We've been doing this for so long.” So (Octave Records’) Jessica (Carson) says, “how many days do you think you're going to need?” I said, “two sessions.” She said, “you can't do it in two sessions!” Well, we did it in two sessions.

FD: What was it like to listen to your music played back in such sound quality?

RL: It's incredible. It's like live music, right there.

FD: What piano players or musicians were your biggest influences, and who do you like today?

RL: Well, my biggest influence was Oscar Peterson. And in fact, I've spent the last 25 years trying to get rid of my Oscar Peterson licks.

FD: Just play half the notes!

RL: Then later on it was Bud Powell and Bill Evans.

FD: I'm kind of torn between Evans and Monk. I can't pick either one. I'd have to go to a desert island with both.

RL: I wouldn't want to choose, but Monk wasn't an influence [on my] playing.

FD: He's so individualistic. Bill Evans makes it sound so easy and flowing, whereas Monk is from another planet. What about new piano players on the scene?

RL: Vijay Iyer. Tamir Hendelman, although Tamir, he's more in the Oscar school. He's a fabulous piano player. There's a guy from Poland that I've been listening to, Marcin Wasilewski. And a piano player in Paris, Manuel Rocheman. These guys are coming out of the modern sound that comes out of Bill Evans, and are in the unstructured environment that Miles Davis introduced. Calling it modal is a wrong tag, because modal conjures up a sound, but it's like it's free [jazz], but it's not free. And it's structured, but it's not structured, and it’s really good stuff.

FD: Do you have any favorite tracks on the Charlie Brown Goes to the Nutcracker album?

RL: “Linus and Lucy.” That's our favorite. We play that every gig.

FD: When you did the arrangements, did you think in terms of having certain instruments in certain solo spots?

RL: Oh yes, absolutely. I want to make sure that everybody has a chance to solo, and there's not too much of any one guy. They're jazz musicians. You give a guy a chance, and next thing you know, the guy wants to solo on everything!

FD: And you don't even have a guitar player in the band!

RL: I don't. Don't have one of those worst offenders!

FD: I love the fact that you have a trombone. That's just such a classic jazz sound that you don't hear as much of as I'd like these days. Even in jazz, how many trombones are in the classic jazz quartets and quintets? It's a refreshing sound. And I think you might have recorded an album that will prove to be timeless.

RL: When we play [the Charlie Brown show] at the St Julien, we pack the place. We have kids in pajamas sitting on the floor. People come to the show and it's become part of their Christmas holiday.

FD: Maybe now this album will become a holiday tradition for a lot more people.

I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I’m a Kinks fan. I’m in good company – they’re one of the most beloved and important bands to come out of the British Invasion, and they proved to have far more longevity than most of the groups to burst from that musical supernova, as evidenced by The Kinks: The Journey – Part 2, released in celebration of their 60^th anniversary.

It’s not surprising that the band has become part of the musical fabric of not just our generation, but really, of history, at this point, like the Beatles or Bob Dylan or Miles Davis. Ray Davies is, as I’ve noted time and again, one of the keenest observers of the human condition of anyone, and his witty, incisive, poignant and sometimes heartbreaking lyrics found the perfect complement in the rest of the Kinks: Mick Avory (drums, percussion), Pete Quaife (bass), and in the vastly underrated proto-punk-metal guitar work and songwriting of brother Dave Davies.

The Kinks: Ray Davies, Pete Quaife, Dave Davies, Mick Avory. Courtesy of Avalon Red.

Like the previous The Journey – Part 1 released earlier this year (see my review in Copper Issue 189), Part 2 doesn’t follow a strict chronological order; instead, the songs are grouped thematically, as noted on the LP and CD versions:

The Journey – Part 2 offers a wealth of everything from hits (like “A Well-Respected Man,” the gender-bender classic “Lola,” and the wryly ironic “Sunny Afternoon”) to what any Kinks connoisseur would call deep classics (“See My Friends,” “Animal Farm”) to some very very deep cuts like the sublimely touching “Two Sisters” and Dave Davies’ incandescent “Susannah’s Still Alive”), and more than a few of Raymond Douglas Davies’ undisputed greatest songs. There are also six new Ray Davies mixes including three live cuts from a 1975 “New Victoria Suite”: “Everybody’s a Star,” “Slum Kids,” and “A Face in the Crowd.” Most of the tracks were remastered in 2023, with a handful redone a few years ago. (For whatever reason, Dave’s “Lincoln County” didn’t get the remastering treatment.)

It’s a fantastic selection of songs, made all the more mind-boggling by the fact that another double album’s worth of superb material isn’t here, and was already released on Part 1 (just a quick reminder: “You Really Got Me,” “Waterloo Sunset,” “Do You Remember Walter?,” “Celluloid Heroes” and Shangri-La” among them). Not every song on the collection works for me – “Artificial Man,”  “Everybody’s a Star” and a couple of others don’t float my boat – but yeah, you kind of need to get both albums, (especially if you’re a vinyl enthusiast), after which you’ll have a wonderful Kinks collection at hand.

It’s pretty much impossible to pick the songs that are the Kinks’ greatest, but there’s no denying that three of the songs on The Journey – Part 2 are very high in the running: “This Time Tomorrow,” here presented in an alternate take (!) and perhaps the only two songs that could possibly close this anthology series: the magnificent, larger than life “Big Sky,” and “God’s Children,” a song about the perils of technology robbing us of our humanity that sounds more relevant today than ever.

Like The Journey – Part 1, the audio restoration for The Journey – Part 2 was done by Andrew Sandoval at Beatland Tours, and the analog mastering for the vinyl and lacquer cuts was performed by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. Again, I’m sure some remastering and tweaking was done to keep a degree of sonic consistency, especially in the EQ. Keeping things in perspective – some of these recordings are raw, almost primitive, and they’re rough-sounding. Don’t expect “audiophile” sound quality. This isn’t Shelby Lynne’s Just A Little Lovin’ or Kraftwerk’s The Catalogue 3D. That said, these Kinks cuts are the sound of a fondly-remembered bygone era, an actual sound that no one will ever produce again.

Out of 27 cuts, 12 are in the original mono. I listened to both the Qobuz 24/48 hi-res stream and the 2-LP vinyl version.

The vinyl and CD versions come with a booklet with track information, lots of very cool photos, and quotes by Ray Davies, Dave Davies, and Mick Avory. I wasn’t able to get an interview, but their comments about the songs are in the booklet, and offer a lot of first-person insight into the songs. Here’s a sampling:

“This Time Tomorrow”

Ray: “Written on a long-haul flight. After a while you have no idea where the jet is taking you, so you just take the boarding pass you are given, get on the plane and hope it’s going somewhere nice.”

“Lola”

Dave: “There are many stories about ‘Lola’ but I tend to use the one where our manager Robert met someone at a nightclub, and the rest is history.”

“Sunny Afternoon”

Ray: “Attempting to get off the treadmill!”

Dave: “One of Ray’s gems. A special time and a special song for the Kinks. ‘Sunny Afternoon’ knocked the Beatles off number one and England won the World Cup!”

“Two Sisters”

Dave: “I’ve always liked this. It seems like it could be about our sisters but there’s an undercurrent that it’s about me and Ray.”

“Dedicated Follower of Fashion”

Ray: “That’s dedicated, not medicated.”

Mick: “The only Kinks song I know all the words to. This song brings back lots of memories of the Carnaby Street days. We used to shop there and follow some of the trends and see some of the other bands wandering around.”

“Big Sky”

Ray: “About finding inner strength.”

“God’s Children”

Dave: “A very beautiful song. One of Ray’s masterpieces.”

Ray: “A fresh start in a new world.”

The Kinks: The Journey – Part 2 track listing:

Till The End Of The Day (1965)
Preservation (1974)
David Watts (1967)
This Time Tomorrow (Alternate Take, 2020 Mix) (1970)
A Well Respected Man (1965)
Monica (1968)
Scrapheap City (1974)
Lola (1970)
Sunny Afternoon (1966)
Animal Farm (1968)
Creeping Jean (1969)
Two Sisters (1967)
See My Friends (1965)
Money Talks (2023 Mix) (1974)
Rainy Day In June (1966)
Dedicated Follower Of Fashion (1966)
Where Are They Now? (2023 Mix) (1973)
Wicked Annabella (1968)
Susannah's Still Alive (1967)
20th Century Man (1971)
Sitting By The Riverside (1968)
New Victoria Suite - Everybody's A Star (Starmaker) (Live, 2023 Mix) (1975)
New Victoria Suite - Slum Kids (Live, 2023 Mix) (1975)
New Victoria Suite - (A) Face In The Crowd (Live, 2023 Mix) (1975)
Holiday Romance (1975)
Big Sky (1968)
God's Children (1971)

Immersive audio was the unequivocally hottest topic at AES New York, and both long-established companies and newly-formed ones were all touting their latest offerings to appeal to immersive sound aficionados.

Audeze has been making waves of late with its MM Series headphones, designed in collaboration with engineer/producer Manny Marroquin (Kendrick Lamar, Imagine Dragons, Lizzo, Post Malone). Touting their professional sound quality as the reason for his decision to use Audeze headphones for mixing a number of his hit records, Marroquin’s reputation has raised the company’s profile among audio professionals outside of its original audiophile demographic.

In a savvy presentation designed to appeal to both the pro audio and audiophile camps, Audeze opted to showcase the immersive sound-translation capabilities of their headphones. To conduct this audition, they tapped immersive audio’s “power couple”: multiple Grammy Award winning producers/engineers Jim Anderson and Ulrike Schwarz (featured in Copper Issues 156 – 159, and 181 – 182) to demonstrate Audeze headphones’ immersive qualities with cuts they had produced and/or engineered by singer/songwriter Nataly Dawn and Afro-Latin jazz bandleader Arturo O’Farrill.

It takes concentration to listen critically: Copper's John Seetoo, Jim Anderson, and Ulrike Schwarz listen at the Audeze booth.

Nataly Dawn’s intimate songs placed the listener almost in a living room type of atmosphere, where every subtle nuance sounded clearly as if it were right beside you.

Arturo O’Farrill’s fiery big band jazz orchestra captured the live excitement in the room (Jim Anderson confirmed that there were no overdubs) as the complex arrangements and percussion set the stage for the dialogues between singers and horn soloists.

The wonderful audio imagery and surround reproduction of the Audeze headphones did not disappoint, and definitely impressed some of the headphone-oriented DIY producers and engineers at the listening stations.

Meyer Sound (see the Copper interviews with founder John Meyer in Issues 99, 100 and 101), best known for their complex audio installations in theaters, arenas and outdoor festivals around the globe, have been on the hardware cutting edge for decades. Their latest loudspeakers offer expanded power handling and frequency range while reducing size and weight. Their showroom speaker arrays were arranged in a surround-sound immersive audio configuration with noticeably smaller speakers than in past years.

Their new 2100-LFC subwoofer is rated at a whopping 8,000 peak watts with a single 21-inch driver delivering 35 – 125 Hz frequency response (a 35 percent power increase over its previous 2 x 18-inch units) and a 20 percent weight reduction for greater options in rigging and placement. The air pumped from this relatively innocuously-sized subwoofer felt like what could only be described as a gut punch.

Meyer Sound’s new ULTRA-X20 is a nearly bookshelf speaker-sized version of their popular ULTRA-X40. With a pair of 5-inch cone drivers, a 2-inch compression driver for the highs, and a rotatable horn, the ULTRA-X20’s only sacrifice is its footprint; the sound coverage spread is impressively wide, and makes for an optimal immersive speaker choice for any venue.

While Meyer Sound’s state-of-the-art live music equipment has been the cornerstone of its reputation, software has become an important component. Meyer Sound impressively showcased its latest software offering (released on October 27) designed specifically for immersive audio mixing: Spacemap Go.

Spacemap Go is an iPad free app or plugin designed for ergonomic manipulation of Meyer’s Galileo GALAXY network platform. Instead of the need to create algorithms to select or change the directionality and sources of audio within a space, Spacemap Go reduces that task to mouse or touchscreen swipes that instantaneously react and trigger the required changes. Creating swirling cascades, ping pong effects, and almost any imaginable pattern of sound direction can be directed with childlike simplicity by using Spacemap Go.

While Spacemap Go is unique to the Galileo GALAXY network, its extreme ease of use can certainly make a case for choosing Meyer Sound systems for touring and venue installations over their rivals in the market. The platform is also an indicator of where immersive mixing is headed – toward simpler and easier user interfaces. Spacemap Go is currently being used with the GALAXY platform on the Meyer Sound-equipped Metallica M72 world tour.

While Meyer Sound’s Spacemap Go is certainly an impressive software resource for using the Galileo GALAXY platform, the need for software applications in designing immersive sound environments that can accommodate other manufacturers’ equipment, or even a mix of brands, was certainly something that could be anticipated. Treble Technologies proved to be one of the few companies that were already in that equation.

Based in Reykjavik, Iceland, Treble Technologies is a relatively new software-based company specializing in spatial analysis and sonic simulation. Founded in 2020 by acoustic engineers Dr. Finnur Pind and Jesper Pederson, they have poured their years of acoustic studies and sound simulation into a cloud-based audio analytics software that is product and brand agnostic and, in fact, includes an ever-expanding database of audio equipment from many manufacturers that can be plugged into Treble Technologies’ analyzation algorithm for comparison purposes.

In a conversation with Finnur, he explained that the Treble Acoustics Simulation Suite software is designed to calculate and determine optimum speaker placement configurations for any kind of acoustic space, once the relevant parameters were entered into the appropriate categories. These parameters would include: room dimensions, construction materials (i.e., wood, stone, et al), and equipment specs such as speaker models, number of units, amplifiers, and other criteria. Additionally, a user can also determine the amount of reverberation and delay they might want from the room alone prior to adding any digital sound processing outboard equipment.

Diagrams of Treble Technologies' Acoustic Simulation Suite. Courtesy of Treble Technologies.

As it is cloud-based, Treble’s software can be used on any compatible laptop, and the database is constantly being updated to add more equipment and its specs. As a result, a touring front of house engineer targeting a consistency in sound from venue to venue could find the Acoustics Simulation Suite a very useful tool, since the room and equipment configurations of every arena, theater or nightclub will vary widely.

The range of applications certainly includes but is not limited to pro audio. Commercial building architects, automobile sound system designers, audio equipment manufacturers, AI developers, and people involved in other types of design work involving audio may also find such software to be extremely useful.

Want to assemble your own circuit boards? This Neoden PnP (pick and place) machine will let you do it.

Here's a fantastic home or remote recording and mixing setup, courtesy of Empirical Labs Inc., makers of hardware and software audio processing equipment.

Manley Laboratories is as well known in the pro audio world as in the high-end. Here's a sampling of the studio gear they brought to the show.

Studio Float Isorafts are soundproofing and decoupling devices that facilitate the construction of sound-isolated rooms.

Header image: at the Augspurger booth, courtesy of Harris Fogel. All other images courtesy of Frank Doris.

This photo was made in the foothills of the Patagonia Mountains of Southern Arizona. The Patagonias are the northernmost terminus of the Sierra Madre Occidental range, which runs all the way to Mexico City.

Happy holidays from all of us at Copper!

Because of COVID, I was unable to attend the Audio Engineering Society’s (AES) annual convention in 2022, so I was particularly stoked to go to AES New York 2023, held at the Javits Center in Manhattan on October 25 – 27.

2023 marks the 75th anniversary of AES. Some major players, like Yamaha, Sennheiser and other biggies weren't there and the booths were smaller overall. Are pro audio (and other) manufacturers now spending more on social media, videos and other types of marketing these days? I don't know. In any case, everyone’s mood was upbeat and friendly, and attendance was up by 15 percent. AES is the organization where a lot of technological innovation in audio begins, either through academic and practical research, or via new product introductions. The convention is quite simply an audio geek’s paradise.

From a personal perspective, AES New York 2023 rejuvenated me. I, like many others, have been wondering how to stop the high-end audio industry from aging out or losing relevance among a new generation, especially when some of the products on the ultrahigh-end are becoming stratospherically or even decadently priced. Well, one look at the show floor lifted my spirits. The attendees made up a diverse crowd of ages, ethnicities and backgrounds, with many people in their 20s, 30s and even teens (AES has always put a focus on education and mentoring) mingling with, yes, old timers like me.

The enthusiasm was palpable. From what I can see, the future of audio is in good hands.

Some stats: more that 8,100 people attended. AES New York 2023 featured 127 exhibitors, along with educational seminars, product demonstrations, panel discussions and more. If you add in the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) event that took place the same time as AES at an adjoining hall, there were more than 20,000 people under one roof that week.

Copper’s John Seetoo and Harris Fogel also attended the event, and we have lots to talk about. As John notes elsewhere, immersive audio was prevalent at AES.

Shure’s exhibit featured a white square thing about two feet on a side. At first I thought it was some kind of PZM mic, but was told it was their new MXA902 Integrated Conferencing Ceiling Array. It fits in a standard ceiling tile mount, has built-in mics and speakers, and is designed to capture and deliver clear audio during Zoom meetings and videoconferences, over a 20 by 20-square-foot area. It features Shure’s IntelliMix DSP, a 100-mic array and audio beamforming, and other tech for the best-possible audio quality for every seat in the room. (Why do I feel like beamforming is just getting started, relatively speaking, in home audio applications?) We’ve all had to suffer through listening to unintelligible dialog from a speakerphone or crappy computer monitor speakers, making a product like this a boon for meetings and other A/V applications. Naturally, Shure displayed a wide range of mics, including their iconic SM7B vocal mic ($399), in production in one form or another since the 1990s.

It's hip to be square: the Shure MXA902 videoconferencing solution.

Shure was just one of many microphone companies at AES. After all, when it comes to audio recording and reproduction, without a microphone, we got nothin’.

Audio-Technica (disclaimer: I do a little bit of consulting for the company) showed a number of mics for content creation such as their very popular $129 2020USBX, which has selectable noise reduction to compensate for the less-than-perfect environments many YouTubers and podcasters work in. Although, as A-T’s Gary Boss pointed out, “they don’t like to use the word ‘content’,” for whatever reason, and prefer to be known as “creators.” Well, OK. My eyes were drawn to the spiky, alien-looking BP3600 immersive audio mic ($5,140), which has a cluster of eight microphone assemblies in a near-coincident array to capture 360-degree sound. It’s designed for broadcast use, so maybe you’ll be hearing it at the next Olympics or MotoAmerica rally – and it’s being used on Iron & Wine’s upcoming orchestral recording.

Since anyone from you or I to Billie Eilish can make great-quality recordings at home these days, the line between consumer, “prosumer” and professional continues to blur. Focusrite has been a purveyor of high-quality audio interfaces – devices that go between a mic or musical instrument and a computer – for a long time now and at AES they showed their new fourth-generation Scarlett products ($139 - $299), offering a variety of mic and instrument inputs, 120 dB of dynamic range, all-new circuitry and 24-bit/192 kHz D/A converters, and other enhancements. Focusrite offers complete packages including mics and headphones – just add a computer, software, and talent.

Audio-Technica's BP3600 immersive audio mic.

Scarlett offered a host of compact recording interfaces like the Solo Studio.

I’d like to go in depth about Neumann microphones, but when I went to their demo room it was absolutely packed. Not surprising as Neumann mics (which have been around since 1928) are legendary, they’ve been used on more historic recordings than probably anyone could count, and are still highly regarded and in demand today. The company also offers studio monitors, headphones and audio interfaces.

The UK’s Aston Microphones displayed what were, for me, hands down the coolest mics at the show. As a rep pointed out, all of their mics are completely original designs and not copies of other manufacturers’ wares. Aston also offers their Halo line of portable vocal reflection filter “isolation booths” that can be set up practically anywhere, and look almost as cool as their mics.

Yes, mics can be fun as well as functional, like this Spirit Fifth Anniversary Edition from Aston Microphones.

Other mic companies exhibiting at AES included Austrian Audio, Telefunken, Cloud Microphones, Soyuz, MXL Microphones, Schoeps, Sontronics, and others.

Speaking of crossovers (of the consumer-to-pro variety), Genelec active loudspeakers have been finding increasing acceptance among audiophiles and other home listeners, as well as being one of the top names in recording studio monitoring. The company had quite a demo setup, and debuted its 8381A point-source monitor to the US market, which indeed is touted as “designed for high-end music recording, mastering and audiophile listening.” The 8381A incorporates the company’s Minimum Diffraction Coaxial (MDC) driver along with proprietary DSP, and can deliver an astounding 126 dB SPL, thanks to 6,000 watts of built-in amplification. The 8381A interfaces with Genelec’s new UNIO audio monitoring platform featuring the 9320A Reference Controller. The 9320A provides easy hands-on control and calibration of up to three Genelec speaker systems, plus headphones.

Room treatment might be little-known by the average person, and recognized by audiophiles, but in the recording studio world it’s an essential given. Room acoustics company JOCAVI Acoustic PaneIs introduced not only some room treatment, but an entire listening room concept with the debut of SOUNDSPACE PRO, prefabricated soundproofed modular rooms that can be easily assembled. They are supplied fully decorated and finished in different wood and fabric options. The company claims the rooms are ideal for immersive audio applications like Dolby Atmos.

Luis Candeias and Alexandre Grade from Jocavi Acoustic Panels proudly display a selection of their room acoustics products.

There was so much to take in at the show that John, Harris and I only caught the tail end of “Barbie Goes to AES,” a standing-room-only panel discussion about the soundtrack recording process. We did get to hear a panelist respond to an audience question about what he took away from the experience, “I always learn the most from my mistakes.” I know the feeling.

"Barbie Goes to AES" was one of the many well-attended seminars at the show.

Augspurger had a wide range of studio monitors on display, some of which are shown here. As you can gather from the photo, they were capable of delivering impressive volume while maintaining clarity.

DiGiCo is one of the top names in mixing consoles for recording, theater and live sound, and they introduced their new flagship Quantum 852 at AES, the first one ever produced. To me, it’s a thing of industrial design beauty with its colored lights and undeniable Starship Enterprise cool factor. To a mixing engineer it’s an embodiment of awesome specs: 384 (that’s not a typo) input channels, 192 aux/sub group busses, a 64 x 64 audio processing matrix, 1,030 equalizers, 1,000 LCD screens, surround mixing capability, and a dizzying amount of connection and configuration options. While I was gaping at it an engineer came walking by and asked, “when are you going to come out with the theater version?” DiGiCo distributor Group One Unlimited’s Matt Larson simply smiled, reached over, pushed a button, and the Quantum 852’s main display changed to light up and display, “Quantum 852 Theater.” The console literally completely reconfigured itself at the push of a button. The engineer was highly impressed, as was I.

Matt Larson (center) has the DiGiCo Quantum 852 console under control.

Solid State Logic, another name familiar to any recording and mixing engineer, also had a variety of new analog and digital consoles and production tools on display at the show, including the UF1 and UC1 controllers, FUSION processor, and BUS+ compressor. The company also featured its ORIGIN 16 console, and its System T for immersive music production. You can read more about everything at this link.

The JBL immersive audio room featured a 7.1.4-channel surround audio system with JBL 708i Master Reference Monitors, with the company’s 2409H high-frequency transducer feeding into an Image Control Waveguide, mated with a 728G high-excursion low-frequency driver. A JBL LSR6312SP 12-inch powered subwoofer handled the deep bass. The main speakers were driven by JBL DSi 2.0 Series amplifiers, and the entire setup was controlled by a JBL Intonato 24 Monitor Management Tuning System, which provides easy setup and automated system calibration.

It’s always a pleasure to run into Louis Manno of The Audio History Library and Museum. As you can imagine, this New York-based organization is dedicated to the preservation of audio history, and at this year’s AES they had a very cool display of old radios. Lou told me they have quite a collection of vintage mics, books, magazines and other items. I need to pay a visit; look for a feature in a future issue.

I ran into David Chesky (HDTracks, The Audiophile Society, Chesky Records) and he told me I needed to check out the Ex Machina Soundworks monitor speakers. He was right. I don’t know what models I was listening to (I went by the booth a couple of times) but I was struck by their clarity, tonal balance, openness and dynamic impact. The speakers from the Brooklyn, New York-based company have some interesting features, like environmentally-conscious construction using Valchromat cabinet material, a Rubio Monocoat plant-based finish, Hypex Ncore internal amplification, and other attributes.

The Audio History Museum displayed some very cool radios from its collection.

Designed for performance: these Ex Machina Soundworks monitors might not look flashy, but they sure sounded good.

Korg showcased one of the most interesting and possibly most important technologies at the show: their Live Extreme internet live streaming system. This platform delivers up to 10 channels of high-resolution audio and 4K video in real time, or pre-recorded. Korg claims it’s the highest level of audio quality in the industry, and their demo was extremely impressive. The proprietary technology can support Hi-Res Audio, DSD audio, Dolby Atmos, Auro-3D, FLAC, Apple Lossless and other formats up to 24-bit/384 kHz or DSD up to 5.6 MHz. It avoids the video compression found in other formats by directly encoding the video into HLS and MPEG-DASH before uploading them to the streaming server, and also allows viewers to watch content directly from a web browser without the need for specialized software. Live Extreme can be licensed for third-party use. This feels like a real breakthrough to me. Click here for a demo.

Another honest-to-goodness breakthrough is Sony’s 360 Virtual Mixing Environment (360VME). As engineer Gus Skinas told me (he also masters the Octave Records releases), it was born out of necessity – during the pandemic, the film sound mixing engineers could not go into the studio, but work still had to be done. 360VME was developed to accurately reproduce the acoustic field created by the multiple speakers of an immersive audio studio, by using headphones. 360VME employs proprietary technology to take measurements of a recording studio environment, and then reproduce it using headphones and 360VME software. This enables engineers to listen and mix in a familiar acoustic environment.

I listened to a demo and was blown away by the clarity, spaciousness and resolution of what I was hearing. But that’s only half the story. I asked Gus what the headphones I was listening to were, and he told me they were the new Sony MDR-MV1 Studio Monitor Headphones. This open-back 40 mm dynamic-driver model offers a frequency response of 5 Hz – 80 kHz and is claimed to be designed for “uncolored frequency response suitable for production, obtained through collaboration with leading industry professionals.” The price? $399 retail.

Anyone who has been around a recording studio will know of Auratone monitor speakers. Their 5C Super Sound Cube has been around seemingly forever – in fact, Auratone has been a family-owned business for more than 50 years, and president Alexander Jacobsen is the grandson of original founder Jack Wilson.

Auratones are diminutive – 6-1/2 inches on a side – go down to only 80 Hz, have a single 4.5-inch driver, and handle only 25 watts of RMS power. So why are they ubiquitous? Because engineers, artists and producers use them to hear what their mixes will sound like in real-world conditions, as opposed to big studio monitors. According to Jacobsen, they are manufactured to be as close to the originals as possible. The drivers are custom-built in the US, and the enclosures are crafted in the company’s Nashville factory. In a world of constant and often bewildering change, it was comforting to look at and listen to a speaker I first heard in the early 1980s. That said, it was exciting to see the world of audio technology moving ever-forward.

Cube roots: a pair of 2023 Auratones, looking just like their famous ancestors.

How could we not love this copper-finished mic from Telefunken? In fact, it's the TF29 Copperhead.

Header image from www.aes.org.

All images courtesy of the author except where noted.

When your wife is a famous soprano and your best friend is Europe’s most sought-after librettist, you’re likely to have one heck of an opera-writing career. That certainly held true for German composer Johann Adolf Hasse (1699 – 1783), who was quite a big deal in his day.

He started out as an operatic tenor in Hamburg, but soon made the best possible choice for anyone who wanted to flourish in opera in the early 18^th century: He got out of Germany. Italy was the place to be, so he hightailed it to Naples. By 1725 he’d composed a short work for singing superstar Farinelli, which landed him plenty more commissions. J.A. Hasse had arrived, and all of Western Europe wanted him.

Although he also wrote a fair amount of sacred vocal music, Hasse was best known for his approximately 50 operas and opera-like works. Unfortunately for his legacy, he was the perfect representative of galant pre-classical style, meaning that his popularity plummeted as soon as the new cool kids (Gluck and Mozart in particular) introduced the world to more experimental harmony, form, and literary topics. Today Hasse is considered specialized repertoire, with only a few recordings coming out each year.

One offering is by countertenor Filippo Minecca, with backing from the ensemble Il gioco de’Matti. The title Arcadian Cantatas (Pan Classics) refers to the miniature secular chamber operas known as cantatas in the 18^th century (quite a different genre from what J.S. Bach and other Lutheran composers called cantatas).

Minecca’s male alto voice is captivating, and the ensemble provides him with graceful support. Consider this aria from a cantata called Oh Dio! Partir conviene (Oh, God! If he should leave…). These short works didn’t have much in the way of plot. Here’s the entire synopsis of this cantata from the website HasseProject.com: “Mirzia is our heroine and her erstwhile lover is forced to be separated from her. Oh, the anguish!!” This ain’t Shakespeare. But the ornamented vocal writing is delightful, and a real challenge to the performer.

Like any composer with courtly patrons, Hasse often needed to write instrumental works, too. Ensemble Il gioco de’Matti made the reasonable guess that the recits and arias of a sung cantata might have been interspersed with the dance-inspired movements of a Baroque-style sonata. The Allegro from Hasse’s Op. 1, No. 1, fits the bill, and so they included that, featuring the energetic, virtuosic flute of Giulia Barbini.

In her Hasse album, Arie d’opere (Tactus), Venetian soprano Elena De Simone takes on arias from meatier Hasse works, mainly opera seria, some of which no longer exist in complete manuscripts. L’Ulderica, for example, was premiered in 1729, but we know so little about it that even the librettist’s name has been lost. Yet the aria “Fissa né sguardi miei” (Fix neither my looks) survives.

I wish De Simone and the instrumentalists of Il Mosaico made me feel that this was better news. But the ensemble playing has ragged edges, and De Simone, somehow always at the bottom of her range, wobbles and waddles through the intricate melody line.

She fares slightly better in this aria from Tito Vespasiano, an opera with words by the celebrated librettist Pietro Metastasio, who often collaborated with Hasse and was his lifelong friend. De Simone’s long notes and higher pitches seem controlled at first, but she quickly begins to over-sing.

On a recent Profil Records release, the German group Cappella Sagittariana Dresden takes a different approach to preserving Hasse’s output: They have recorded an entire opera. Attilio Regolo is a three-act work from 1750 with a Metastasio libretto, telling the story of a Roman soldier held prisoner in Carthage. The leading lady, his girlfriend Attilia, was originally played by Hasse’s wife, Faustina Bordoni.

It’s appropriate that a Dresden ensemble has made (to my knowledge) the only complete recording of this opera, considering that Hasse composed it for the Dresden court. This recording actually captures a 1997 live performance conducted by Frieder Bernius, although it was not released until 2018.

Unlike the overtures of later operas, in the Baroque and Pre-Classical periods composers normally opened their operas with sinfonias. These orchestral movements differ from overtures in that they aren’t as obviously preparing the audience emotionally for the story to come. (A huge exception to this is Handel, who knew how to take dramatic advantage of a sinfonia, especially in his oratorios.)

Here’s the Act 1 Sinfonia from Attilio Regolo, rendered bravely by the Cappella Sagittariana. My heart aches for the oboists who had to surmount all those jagged 16^th-note triplet passages. The contrasting section, starting at 2:21, allows the whole orchestra to relax into a more elegant style.

This time the soloist is a coloratura soprano, Carmen Fuggiss. This philosophical Act I aria, “Sempre e maggior del vero l’idea d’una sventura” (The idea of a misfortune is always greater than the truth), is particularly interesting for Hasse’s use of quick, biting syncopations known as Scottish snaps because the technique reminded musicians of bagpipe ornaments. Henry Purcell helped to popularize these in the late 17^th century. Figgiss and the Cappella spin out the spritely aria with panache.

Since opera’s invention in the late 16^th century, it has featured choral writing. Hasse’s full-scale operas are no exception. In this Act III chorus, Bernius does a fine job balancing the small vocal ensemble with the instrumental lines that double or decorate the vocal parts. You’ll notice that, compared to a Handel or Bach choral movement, this one has very little complex counterpoint. That’s a sign of changing tastes in the pre-classical period.

There’s one more Hasse recording to mention, Venetian Ballads. Barcaroles from the Walsh Collection (G&G Classics). I went through a complicated series of reactions to this album. First, I was annoyed that the singing sounded so amateurish (if passionate). Next, I was grateful that somebody, anybody, had bothered to record these lovely little musical bonbons.

And finally, I thought about who would have sung them in Hasse’s day. Probably not the finest singers in Italy. They were dainty amusements, nice to do at parties. This may in fact be a historically authentic performance!

The album features a host of singers, but I’ll leave you with just two examples. Try to focus on the pieces more than on the singing, and imagine yourself perched on a velvet settee in an exquisitely appointed parlor.

The first is soprano Anna Sanachina:

And here’s tenor Andrea Biscontin, to further entertain you while you sip your espresso (an exotic treat in mid-18^th-century Italy!) from a gold-rimmed porcelain cup.

Copper has an exchange program with FIDELITY magazine (and others), where we share articles, including this one, between publications.

That smell! Nothing compares! Old record sleeves, the dust of decades past.

While record stores are dying out at an alarming rate in this country, a very special culture of jazz bars and jazz cafés has survived in Japan in general and Tokyo in particular. Here, jazz fans can rummage deep into the past, pulling from the unfathomable depths of wall-sized shelves jazz records that most people didn’t even know existed. “Kissa” translates as “store where you drink tea,” the equivalent of the European [and American] “coffee shop.” The only difference is that jazz from the second half of the 20th century is rarely played in Starbucks and the likes – and certainly not as a concert of your choice.

Documentary photographer Philip Arneill, who hails from Northern Ireland, has taken on this wonderful parallel world beyond the chaos and noise of Japanese beehive settlements, capturing these intimate kissas in very atmospheric images. Images that make you want to reach in and pull out a creased copy of John Coltrane’s Blue Train or Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue and listen to them through ancient horn loudspeakers. “Japanese jazz pubs and cafés are insular worlds where time stands still,” reads the blurb on the lovingly-designed illustrated book published by Kehrer-Verlag.

In Tokyo, there are – as of yet – a large number of these “Jazu Kissas,” which are gradually beginning to die out because their customers or guests are slowly reaching an age at which their physical condition no longer allows them to combine a visit to the pub with the enjoyment of jazz. Arneill and [writer James] Catchpole have long since expanded the project, which began in 2015, beyond Tokyo and have documented a quintessentially Japanese phenomenon in Tokyo Jazz Joints, which also makes it clear how important jazz is, at least among the older generation.

The origins of jazz kissas date back to the time before the Second World War. After the War, they became increasingly popular and accepted by broader sections of society. The phenomenon reached its peak in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then, the curve has been pointing downwards again. Perhaps this is also because, although there is a vinyl renaissance, the musical tastes of those who are rediscovering the black disk for themselves, even in Japan, are hardly focused on an intellectual niche music called “jazz.”

When Philip Arneill describes how he first came into contact with the world of Kissa together with James Catchpole, his story speaks of respect, even awe: “It is a lively spring evening, clinging almost playfully to the last whisper of winter. Neither of us knows what to expect. We don’t really know each other either, apart from a few conversations shouted back and forth and handshakes on noisy club nights. We stand next to each other, full of expectation, in a drab station district on the southeastern edge of Tokyo. The pub is tucked away near the railroad tracks.

Tokyo Jazz Joints
Philip Arneill (photography) and James Catchpole (accompanying text)
Hardcover, English, 168 pages, 45,00 €
Kehrer Verlag, ISBN: 978-3-96900-120-2
www.kehrerverlag.com

Warmest wishes for a happy and healthy holiday season and new year, from all of us at Copper.

In 1991 The Absolute Sound decided to do its first Guide to High-End Audio Components. I was on staff and it was my first experience working on a buyer's guide-type publication. Let me tell you, they take a lot of work.

Here's the back cover featuring the mighty Carver Silver Seven vacuum-tube monoblocks ($17,500 per pair), at one time TAS editor Harry Pearson's reference.

This Audio Research ad from the publication featured the company's first-ever DAC, the aptly-named $2,995 DAC1.

Here's another ad, for Atma-Sphere Music Systems. I have fond memories of listening to the MA-1, which is still in production today.

Who needs an iPhone when you have a rig like this? Popular Mechanics, June 1956.

If you’re human, you make mistakes. Sometimes they are driven by emotion, sometimes by ignorance. But you’re never going to escape them, and you’ll always be sorry you didn’t, or couldn’t, avoid them. Making mistakes and being sorry is part of the human condition.

But if you focus on them, you may see your entire life as a comedy of errors. That’s a mistake. You’re no more fallible than the rest of us. Unless you feel you can act with impunity – which is another mistake – you’re just like everyone else. As my buddy Jimmy used to say, everyone’s a screw-up, just in different ways (he used more colorful language).

It’s easy to see the mistakes of others as incredibly stupid. Often we do this while making mistakes ourselves that are equally shortsighted. When we realize this we feel stupid. Once we accept that we all screw up from time to time, we can forgive others -- even for the mistakes they directed towards us. The real value of forgiveness is that it leads to self-acceptance.

Audio systems are flawed too. Nevertheless, we insist, like Don Quixote, on chasing the dream, and go to great lengths and expense to achieve perfection. A new system, like a new sweetheart, seems perfect…for a time.  But when the honeymoon is over, reality sets in, and you discover that your new acquisition is as flawed as the last, just in different ways. Good thing ex-audio equipment isn’t entitled to alimony.

Back in the last millennium, I ran into one of my ex-systems at the home of the guy I'd sold it to. It sounded much better than I remembered. So good in fact, I was thinking I might want the system back, but there’s no way Russell was letting go. Mistakes suck.

He told me he’d taken the trouble to cultivate a relationship with his system, (I knew to do that, I just didn’t bother when it was mine. That was a mistake.) Apparently, he’d moved the speakers around the room till they sounded just right and rearranged the furniture accordingly. He glued some acoustic foam around the tweeter to minimize diffraction and make them sound smoother, replaced the tired midrange drivers with those recommended by a parts house, braced the interior of the cabinets, and experimented with different damping materials.

He'd also added some acoustic panels at reflective points on the walls and behind the listener, and created a 4 by 8-foot piece of artwork from wood scraps glued to a plywood board to provide diffraction between the speakers.

How’d his wife feel about all this? Fortunately, he'd cultivated a relationship with her as well. He asked her what she thought of the sound as he moved his speakers around the room, thereby involving her in the process. When they couldn’t come to an agreement on rearranging the furniture, he bargained and agreed to do it her way so long as the listening chair was properly located. In the end, she demanded new furniture for the living room, a worthwhile tradeoff in his opinion.

Russell also made her part of the creative process. Once he’d finished building the diffractive panel, he asked her to paint it. She bought several cans of enamel and painted the applied blocks in different colors to match the new furniture (see header image). As a result, she’s happy and he’s happy – all for much less than the price of the system I bought to replace the one I sold him.

Russell taught me to become an active participant in the development of my system, and not just a consumer. Once I got started, I went much further than him and learned about box alignments, diffraction, room acoustics, and digital signal processing. Turns out I could do a lot more about my sound than I thought. Like him, I also got my wife involved in the project, and discovered she was more flexible than I’d previously imagined.

In some ways, audio is a microcosm of life. Before you get it right, you’re going to make lots of mistakes, but that’s necessary in order to figure out what works. The greatest mistake anyone can make is avoiding changes for fear of getting it wrong.

This article first appeared in Issue 38.

Positive Feedback has a review of the Stellar Phono preamplifier in Issue 130. Michael Laurance said, “It's exciting when a component makes a tremendous difference the moment it becomes a part of your system. Such is the case the second the stylus of my Triangle Art Hathor lowers onto side one of the half-speed mastered release of Santana's Zebop! Over the years, several phono stages have transferred the analog signal in this room, but none with this immediacy or impact.”

He also noted, "[Santana's] "Tales of Kilimanjaro"...not only has a more open feel and sound, but is also more organic versus (or compared with) phono stages I've auditioned in the past. There is a closeness to the music that makes this component a special experience....The PS Audio Stellar Phono Preamplifier has a beautiful tendency to extract the maximum enjoyment from any platter spun through it.”

Click here for the full review.

In Issue 129, Positive Feedback also reviewed the PerfectWave DirectStream DAC MK2. Dave Clark pointed out, “If you loved the older DirectStream DAC, you are going to love the newer one even more. The DirectStream DAC MK2 goes deeper with a way more solid feel to the bottom end. Great solidity and punch. Tight, but effortless. Massive in a way. Big. Bold.” He continued, "PS Audio has gone to great measures to filter out or eliminate noise and contamination that can, and will, get in the way of the music. Clean, but not mean. No hype. Cold and analytical? Not in the least. All just very natural. Very musically balanced. Wonderful articulation and presence....The DirectStream DAC MK2 is a major improvement over the older version.”

Click here for the full review.

PS Audio received no fewer than six recommendations in The Absolute Sound’s new 2024 Annual Buyer’s Guide. The products listed include the aspen FR30 loudspeakers, Stellar Series S300 stereo power amplifier, Stellar M1200 mono power amp, BHK Signature 300 mono power amp, and Sprout100 integrated amplifier. The M1200 was also included in “The Greatest Bargains in High-End Audio” listings.

Header image courtesy of Dave Clark/Positive Feedback.

This cartoon was first published in Issue 132.