Copper

Welcome to Copper #38! Just as there are continual changes in the audio business, we've got some changes here at Copper. I'm excited to introduce yet another new writer: Gautam Raja is an essayist and... Read more...

Torture

Audiophiles are experts at self-torture: “Is the VTA just a hair off?” “Would the titanium spikes be better than the silicon steel ones?” “Should my chair be half an inch... Read more...

Roon: What's It Building In There??

A couple of years ago, along with a DirectStream DAC, I bought an older Mac Mini. Why older? The price was “attractive”, and I got the last model you could get with a “Super Drive”, the Mac DVD/CD drive. For the first half-year or so, I connected the Mini to the DAC via USB (and tried various AudioQuest USB enhancements), but ever wanting to fiddle, I eventually connected it up to my network via a Bridge II card. This necessitated using JRiver, MC 20 and 21, and giving up on... Read more...

Beauty Grows

A Vivid System, Indeed

I probably have a pretty standard story as far as the evolution of my system goes. I started listening to music seriously back when I was still a teenager, with... Read more...

Changes at B&W/Classe

[This is another occasion upon which press-releases cannot be relied, because there aren’t any. I’ll piece together the timeline to the best of my ability, and link to other reports online, such as there are.—Ed.] Observers of the audio biz may recall that industry-leading loudspeaker manufacturers Bowers & Wilkins were sold last year to a mysterious Silicon Valley entity called EVA Automation, of which little was known. The best coverage of the sale was by Engadget, which explained that EVA was owned by Gideon Yu, former CFO of Facebook and a partial owner of... Read more...

High-End Audio: In Need of Higher Fidelity to Itself?

Musings from a long-time listener upon entering the hi-fi industry I remember the exact moment the switch flipped. I was in my early twenties when I hit “play” and was blown away by what a couple of bicycle inner tubes and heavy books could do to the sound of my Sony CD-player and Indian-made Cox integrated amplifier. Since then, my love for music has been matched—and, if I’m not careful, exceeded by—a love for the products and optimizations that replay that music. When I found a job in the high-end... Read more...

Mistakes

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, correct them. Making mistakes and being sorry is part of the human condition. If you focus on them, it’s easy to see your entire life as one long series of mistakes. That’s a mistake. Some mistakes you can correct, most you can’t. This makes you as liable as the rest of humanity, unless you feel you can act with... Read more...

The King Lives!… and King Gizzard?

Elvis Presley DVD: Elvis Lives: The 25th Anniversary Concert “Live” From Memphis Single DVD Available from Amazon Occasionally there are performances that cause you to completely change your opinion about the artist. This, for me, is one. I never had much use for Elvis. I had no use for “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog”, but I happened upon a trailer for a DVD on TV, and thought that the technology involved seemed interesting: it is a live concert recording made in Elvis’s home town of Memphis on the 25th anniversary of... Read more...

Deep Purple—In Rock

Ok. This is how shit happens. In 1967 Chris Curtis, former drummer for the Searchers, had an idea to start what would essentially be a supergroup where the members would rotate. Curtis sold the idea to some London businessmen and they began recruiting. The first gentleman they looked at was a classically trained Hammond B3 player named Jon Lord. He’d been mucking about London playing with bands with names like The Flower Pot Men. He needed a real job. Through bandmates Lord heard of a guitar player who was in Hamburg doing... Read more...

Deborah Conway

I liked Deborah Conway the moment I learned she had an album called Bitch Epic. Fortunately, that album lives up to its name, and the rest of this Australian singer-songwriter’s output is worth getting to know too. Conway’s first solo album was String of Pearls in 1991. The most popular song from it was “It’s Only the Beginning.” It shows the promise of a confident songwriter, even if this pop-love number doesn’t reveal how much she has to say. (By the way, if that opening hook seems familiar, you’re not imagining it. It... Read more...

A Factory Visit

The first two shots of slivovitz—plum brandy— went down easily, the third even easier, and the fourth and the fifth… It was 8.30 in the morning. This was my first trip to the Czech republic. About 18 months prior to this visit, I had met Heinz Lichtenegger, the owner of Audio Tuning, the company that makes Pro-Ject turntables, at a party at CES in Las Vegas. We hit it off immediately and at the end of a drunken and amusing evening he had agreed to make a turntable for my... Read more...

Wine and Chocolate

I don’t drink wine, but I’m fascinated by it. The rituals, the industry, the marketing. I do drink chocolate, because I decided I need some sort of vice, and after all, chocolate is about as perfect a vice one can have. And I showed up just as the chocolate industry started down the road to being as much like wine as they can be. Hang in for just a few paragraphs, I’ll bring it back to audio. Thanks for your patience. Twenty years ago, John Scharffenberger launched the first bean to bar... Read more...

Is It Worth It?

I want to consider a topic seriously, minus my usual snark. It’s not a feel-good topic; if anything, it’s the opposite of that. Why do successful, widely-admired artists keep killing themselves? This is admittedly well outside my usual beat, but I think it’s an important question that we as music-lovers (and just as decent human beings) need to ponder. I may be discussing artists unfamiliar to some Copper readers; we can consider this an opportunity to practice Larry Schenbeck’s Values #1 and #2. Chester Bennington, the animated lead singer of Linkin Park,... Read more...

Pledge(s) of Allegiance

I’ve been reviewing classical records for, like, ever. In the process I think I’ve begun to figure out what matters and what shouldn’t. Naturally, I’ve made a list. Two lists, in fact: you could call them values and maxims. Value No. 1: New music matters. Do I still listen to Beethoven? Of course. Mozart, Puccini, Stravinsky, Mahler, Bach? Ditto. But as a mindful member of the food chain, I usually check out the new stuff first. That means listening repeatedly (giving it a quick “test of time”), reading liner notes, analyzing the music’s relationship to other... Read more...

Tim's Vermeer

Not long ago, I watched a documentary on Netflix from Sony Classics called Tim’s Vermeer. It was a profoundly interesting program, one I felt was worth writing about. I urge you to seek it out. You won’t regret it. Johannes (Jan) Vermeer was one of the Dutch Masters who painted in the latter part of the 17th Century. His paintings, typical in general of the Dutch Golden Age, possess a quality we refer to as ‘photo-realism’. They exhibit an accuracy of perspective, and of illumination, that we today take for granted in photographs, but which was... Read more...

Purchase or Audition Locally