In Part One of this interview (Issue 212), Jamie Howarth, President of Plangent Processes and I discussed the fundamentals of the company’s audio speed-correction and stabilization technology, how the idea originated, and the long journey from bringing the idea of compensating for the constant variations in tape speed recording and playback – and the subsequent degradations to recording quality – to practical reality.
Part Two (Issue 213) delved further into the Plangent Processes technology, and some of its practical applications. Our interview concludes here with a deep dive into the sonic and most importantly musical benefits of what Plangent Processes does, along with some uncovered audio history.
One thing that I know results from the Plangent speed correction process is the enhanced ability to hear inner threads within the arrangement. Again, my pet observation – pro audio this would be heresy – but [Ivor] Tiefenbrun of Linn was right about that with his low-flutter turntables. “Temporal masking” disrupts our hearing and we revert to [focusing on] the most obvious outlines in the music, sacrificing inner details for overall comprehension. Knock out the wow and fast flutter and the brain can track what it’s hearing…it’s how we’re built. A parallel example: we all take for granted the center “phantom” image – it’s a given. I’m like yeah, OK, find me a place in nature where two noises are emanating from separate areas in perfect phase and level. Doesn’t exist. So, I’m not at all skeptical of other non-occurring sound phenomena [that are] unique to audio having unique effects on comprehension.
You can follow the musical material without the confusion and the garble of hearing all these extra beat frequencies in there that are not supposed to be there. That would be a whole other article, about the heuristics of why our ears want to hear something that's devoid of that kind of interference, because it's partly how we achieve localization. We're constantly moving slightly. We're listening to the reflections coming off of the wall in the room. We're listening to ourselves [speaking] as contrasted with the reflection coming off the wall. So, we're constantly judging the myriad and sundry comb filters between what we say and what's coming off the wall or any surfaces near it. And the Doppler effect also changes as we move.
FD: It almost makes it sound like trying to get absolutely perfect reproduction is impossible. But I guess that doesn't stop us from trying? I’d love to be wrong about this.
JH: Nothing's impossible. It's impossible at the moment.
FD: Let’s talk more about what people will hear with the Plangent Processes system.
JH: The image, the sound, the performance is going to be more clear and more stable. We discussed all the top-end hash, a lot of the noisy annoying stuff in high brass on older recordings is not the room or the mics, it’s the tape machine. Fast flutter. Yup. Like the small Doppler excursion in the Quad ESL63, which I still gravitate back to, and which I can still hear [the quality of] even in a YouTube video of an ESL63. I'll bet you can too. Tape machine mechanical perfection, no. But correctible to the precision of a quartz crystal oscillator? I’ll take it.
Sample of "Born in the USA," FFT spectrum of drift, wow and flutter with sidebands on a 240 kHz bias signal, Studer A80 tape deck.
The same sample after being corrected with Plangent Processes: all speed-related issues are resolved.
FD: Let’s talk about using Plangent Processes (and other technologies I suppose) to get back to the artist’s, producer’s and engineer’s original intent. The fact is that the original recordings were how the artist and the producer intended them to be, whether on tape or vinyl, and remixes and re-masterings are different. I suppose it could be a matter of opinion whether any of these are “better” or “worse” or just different. This is certainly a point of controversy with Beatles’ reissues. But with Plangent, it seems to me that without a doubt, the reason for using it is clearly to get closer to the artist's original intention.
JH: Yes, absolutely. Look when it comes to remixing and remastering the Beatles, you're up against the four smartest musicians on the planet at the time, and the smartest producer and one of the best engineers who've ever lived. You've got John, Paul, George, Ringo, George Martin, and Geoff Emerick, and you're not going to beat that. I don't care who you are, you're not going to match that. Anyway, let's stay away from that controversy for now. The thing is, yes, we want to capture the original intent of when the musicians played it, the way they played it.
If someone like session drummer Jim Keltner listens and says, “that sounds more like Hal [Blaine], that swings harder in [the Plangent Processes version],” what am I supposed to say? You don't know what you're talking about? Keltner is the only guy that I know who actually [was there to] hear everything Hal played on a session. So if we can better convey that authenticity, it’s gonna matter. “That swings more like Hal.” Yes, and the recorder was stepping up and down 3 tenths of a percent and that’s enough to hear…the groove will wander.
I would mention parenthetically here’s a perfect counterpoint to the odd notion that if one understands the metrics that’s somehow inferior to just determining quality by listening alone. Most often this is the defensive posture of folks who don’t understand the tech. Problem is a lot of times their ears are fooling them. But a top-notch session drummer hears something positive, that can be backed up with actual objective data – that’s to the good, not to be dismissed. I don’t think subjectivity enters into it. If it’s more accurate to the source that’s what high-fidelity means.
There’s another book called The World Viewed (by Stanley Cavell) which boils down to: if you go to a movie and you ask six people afterward about what happened in the movie, six different stories are going to come out, and five of them are going to be kind of fractured and distorted and misremembered, and one of them is going to be pretty close. That's the guy I want to talk to, because that's the individual who has the least amount of their personal biases getting in the way of what actually happened. The film didn't change. I think one of the problems that we run into a lot of in the audiophile business is that there's a kind of a feedback loop involved in that, ‘is what I like what's important, as contrasted with what's accurate?’
And this whole thing of objective versus subjective just absolutely drives me nuts. The person who ‘objectively’ accurately remembers the movie is the one likely to subjectively understand the meaning in the piece. That’s a guiding principle: we deliver an accurate rendition of the tape, prior to its recording. As strange as that sounds – we’re closer to the console than the playback. That transcends the argument about subjectivity. It’s objectively better and it sounds it.
I'm constantly finding details in records that I didn't know were there. Like the end of “Cherish” by the Association. What the f*ck is that thing on the right? The right [channel] is where the sweetening is. The left channel's all backing track. The center track is vocals. The right side is all the adds, the tambourine, the extra vocal, the drum in a few places where the drum track wasn't strong enough, and at the end of “Cherish” there’s a kind of boing/drone sound where I said “wait a minute, what the hell is that?”
I'll tell you in advance what it is. It’s a koto. Jules Alexander [of the Association] had just come back from being in the service in Japan and brought back a bunch of Japanese instruments. I had never heard that on a remaster. It was there all along. I could hear it in the Plangent version that to some extent unmasked what they paid for, played, labored over. In fact, when I tried a tiny EQ adjustment to bring it into perspective the whole record lit up, sounded like its own reality. That's what I mean by the original intent of the artist, when the mastering reveals what they actually heard, sweated over, without masking by a biased presentation.
My approach to mastering…I'm a grandson of Phil Ramone. He was the Pope. He was the best in New York. HP liked “The Look of Love”? [Jamie is referring to Dusty Springfield’s version on the original Casino Royale soundtrack – Ed.] That’s Phil. And Getz/Gilberto’s “Ipanema” is a classic from A&R Recording, in 1963. Phil engineered it, and owned the studio. He was a strong guy who painted a vivid picture. And a reissue better f*cking sound more like A&R Recording than it does some reissue guy’s favorite cute re-interpretation of how vintage audio should be re-eq’d. It better sound like Phil, not like the mastering guy. The release on the IMPEX SACD I hope hits that mark.
So to sum it up, I guess as a philosophy I’m just trying to be the guy that comes out of the movie theater and remembers the plot line and the details and didn't change it in his damn head.
And those are the things that have driven me since I've been in the business, and they come to some extent out of an art degree with a minor in philosophy. I built Heathkits and I was a musician. So it's a really oddball combination of…back to your original question. What was the original idea of Plangent Processes? I don't know. It's both an amalgamation and a stupid pet trick, but it turned out to have such an effect on the audio quality, and there’s more to come. Hopefully with good heartedness and good intent, we can bring the [audio quality] thing forward without regard to the discussion of whether it's subjective or whatever. It's not subjective. It’s what they did.
FD: You’ve had quite a career in audio and it seems that you know a lot of history about making records. You’ve mentioned elsewhere that Al Schmitt is one of the greats.
JH: Well I started paying attention to engineering credits in 1962. Little Peggy March [who had a 1963 hit with “I Will Follow Him” – Ed.] . Mickey Crofford at RCA …1960 to 1966 is a little bit of a mystery as far as [knowledge of] engineering and mastering goes. Everybody knows about Bones Howe and the Mamas and the Papas, Bernie Grundman’s work, Artisan (sound recorders), Bruce Botnick with the Doors…they don't know that [Elektra Records] producer/engineer] Bruce Botnick also did “Lies” by the Knickerbockers. He had a major career with some great records before the Doors thing happened. [Botnick also produced and/or engineered records by Love, the Rolling Stones, Eddie Money, Kenny Loggins, and others – Ed.]. And Al Schmitt would have been a historic figure in American history and culture for having recorded the beauty and aching emotion of Sam Cooke’s civil rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come” if he’d never done anything else. And of course he did a lot.
There were other greats, lesser-known. One was a guy at Bell Sound in New York who was really good and we've never heard of him: Harry Yarmark, whom I loved as an engineer and as a great guy, unsung. He and Roy Halee traded tracking and mixing tasks back and forth. He did “Leader of the Pack” (by the Shangri-Las). He did the tracking on [the Lovin’ Spoonful’s] “Do You Believe in Magic.” Harry did some of the Four Seasons records. He mixed (the Shangri-Las) “I Can Never Go Home Anymore.” They made him mix it for three hours until he finally burst into tears. They [finally] said, “that's it!!!” They ran it down the hall and made a lacquer of it. It was on WABC two hours later. But they mixed it until he cried, because that's when he and they knew they had it.
I'm thinking about starting a small label that's all-digital, reissuing some of these older singles in hi-res because they sound amazing when the older machines’ flaws are fixed…and they were important in their time. I can't seem to get past the idea that labels ignore all but their very top tier artists and drive them into the ground. One of the titles that I'd like to get a hold of is Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brazil ’66. You know who did Sergio Mendes and Brazil ’66? Bruce Botnick. That's Botnick at Sunset Sound [Recorders in Hollywood].
FD: Oh, I love that record. My parents loved it. My mother loved that record. I grew up listening to that.
JH: “One Note Samba.” Are you kidding? That's a f*cking great record. [But] you never hear it at the audio trade shows. And I think it would be the next “trade show” record. If I can get my hands on it…if you know anybody…who would like to make a couple of bucks on a reissue of that, I'm looking for help. The other of Bruce’s and Jac Holzman’s I'm trying to get my hands on, which was [co-engineered by] Brooks Arthur, is The Circle Game, the Tom Rush record on Elektra, which is a gorgeous recording and a really iconic record. I want to figure out how to get these records back in play; the major labels don't seem to want to release anything other than Miles Davis, Simon and Garfunkel, and Billy Joel, and then Miles Davis, and Simon and Garfunkel, and Billy Joel, and Miles…
FD: I wonder if the labels just don't want to spend the money to use Plangent Processes, or if they don't think it’s commercially viable, and if they put “Remastered with Plangent Processes” on the album cover, will anybody care?
JH: I don’t think it’s just cost, it’s also the analog vs digital vs vinyl vs common sense. You simply wouldn’t believe how many points of pushback there are with something new like this. Which is 20 years old this year… The old-school mixers rebel at the notion that their work could be improved, as if we were fixing their work rather than the machines’ fighting them. One of the biggest names in the business harbored that grudge for many years, I hope I straightened it out. I would never articulate it as us fixing their work. Their work is marvelous. That’s on the pro side. Then on the audiophile side, and the A&R at the labels are kowtowing to this: as soon as you mention that there’s a digital step in [the remastering] it’s “compromised.” Only AAA is legit. And the labels like Audio Fidelity, Acoustic Sounds and Chad etc.…they know their audience and unfortunately they can sometimes be utterly unapproachable about anything from outside their own cloister. We’ve done demos of material from their actual releases where we’re beating what they’ve put out, without messing with the mastering. They refuse to listen. It’s actually gotten pretty heated, but when you believe you’re right you can’t back down.
At this point there’s only two “names” in reissue disk cutting – I’ll let you guess who. I think it's unfortunate the business has gotten so siloed with these mythologies [about sound quality and keeping vinyl mastering all-analog] that I know are technically solvable and that the open-minded audio community would enjoy. But to these guys I start talking about technical solutions and their eyes glaze over, it doesn’t fit that arcane model. But on the Steve Hoffman forums and other venues, we know we have a strong following. Some sales happen because we’re credited, and defended as high-quality in the constant shoot-out wars. The work does speak for itself. Bob Ludwig is a big advocate, as was Phil Ramone before he passed. We have customers that have used us on everything for the past 20 years. So, it’s mystifying why the residual parochial pushback is still lingering. In the past I haven’t really bitched about it for fear of losing business. On the other hand, how’m I gonna know the difference, right? But I see many fans on the forums that love what they hear and we’re grateful they acknowledge it.
FD: I’d like to give readers some examples of recordings that have been done with Plangent Processes so they can hear it for themselves. (Please refer to the list at the end of this article.)
FD: The difference in what the Plangent system does to improve the recordings is instantaneously obvious to me, and my hearing is screwed up and I'm not shy about telling people that. I can still hear a 16 kHz tone, but the drop off in volume is ridiculous.
JH: As long as you can hear [up to] about 10 or 11 kHz, not only is there not a whole hell of a lot [of musical signal] there, and it doesn't materially change the balance in the music in a way that's going to throw you off. I’ve got a kid [working for me] that can tell me if there's some supersonic sh*t going on up there. 15kHz is over-rated. I’m good to about 14, which is nuts considering I’m 71…
But I’m committed to the philosophical discussion, and it drives what we’ve built, what we hoped to contribute… I really need to put this over, and I repeat: I'm 71. I do not have another 10 years to be f*cking around with people saying this is subjective, objective or whatever. [I have] a long-term philosophy of wanting to bridge these gaps, because we're all wanting the same thing.
Selected Re-masterings Using Plangent Processes
Note: all of these are from the original stereo or multitrack masters, not from dubs or safeties.
Bruce Springsteen – all analog albums transferred/processed mastered by Bob Ludwig and currently in release:
Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.
The Wild, the Innocent & the E-Street Shuffle
Born To Run
Darkness on the Edge Of Town
Nebraska
Born In the USA
Chapter and Verse
The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story
The Ties That Bind: The River Collection
Various live concert recordings at the Roxy Theatre, Agora Ballroom, Capitol Theatre, and Madison Square Garden
Queen – A Night at the Odeon, Hammersmith 1975
Hungarian Rhapsody: Queen Live at Knebworth Park 1986
Bohemian Rhapsody DVD
Joni Mitchell – Live at Canterbury House (Grammy nomination)
The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949 (Grammy winner)
The Rolling Stones – Charlie Is My Darling documentary (Grammy winner}
Erroll Garner – Concert By The Sea (Grammy nomination), and the entire Erroll Garner catalog
Neil Young – The Archives Vol. 1 1963 – 1972 (including Live at The Riverboat)
Neil Young Archives Vol. 2: 1972 – 1976
Agnostic Front – Victim In Pain
Dire Straits – Love Over Gold (Mobile Fidelity)
The Doors – transferred/processed and with Bruce Botnick, mastered by Bernie Grundman:
Waiting For The Sun (50th Anniversary Edition)
The Soft Parade (50th Anniversary Edition)
L.A. Woman (50th Anniversary Edition)
Morrison Hotel (50th Anniversary Edition)
The White Stripes – White Blood Cells (Deluxe Edition)
The White Stripes – Elephant
Aretha Franklin – The Atlantic Singles Collection 1967 – 1970 (mono)
Bill Evans – You Must Believe In Spring
Vince Guaraldi – Black Orpheus
Marcel Dupré – The Mercury Living Presence Recordings
Aaron Copland – Symphony No. 3 on Mercury Living Presence
Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble on Mercury Living Presence
The Grateful Dead: all studio albums (American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, etc.) in current release
All live recordings released since 2005, including the entire 76-CD Europe ’72 box set
Tim Buckley – Live at the Folklore Center 1967
Doc and Merle Watson – Never The Same Way Once: May 2, 1974
Joan Baez – The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
Country Joe and the Fish – I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin’-to-Die
The Association – And Then…Along Comes The Association
Feature films with soundtracks recorded on 35 mm magnetic tape:
From Here To Eternity
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Cabaret
Camelot
Young Frankenstein
West Side Story
South Pacific
Oklahoma!
Five Easy Pieces
The Long Hot Summer
Picnic
The Fly
Lost Planet
Desirée
Curse of the Mummy's Tomb
Frequency
Dark Wave
Lost Horizon
Badlands
Experiment In Terror
The Young Lions
