Issue 166

This follow-up to Part One in Issue 165 covers the last of the currently-available Steven Wilson XTC catalog album remix/remasters in 2-disc CD/Blu-ray sets — well, almost. I’m still missing the pseudo-XTC Dukes of Stratosphear’s Psurroundabout Ride, which collects two albums, 25 O’Clock (1985) and Psonic Psunspot (1987) in a CD/Blu-ray set. That corresponds with all the others in terms of high-res stereo and surround tracks and gazillions of extras – it’s on the way, just hasn’t gotten here yet.

There are still a few XTC albums that await the Steven Wilson treatment; I touched on the ongoing search for the multi-track masters of English Settlement last issue. I’m also particularly interested in a remix of that album’s underrated follow-up, 1983’s Mummer, which has also yet to appear. Apparently the multi-track master tapes are missing for it as well, and you get the impression that Wilson is particularly unhappy with not being able to do that particular remix, because it was the first XTC album that he ever heard in its entirety. I just stumbled onto an XTC fan site, xtclimelight.com; the link from September 2021 takes you to an episode that includes a podcast that features an interview with Steven Wilson moderated by Mark Fisher of xtclimelight.com. It’s over an hour, but contains a ton of interesting information about Steven Wilson’s remix process for both high-resolution stereo and surround, as well as his experiences in remixing the XTC catalog albums. It’s fascinating, to say the least, and well worth your time and effort. Steven Wilson is irreverent, brilliant, and charming at the same time, and his insight into the process is both intensely interesting and totally captivating. Check it out!

In addition to my upgraded digital front end, I also just received the KLH Model 5 loudspeakers for review, and took another listen to my 24/96 rips of all these albums on the new setup, after the Model 5s had about a week to get broken in, of course. I think the sound quality is pretty intoxicating, though my neighbor Bob came over for a listen, and after several, several 9.9% dark beers, he rather drunkenly pronounced that he was “unimpressed.” You can’t please everybody!

XTC – Black Sea (Steven Wilson remix/remaster)

1980’s Black Sea was the band’s fourth studio album, the follow-up to Drums and Wires, and used the same production team of Steve Lillywhite and engineer Hugh Padgham. The working title for the record was Working Under Pressure, which Andy Partridge felt epitomized the crush of attempting to balance the demands of constant touring and studio work on new albums. Record label execs at Virgin expressed their discontent with the title, and Partridge relented and changed it to Black Sea. After its release in September 1980, XTC toured extensively in support of the album as the opening act for the Police. Andy Partridge’s level of fatigue and near-nervous breakdown reached a head during the tour, and by the time 1982’s English Settlement had been released, XTC had ceased touring completely.

Prior to beginning work on Drums and Wires, Colin Moulding had already pronounced that XTC were ready to move beyond the “quirky nonsense” that had pervaded their first two studio releases. And while that record was definitely a move in that direction – yielding some of the band’s most recognizable tunes – Black Sea solidified XTC’s ability to crank out hit singles. These included tunes like “Generals and Majors,” “Towers of London,” Respectable Street,” and “Sgt. Rock (is Going to Help Me),” which combined to help the album reach No. 16 on the UK charts, and it even dented the US charts at No. 41. The album debuted to very favorable reviews, and helped propel XTC to the next level artistically, despite Andy Partridge’s escalating problems with the band’s relentless touring.

The songs absolutely sparkle on the new remix and in high resolution, this record has never sounded better! Steve Lillywhite did an excellent job of capturing XTC’s desired bass and drum sound to underpin the proceedings, and Dave Gregory’s guitars absolutely crunch throughout the songs. This is a great-sounding record! This reissue is probably the first time that it’s been remastered from the original source tapes in any digital format. I have to admit, listening to the remixes of this album was probably the first time I’d listened to it in quite some time, and it’s a truly excellent album. XTC was moving in a new direction musically, but was still able to retain the poppiness that gave so many of the songs such mass appeal. As the precursor to English Settlement, it unquestionably laid the groundwork for the band’s next phase.

The CD contains not only the remixed album tracks, but there are also eight (!) bonus tracks. Of course, the gem is the Blu-ray disc, which contains all the 24/96 high-res remixes of the original album in both stereo and surround versions. That goes for the eight bonus tracks as well – one of the highlights is the final bonus track, Andy Partridge’s tongue-in-cheek “History of Rock ’n’ Roll.” The duration is only 20 seconds, but it’s maybe the most entertaining 20 seconds on the entire album. You get the high-resolution instrumental tracks of the studio album in both stereo and surround mixes, along with a flat transfer of the original album mix in high-res. As well as tons of demos, work tapes, rehearsals, and rough mixes from the sessions. As well as official videos for “Towers of London,” “Generals and Majors,” and “Respectable Street.” For XTC fans, it doesn’t get much better.

Ape House Records, CD/Blu-ray 2-disc set

XTC – Oranges & Lemons (Steven Wilson remix/remaster)

1989’s Oranges & Lemons was XTC’s ninth studio album, and the songs were intended to evoke a sort of Sixties psychedelia. The album cover art was commissioned to specifically resemble the work of German artist Heinz Edelmann, who served as the lead art director on The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine film. In appearance, it is a de facto homage to the artwork of the movie, lending even more of an aura of psychedelia to the proceedings. The album was recorded in the US at Ocean Way Studios in Hollywood, a first for XTC, and was produced with American producer Paul Fox (it was his first job as an album producer!) in tandem with drummer Pat Mastelotto (later of King Crimson fame). Production costs for the album exceeded a quarter of a million dollars; at several points, Virgin Records threatened to pull the plug on the project as the costs continued to skyrocket.

Oranges & Lemons really resonated with me; I felt at the time of its release (and pretty much still do) that it was one of the most perfectly-realized albums released by anyone in the Eighties. That said, I felt parts of the album were almost and perhaps even outright unlistenably shrill. Any CD version I owned sounded basically awful; when an LP became available, I grabbed it, in hopes that it would tame some of the CD’s harshness. Nope – the LP was marginally better, but not nearly enough to satisfy me. One of the worst moments comes at the very beginning, at the intro to “Garden of Earthly Delights,” where the instrumental mix is a bouncing, “Summer of Love-y” fusion of sitars, tabla, percussion, and voices that comes to a crescendo at the song’s start. At the point where the intro transitions to the main body of the song, the crush of piercing high frequencies is painful and exceptionally distorted. While the rest of the album has its share of overly hot treble response, that opening track transition has almost completely ruined my ability to enjoy this album, even 30-plus years later.

In the Steven Wilson podcast I linked to in my intro, he talks extensively about Oranges & Lemons. He refers to the album’s harsh sound quality as what’s known in the recording industry as a “cocaine mix,” where the high-frequency content of everything on tape was mixed at a grossly exaggerated level. Because that’s what the coked-out engineers, producers, band, and listeners wanted to hear! Wilson does go on in his statements in the podcast to clarify that he has no idea if anyone in the band or in the studio was actually doing coke at the time. But the end result of the overall sound of Oranges & Lemons is emblematic of a classic “cocaine mix.” Here’s the good news: while consciously avoiding reducing the high-frequency sound content of the album too drastically, Wilson has managed to achieve a perfect balance. The new remixed version of the intro to “Garden of Earthly Delights” now exhibits perfect clarity, and the transition to the main body of the song is infinitely listenable. You can crank the song to reference levels now without any fear that the painful oscillation of the previous mix might actually damage your eardrums!

The overall effect of the new mixes on this classic album is that now, a record that was only a triumph on an artistic level is now a sonic triumph as well. This album always had the potential to be absolute ear candy, and now, with Steven Wilson’s new remixes, it finally is. Much of this album has a very poppy Eighties sound, and now, hummable songs like “The Mayor of Simpleton” and “King For a Day” sound so very much more listenable without the edginess of the previous mixes. Steven Wilson’s realization of Oranges & Lemons is a dream for XTC fans everywhere.

The two-disc set has the now-expected assortment of extras; but the CD only has the remixed stereo tracks. The Blu-ray disc adds 24/96 high-res remixes of the original album, along with a bonus track, “My Train is Coming,” which was recorded live at Ocean Way. There’s also the now de rigueur inclusion of the high-resolution instrumental tracks of the studio album in both stereo and surround mixes. On the podcast, Wilson commented that while he originally just kind of decided to throw the instrumentals in because there was plenty of space on the Blu-ray and it was effortless to simply turn off the vocal tracks, the feedback from fans has been unbelievable. There’s also a flat transfer of the original album mix in high resolution, as well as tons of demos, interesting work tapes, and rough mixes from the sessions. You also get five videos – one of them, “The Road to Oranges & Lemons” is a making of video that will be of particular interest to fans. Very highly recommended.

Ape House Records, CD/Blu-ray 2-disc set

XTC – Nonsuch (Steven Wilson remix/remaster)

XTC took a two-year hiatus after the recording of Oranges & Lemons, with the various members pursuing side projects and Andy Partridge even getting involved in a proposed kids’ game show for television. Partridge had also been busy writing songs in that period, and towards the end of the prolonged break, was ready to return to the studio. Virgin Records wasn’t too keen with the songs Partridge presented them, and even went as far as to demand a rewrite. Partridge and Moulding refused, and after many months, Virgin caved and gave them the go-ahead to proceed. Unfortunately, during Virgin’s waffling over the songs, XTC’s first choice of producer for the new album, Steve Lillywhite, became unavailable, as did an ongoing cavalcade of choices. Over a period of months, Andy Partridge was growing discontented about not being able to secure a producer, and was even quoted as saying that “he would have given the job to a window cleaner, had one been available.” At the bottom of the list was Gus Dudgeon, mostly famous for his work with David Bowie and Elton John, but Partridge was too anxious to get on with it to be excessively choosy. The band arrived at Chipping Norton Recording Studios in Oxfordshire in July 1991, and recorded the album in about four months. Nonsuch would become the band’s tenth studio album.

XTC moved away from most of the psychedelic influences that were so prominent on both Skylarking and Oranges & Lemons, and crafted songs that displayed a much wider range of musical styles. Andy Partridge composed many of his songs for Nonsuch on keyboards, which was a significant departure for him. Partridge reportedly clashed with producer Gus Dudgeon repeatedly throughout the recording sessions, especially after Dudgeon initially refused to include the song “Rook” on the album, which Partridge felt was one of the best tracks laid down during the sessions. Partridge never allowed his disagreements with Dudgeon to devolve to the level they did during the recording of Skylarking with Todd Rundgren at the helm. However, he and Dudgeon clashed strongly over the mixing of the album, and Virgin Records was none too pleased with the sound of three master tapes Dudgeon presented them. Sound familiar? Somewhere Todd Rundgren is laughing his (expletive deleted) off. Dudgeon was fired after strike three, and Nick Davis (the man who did the awful remixing of the Genesis catalog in 2008) was brought in for the album’s final mix. Partridge has been said to have frequently made light of his encounters with Dudgeon in the years following Nonsuch’s release.

Nonsuch was undoubtedly XTC’s darkest album ever, thematically, with many of the songs reflecting Partridge and Moulding’s discontent with the political environment in the UK at the time. Partridge’s “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” was one of the lead singles, and the most rocking song on the entire album, spinning a tale of greed and deceit and one man’s attempt to rise above it all. Partridge has stated that the song is about a pumpkin he carved for Halloween for his children, and rather than disposing of it, he left it in his garden to decay and disintegrate. As he observed the ongoing decay, it birthed one of his best songs in the process! The album’s other single, “The Disappointed,” tells a tale of people who have been unlucky in love, and form an organization to commiserate. A proposed third single, “Wrapped in Grey,” was rejected by Virgin Records due to the album’s relatively poor performance. The rejection ultimately fueled Partridge to hasten the band’s split from Virgin following the release of Nonsuch; they eventually signed with Cooking Vinyl, a more artist-centric record label. The album closes with the song “Books are Burning,” where Partridge opines that “where they burn books, people are next.” Very cheerfully dystopic, no?

Apparently, Kirsty Wark, then host of BBC 2’s The Late Show, somehow managed to coax Andy Partridge to assemble XTC into the studio for a one-off live recording of “Books Are Burning.” Just watching the video, it’s amazing to see XTC playing live, especially after a nearly ten-year absence from the stage. Andy Partridge’s guitar solo at the end of the song is absolutely incendiary! Oh, what might have been…I was totally reminded of seeing the Beatles on the rooftop during the filming of Get Back. They hadn’t played live in forever, but they hadn’t lost a step as a live band. Also true for XTC in this video; the similarities here are quite eerie, to say the least.

True to form, the CD contains the remixed album tracks and a single bonus track, Colin Moulding’s “Didn’t Hurt a Bit.” Of course, the Blu-ray disc also follows form and contains all the 24/96 high-res remixes of the original album in both stereo and surround versions. There’s also the high-resolution instrumental tracks of the studio album in both stereo and surround mixes, along with a flat transfer of the original album mix in high resolution. The extras also include demos and work tapes, along with short films for the two singles, “The Disappointed” and “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead.” The Blu-ray contains an additional 48 minutes of footage shot during the recording sessions, and that alone will prove invaluable to true XTC fans. This set is a no-brainer; don’t dilly-dally, grab one while they’re still available!

Ape House Records, CD/Blu-ray 2-disc set

Header image courtesy of the author.

It has been quite a while since 1989, when professional disk mastering system manufacturing came to an end. To be precise, it has been 33 years, during which the world went through a phase of believing that the vinyl record has been rendered obsolete by digital media, followed by a major resurgence over the past decade. Vinyl record manufacturing equipment is large and heavy. It takes up a lot of space, which could be utilized to manufacture something else, such as CDs, bug zappers or toilet paper. During times of low interest in the vinyl record, there wasn’t much of a market for the obsolete manufacturing equipment, except for the one option that is always open for heavy items made of metal: the scrapyard! Record presses, disk mastering lathes and other equipment were melted into soda cans, sewer lids, or worse.

As we discovered during the course of several previous episodes, this had always been a very limited market in the first place and not that many of these machines were ever made. The fact that many of them had been scrapped, and many others had been neglected (left out in the open with no protection from the elements, or stored in damp warehouses, to be frequently bumped by forklift truck operators still suffering the effects of their weekend hangover) meant that by the time the resurgence came and these obsolete chunks of metal suddenly went from being worth their weight in scrap minus the transportation cost to the scrapyard, to being worth insane amounts of money (with prices regularly being readjusted for scarcity with every forklift accident), there really weren’t that many of them left.

A rather young and enthusiastic individual from Switzerland took it upon himself to keep vinyl spinning and to continue the Neumann tradition. Flo Kaufmann, a rather eccentric artist who is notoriously difficult to contact (although this greatly depends on cultural perspective regarding what is considered easy to contact; this statement is made from an American standpoint…) and whose website home page simply states, “welcome to my world of m.e.a.t.” (which stands for Media, Engineering, Art, Technology), had persistently pursued a friendship with the former Neumann employee who had been tasked with fulfilling the contractual obligations for support for Neumann lathes. This contact eventually led to Flo being able to obtain his first Neumann lathe. Apart from cutting records, he went on to offer repairs and servicing of disk mastering lathes, and eventually, along with a group of friends, he started up the FloKaSon company, an entire pressing plant, and developed a range of disk mastering products. One of his first products was the Vinylium Kingston Dubcutter, a portable contraption that could be placed over a Technics SL1200 turntable and could actually cut records. As with other products that were intended for use with the Technics SL1200, its weakest point was the lack of a platter, bearing and drive system designed to withstand the cutting forces.

While the Dubcutter did not go very far as a commercial product, it did come with a stereophonic cutter head (the Vinylium SC-99) that was capable of outstanding results. Many of these cutter heads have since been removed from the original portable unit and used with one of the larger professional disk mastering systems described in the previous episodes.

A Vinylium SC-99 cutter head on a Neumann VMS-70 disk mastering lathe. All images courtesy of Flo Kauffman, FloKaSon.

Sometime after that, another cutter head was to follow, called the Caruso. Very few were made and if used with a good lathe and cutting amplifier system, they are capable of results that can directly compete with any other professional cutter head ever made. I have personally used a Caruso for several years, with a cutting amplifier system of my own design, to much critical acclaim for the results.

FloKaSon Caruso cutter head, on a vintage Thorens lathe overhead mechanism with a Technics turntable.

Vinylium SC-99 cutter head.

The underside of a Vinylium SC-99 cutter head.

Cutting amplifiers and a pitch/groove depth automation system were also among Kaufmann’s product line. The pitch depth automation systems were introduced in 1998 with the Pitch98, later updated to the Pitch13 in 2013 and the current Pitch18, available since 2018. These systems are perhaps one of the most successful products, developed by Flo Kaufmann and his associate Jvo Studer. They can be found as aftermarket upgrades on several Neumann, Scully, Fairchild and other lathes.

At some point in the 2010s, Flo Kaufmann started the FloKaSon AM44 project, aiming to produce a very limited number of complete disk recording lathes, based on original Neumann lathe beds that had been cast during the World War II materials shortages. Instead of cast aluminum, which is what had been used for all other Neumann beds, these were made of cast iron. They were discovered stashed away in a warehouse in Germany and had never been used to build up a complete lathe. There were around 30 lathe beds, in an as-cast, unmachined condition. There were no other parts, so all other parts had to be made from scratch. I received and put together the first functional prototype to leave the FloKaSon laboratory. Many years of research and development were to follow and by now, a few of these machines can be seen in use around the world.

More recently, Flo has introduced a few additional cutter head models. The DiAlba and LaCallas are a further evolution of the Neumann SX-74, with a focus on added reliability (cutter heads are all generally quite fragile and perhaps the most frequently repaired component of a disk mastering system). Last time I checked, a LaCallas would set you back CHF 33,000, without considering the lathe and cutting electronics needed.

FloKaSon DiAlba cutter head.

DMM cutter heads made by FloKaSon, along the lines of the Neumann 9X84.

The underside of a FloKaSon LaCallas cutter head.

Following the February 2020 fire at the Apollo Masters Corporation vinyl mastering plant in Banning, California, which destroyed one of the two remaining plants that were manufacturing lacquer disks in the world (the other one being in Japan and still the world’s only remining source for master disks in the world), FloKaSon also made a limited number of SX-84/DMM cutter head copies, to be used on copper disks and offer an alternative for those who would prefer to not rely on lacquer availability.

Flo Kaufmann is also one of the key people behind the Phonocut, a crowd-funded project aiming to develop a fully automated, desktop record cutting machine that can cut on 10-inch blanks. A prototype was presented, but the website informs us that the very earliest the final product could possibly ship is the end of 2024, with a new estimated RRP of €8,000-10,000 (from the originally stated campaign price of €999, later amended to €1,799). The other people and organizations behind the Phonocut are Florian “Doc” Kapps, Creaholic, KamranV, and David Bohnett.

FloKaSon Caruso cutter head.

Inside a FloKaSon brushless DC motor.

Flo is one of only a handful of people (approximately 7 or 8) in the world who is actively working on keeping this technology going and take it a step further where possible. He has been very influential in my own development in this direction, and I have enjoyed conversations and exchanges of information and knowledge with him over the years. As with several other people involved in this sector, his other interests include large-format photography (on film), classic cars, and homemade electronic musical instruments. His main artistic occupation involves art installations using electronics and audio and video technology under the project name bricolage universel. One of his performances involved cutting a record groove on a beer can.

FloKaSon cutting electronics.

Header image: a Neumann-based FloKaSon AM44 disk mastering lathe. Courtesy of Flo Kaufmann.

Previous installments appeared in Issues 165, 164, 163, 162, 161, 160, 159, 158, 157, 156, 155, 154, 153, 152, and 151.

After an almost two-year continuous drought, it’s quite invigorating to see live music back with a vengeance. Certainly, live streaming was helpful in filling the void, but there’s a different kind of engagement and visceral experience that comes with in-person music that can’t be captured via streaming, especially when the venue has great sound.

I was stoked to see the online music publication Pitchfork’s list of “The 80 Most Anticipated Tours of Summer 2022,” with an eye towards taking in a few. Admittedly, there are several artists on the Pitchfork list that I’m not even remotely familiar with, which likely wouldn’t be the case if I were still in my 20s.

I was especially amused by the names several artists have chosen for their 2022 tours. Many tour names are linked to whatever new or most recent LP they are plugging, but far from all.

Paul McCartney was out early behind his “Got Back North American Tour,“ grammar my high school English teacher would have vigorously circled in red, but forgivable wordplay for any McCartney or Beatles fan. As you probably heard, Sir Paul turned 80 while on tour. Is 80 the new 70? The only other vocation where folks are gainfully employed eight decades in are in Congress, and those peeps are doing a lot more shufflin’ than rockin’.

Whether intentional or not, several artists are making political statements with their title choices. The Weather Station is touring in support of their album Ignorance. However, when the album name is strung together as “Ignorance World Tour,” it reads as if the band is casting aspersions on the state of our planet. Jack White certainly isn’t pulling any punches with his current events titled “The Supply Chain Issues Tour.” Lorde is supporting her latest LP release, Solar Power, with a tour of the same name. Just a hunch, neither Shell nor Mobil are sponsors.

Tears for Fears stole a page from Malcolm Gladwell with “The Tipping Point World Tour 2022.” In his best-selling book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Gladwell suggests that “ideas, products, messages and behaviors at a certain point spread like viruses in achieving critical mass.” TFF’s Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith are hoping for similar karma, but first they might need to comp Gladwell with lots of tickets to stave off impending litigation.

Spoon’s “Lucifer on the Sofa Tour” is in support of the band’s critically acclaimed 10^th studio album of the same name. The title is a bit dark and satanic for my taste. Maybe post-tour they’ll trade-in the sofa for a couch and a therapist.

The indie UK band Dry Cleaning boringly titled its tour “North American Tour 2022.” I would have gone with the “No Starch Tour” or “Pressed, Not Wrinkled Tour,” both a bit more playful and on-brand.

The Weeknd’s tour is called “After Hours Til Dawn,” an apt title if he was playing the Fillmore East in 1970, where artists actually could play unabated til dawn. My, how we miss you, Bill Graham!

Bad Bunny’s tour is simply titled the “World’s Hottest Tour.” Mr. Bunny probably doesn’t mean “hottest” in a climatic sense, though many of his tour dates are scheduled for the dead of summer.  Rather, it’s a touch of self-aggrandizement with a superlative setting a bar of high expectation. (Overconfidence isn’t a bad thing, is it?)

A big part of the decision-making process for me is not only whom to see, but where they are playing. Let’s face it, not all venues are created equally, particularly from an acoustic standpoint. A bad sounding venue for me is a no-no.

For many years while residing in New York City I wouldn’t attend a concert at Madison Square Garden (MSG) because the acoustics were so bloody awful. Of course, seat location and a venue’s sound system are critical elements, but many large arenas have painfully bad sound with lots of echo and reflections. Since MSG’s billion-dollar renovation was completed in 2013, I can honestly say the venue’s acoustics are dramatically improved.

In NYC I never gave too much thought if the day’s biggest-grossing artists planned to play the market. Most generally do. However, in a smaller city like Seattle, my new hometown, that historically hasn’t been the case. For top-of-the-chart artists, Seattle has traditionally competed for bookings with arenas in Tacoma, Portland and Vancouver, each in relative close proximity. Bookings for smaller-grossing artists and indie bands were less problematic, as several smaller, top-notch venues have consistently contributed to Seattle’s well-deserved reputation as a top music city.

The biggest impediment for booking big name artists in Seattle was KeyArena, the city’s largest venue that for years many referred to as an echo chamber. The original structure was built for the 1962 World’s Fair and was heralded for its architectural design and unique pyramid roof. However, like many large arenas constructed in the 1960s, sound quality was not a strong consideration, nor was the era’s technology particularly advanced. A three-year privately-financed $1.15 billion renovation transformed the venue into a multi-use state-of-the art-facility that re-opened in 2021 as Climate Pledge Arena (CPA).

Holiday lights outside Climate Pledge Arena, December 2021. Courtesy of David Conger/Climate Pledge Arena.

Randy Foster, Director, Production at CPA, was kind enough to give me a behind-the-scenes tour of the new venue. I was curious to understand the thought process that went into the venue’s acoustic design, and in mitigating the unwanted reverberation and echoes that can plague large arenas.

The lead architectural firm on the renovation, Populous, had to overcome many design and structural impediments. The venue’s exterior and pyramid roof are designated landmarks that could not be altered. As a first step, the project’s structural engineers and general contractor Mortenson decided to lift and suspend the 44-million-pound roof above the site so that 660,000 cubic yards of soil could be excavated from the base of the former KeyArena. A truly marvelous engineering feat!

Venue operator, Oak View Group, also brought in high-end audio and video technology consultants Idibri and Diversified Systems for video projection and sound enrichment. An important add-on was the building of an intricate steel grid and rigging system at the top of the arena’s interior. This newly-designed system enables both lighting and audio to be rigged from the very front to the very back of the arena, enhancing sound even in hard-to-reach upper-seating areas, where venue acoustics often are at their worst.

The rigging system gives front-of-house (FOH) sound engineers far more flexibility with speaker placement and sound control. “It’s one of the few arenas with a rigging system that runs the entire span of the venue,” added CPA’s Foster. “Old-school venues were built and engineered with their rigging steel almost exclusively at stage end.”

In smaller venues and clubs, artists frequently tap into the house PA system. At the arena level, however, artists bring their own sound. Speaker system setups generally operate on a “line array” principle, which essentially means that by changing the shape of the line array, engineers can control the sound at various points in a venue. In theory, with a strong line array, either by physical placement or by using digital signal processing, an engineer can deliver quality sound to the back of the venue without the front sounding excessively loud.

Software is used to help determine where best to hang speakers from the steel rigging, based on a venue’s physical dimensions and other considerations. The ultimate goal is to create an acoustically-sound environment that provides a relatively flat frequency response with little room for coloration (e.g., distortion, reflection). “A FOH engineer needs to trust the building, and (in a figurative sense) the building needs to trust the engineer,” added CPA’s Foster. “It’s a give and take process with the ultimate goal of achieving an acoustical balance throughout the venue.”

There are many different types of acoustic treatments and sound mitigation solutions available to venue designers and sound engineers today. The folks at CPA went all in with Lapendary Panels, manufactured by MBI Products Company. They didn’t install just a few hundred panels; instead, they used a mind-boggling 5,155 of them. The large acoustical banners are suspended vertically from the venue’s ceiling, and are specifically designed to reduce reverb, reflection and sound intensity.

Lapindary Panels installed in the roof of Climate Pledge Arena. Courtesy of David Conger/Climate Pledge Arena.

Another acoustic consideration was capping the number of visible corporate suites in the bowl area to 40 (vs. 150-plus in Los Angeles’ Crypto.com arena, for example), minimizing sound reflection from the glass windows that front each suite. There are an additional 19 tunnel suites that are smartly designed with seating in the bowl area, and the entertaining space recessed behind the suite’s seating.

For sporting events, venue loudness is always a welcome, critical element contributing to a team’s “home court advantage.” Conversely, with concert events, venue loudness is problematic. To address the two divergent needs, CPA is also equipped with retractable 40-foot acoustic curtains, that can be drawn open to enhance bowl loudness during sporting events or closed to mute reflection during concerts.

Significant design improvements in the venue were also made at the “back of the house.” The arena now has an “artists’ compound” consisting of four large state-of-the art dressing rooms, while eight new loading docks (vs. two previously) make the load-in and load-out of concert gear far more efficient. Added CPA’s Foster, “in the past 15 to 20 years, tour production has grown considerably and become far more elaborate. What was an eight-truck show is now a 25-truck show.”

The first “unofficial” concert at the venue was Seattle’s very own Foo Fighters and Death Cab For Cutie. Front man and Foo Fighters founder Dave Grohl, who has played the venue numerous times in its earlier incarnation as KeyArena, had this to say: “It’s the best the venue has ever sounded.” A nice endorsement, even if Dave is a bit of a homer!

In sum, CPA is an exquisitely beautiful venue that maintains a level of intimacy rarely seen in a modern-day venue of its size. A lot of time, thought and expense went into the venue’s acoustic design.

Above: Coldplay performing at the official grand opening of Climate Pledge Arena, October 22, 2021. Courtesy of Climate Pledge Arena.

Perhaps you’re wondering what’s up with the venue’s name? Climate Pledge Arena’s goal is to be a carbon-neutral arena. CPA consumes no fossil fuel, and all mechanical, heating, dehumidification and cooking systems are electric. Perhaps the coolest part of the arena’s ecosystem is this: the venue harvests rainwater from its roof, which then is transported to an underground cistern and purified, before it is made into hockey ice to service the NHL’s and the city’s newest sports team, the Seattle Kraken. (I just knew someone could turn Seattle’s rain to gold!)

A cautionary note to the NHL’s drought-stricken LA Kings and Anaheim Ducks: Don’t try this at home!

Header image courtesy of DP Drones/Climate Pledge Arena.

The new Octave Records release, Mini Brazilian Beasts by jazz pianist Carmen Sandim, weaves a boundless wave of piano melodies, sophisticated harmonic concepts, and the musical rhythms and moods of Sandim’s native Brazil into a richly varied album. The recording features Octave Records’ Pure DSD high-resolution recording process, to capture the musicians with stunning warmth, clarity, and spaciousness.

Mini Brazilian Beasts is a captivating showcase for Sandim’s piano and keyboard virtuosity. Sandim, who composed all the music, is joined by world-class guitarist Gilad Hekselman on electric and acoustic guitar, the telepathic accompaniment of Greg Garrison on bass, and Colin Stranahan on drums. Renowned trumpeter Ron Miles makes a guest appearance on the lush, introspective ballad “Glen.” Carmen Sandim grew up in Brazil, studied at Berklee College of Music and is a composer, performer and teacher.

The title track leads off the album with its bouncy melodic leaps, unison piano and guitar melodies, and easygoing swing. Like much of the album, “Disturbia Nervosa” goes beyond postmodern and fusion jazz into new musical explorations. The ballad “Glen” features exquisite playing by trumpeter Miles – sadly, this was to be his last recorded performance. “Enemy” features soaring, virtuosic guitar work by Gilad Hekselman, whose chordal comping and melodic invention simply shines. The solo piano piece, “Eventual Ocean,” and the album’s closer, “Humdrum Heroe,” take listeners through deep, contemplative musical journeys.

Mini Brazilian Beasts, album cover.

Mini Brazilian Beasts was recorded by Colin Bricker and Kevin Lee at Animal Lane Studios in Lyons, Colorado using Octave Records’ Pure DSD process and the Sonoma multi-track DSD recording system, and mastered by Gus Skinas. It features Octave’s premium gold disc formulation, and the disc is playable on any SACD, CD, DVD, or Blu-ray player. Mini Brazilian Beasts also has a high-resolution DSD layer that is accessible by using any SACD player, a PS Audio SACD transport, or by copying the DSD tracks on the included DVD data discs. In addition, the master DSD and PCM files are available for purchase and download (including DSD64, DSDDirect Mastered 192kHz/24-bit, 96kHz/24-bit and 44.1kHz/16-bit PCM), along with 24-karat gold CDs at standard resolution. These CDs have been cut directly off the DSD master using BitPerfect’s state-of-the-art Zephiir filter.

The musicians are captured with remarkable depth, presence and fidelity. It’s a sonic leap forward in musical realism and in bringing the emotional power and nuance of the performances to life.

We talked to Carmen about the making of the album.

Frank Doris: Tell me about your musical background.

Carmen Sandim: I grew up in Brazil. I moved to the US to go to Berklee College of Music. I grew up listening to a lot of Brazilian jazz – my parents were big listeners – and I played viola in orchestra, and piano. So [I heard] a lot of classical music as well. It’s such a wide variety of music we have [in Brazil], such rich rhythms and harmony. When I went to Berklee, I was exposed to American jazz and improvisation. I guess my generation of musicians didn’t have a choice – we heard the popular music of the Nineties too, and the whole [previous] era of rock.

FD: On the album, I hear musical influences from everywhere.

CS: I think just labeling it as “jazz” would be very hard to do. I used to play bass in a punk band growing up!

FD: How’d you come up with Mini Brazilian Beasts” as the title? It’s…different. (laughs).

CS: I have two kids, and when I drive, they like to say, “mom, drive like a, like a Brazilian beast!” (laughs) But really, they are the fast ones, just running around all the time. So the title of the song is for them. I’m the Brazilian beast, and they’re the mini-Brazilian beasts!

FD: What musicians have had a big effect on you?

CS: Milton Nascimento was really influential for me; his music is so “out,” it’s so weird and wonderful. It’s funny that I ended up in Colorado because Ron Miles was always a hero of mine. And then I moved here and discovered he lived here! Also, Art Landy. I teach jazz history, and of course all of the people I talk about are big influences too. Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea.

FD: Your piano playing is just great, and so is Ron Miles. But the more l listened to (guitarist) Gilad Hekselman, the more I thought, this guy is out of this world. So, I Googled him and didn’t know he was such a heavyweight. The two of you fit together perfectly on the album. How did you find him?

CS: I was listening to Spotify, making sandwiches, and they were playing a bunch of Gilad. As I’m making these sandwiches, Ron Miles sends me a text. “I hear Gilad in your music a lot. You should get him for your next album.” And I was listening to Gilad right then! I’m like, I guess there couldn’t be a clearer sign. I thought, he’s a big deal, this guy. He’s never gonna wanna come to Colorado to play with this, you know, piano teacher (laughs). But I called Gilad, sent him my stuff from my first two albums, and he said “yeah, I’m in; I love it.”

FD: How do you write your music?

CS: It the beginning of the quarantine I was not inspired at all. And I felt, oh my God, these nice folks at Octave want to give me money to do something. What an amazing opportunity. And I have no inspiration whatsoever!

It was interesting to come from that kind of place and force inspiration to come up. What ended up being was that I would have these sensations about some topics, and was trying to find a sound that expressed that sensation. With “Mini Brazilian Beasts” [I wanted to express] that joyous thing of running around with my kids. I wrote “Magia Moderna” on the day I took the Moderna vaccine and was thinking, OK, there’s hope here.

I think the isolation affected a lot of musicians. There were no sounds in our heads because we were not out in the world that much; there wasn’t all this input of life and the vital energy wasn’t there. I almost had to be an actor a little bit and pretend that I had that particular energy very strongly. But I got the seed of an idea, then it was easy.

Carmen Sandim.

FD: Interesting. Did you record the album mostly live in the studio, or are there overdubs?

CS: There aren’t that many overdubs because the studio didn’t have isolation booths! It was intense. I remember feeling very nervous being surrounded by these world-class musicians and being like, oh I gotta deliver right now. I cannot redo it.

FD: How did you feel when you heard the music played back with high-resolution sound quality?

CS: It was a different experience, the warmth of the sound and that it sounds like you’re in the room with the musicians. It’s just amazing because it brings the music to the audience in a completely different way.

FD: I’m curious about some of the other song titles. They’re…unique.

CS: “Samsara’s Learning Curve” is about, what gets you through these tough times? “Disturbia Nervosa” – I guess the title talks for itself; the anxiety of, of living through these times. “Glen,” again, Ron Miles is such a big influence. This track was actually the last track he recorded before he died. Glen is his middle name. I dedicated the album to him. “Jumelandia”…my kids are [named] Julian and Melanie. So, [the song is about] the beauty and horror of having two kids stuck at home with you for two years!

“Cassandra Speaks” is based on the mythological [story] of Cassandra. The gods give her the power of seeing the future, but along with it, they, they give her the curse that nobody will believe her. Mm. So it’s a little bit about the times that we have now with women trying to get more equality. “Eventual Ocean”: I sold a house at the very beginning of the pandemic because I could see that with the pandemic, I wouldn’t be able to keep paying the mortgage. It was the day that my friend helped me move. We sat on the balcony of my new apartment. We were talking about how Colorado’s just perfect. But it would be even better if there was an ocean right behind that hill. And my friend said, oh, eventually there will be an ocean there [for me to look at]. I was in this moment of big transition and big changes, and thinking, yeah. Trying to be optimistic that eventually there will be an ocean for me to look at.

For “That’s Just the Way it Is, OK?,” my kids were fighting and my boy had the iPad and my daughter was like, “why do you always get the iPad? It’s my turn to get the iPad!” And he says, “well, that’s just the way it is, OK?” And the little melody of the way that he said it [made me think], oh, that that’s a cool little melody.

FD: The music sounds very hard to play.

CS: I couldn’t have done it without musicians that weren’t of [such a high] caliber.

FD: But the music doesn’t sound like some kind of intellectual noodling. It has feeling.

CS: Thank you so much.

Arthur’s Tavern is one of those New York City gems that have always been among the city’s best-kept secrets. It opened in 1937 as a speakeasy just after the end of Prohibition, and since then has remained a tight live music space with remarkable acoustics, and walls that drip with history, stories, and I’m sure quite a bit of great gossip. Arthur’s Tavern was closed for years, which ended a run that made the little jazz joint on the West Village’s Grove Street home to countless performances by Charlie Parker, among others, who considered Arthur’s his home court. It also was well-known for hosting artists like Mabel Godwin, Al Bundy, and Johnny Parker, and would later become the favorite place for modern-day musicians like Roy Hargrove to lay down some of their most memorable performances.

The venue was acquired by the Blue Note Entertainment Group, an outfit perfectly suited to bringing this wonderful spot to a new kind of glory. The updates they have made give the room just the right amount of sparkle, but leave its rustic roots intact. On June 8, 2022, the Blue Note Entertainment Group hosted a grand reopening/renovation reveal. New Orleans trumpeter Kermit Ruffins and his band The Barbeque Swingers ushered in the joint’s new era. As they made their way across an impromptu set of songs the room became filled with jump classics, Ruffins originals, and some songs that tipped the hat to Kermit’s idol, Louis Armstrong. The mood was festive, the vibe was light-hearted, and the sound just blistered with rollicking piano parts from Yoshitaka “Z2” Tsuji, dazzling drum fills from Jerry Anderson, deep pocket bass lines by Kevin Morris, and of course, rocketing horn howls and vocal hoots from Mr. Ruffins. It was the perfect launchpad for the reopening, and that night, Arthur’s left a mark on everyone.

We had the opportunity to speak later with Blue Note Entertainment Group Chief Operating Officer Tsion Bensusan about why Arthur’s Tavern became a corporate priority, why its legacy matters, and what he sees ahead for this historic musical haunt.

Ray Chelstowski: What prompted the decision to invest in restoring Arthur’s Tavern, and why now?

Tsion Bensusan: The building was bought in the late 1980s by my father, and he kept it running as he wanted to preserve Arthur’s Tavern because it’s been a historic venue in the neighborhood for many years. When he purchased it, it was done [with the intention] to keep Arthur’s Tavern alive. But we weren’t operating it, we gave it to someone to operate. During COVID, the operator disappeared, and we saw that it wasn’t being kept in good condition; things were falling apart and not being fixed. We decided to take it upon ourselves to operate it, bring it back to life, and bring back some of the old musicians that have been performing there for many years.

Tsion Bensusan.

RC: When you were looking to restore the room, what guided the design, and were there any “off the table” items that wouldn’t be subject to discussion?

TB: We had the [interior] designer help us navigate through the [renovation]. When we were doing some demolition we discovered many old elements to Arthur’s that date back to the early 1940s and 1950s. So, we decided to either restore those elements or bring back some of the color elements that were there prior. We found the old ceiling, we found some old color schemes of what the place used to look like, and other hidden things that we discovered by knocking down a wall or two. We tried to bring back as many old elements as we could to preserve the history.

When we were repairing the bathrooms, we found a room. That room was an old storage room and it was covered with a sheetrock wall and there were even weeds growing in it. Inside that room was old glassware and flatware from the early ’40s. We didn’t [make the room part of the renovation] because of some piping issues, but we will in the near future figure out a way to expose it and share that with the public.

RC: When the company was considering buying the location, what drove that decision?

TB: With COVID, and [with] so many other [venues] closing, we wanted to do the opposite. We wanted to have a brand that preserves history. COVID forced a lot of places that have been around for such a long time to close, and it just wasn’t worth it to them to reopen, and we didn’t want that to happen to Arthur’s. We wanted to preserve it and bring it back because it’s a nice piece of history in New York.

RC: Rooms like Arthur’s have great stories to tell, and in speaking with Kermit we agreed that there are definitely “musical ghosts” present throughout 57 Grove Street. What’s the best story you’ve been told about the tavern?

Bassist Kevin Morris. Courtesy of Cathy Chelstowski.

TB: Arthur’s was home to Charlie Parker in the later period of his life. He used to like performing there, and Roy Hargrove was also frequent. Then you have some local acts like the Grove Street Stompers that have had one of New York City’s longest residencies.

Supposedly there’s a hidden passageway from Arthur’s to Marie’s Crisis Café and to the other townhouse next to it. We tried to look for it and we couldn’t find it but maybe we just didn’t break apart everything.

RC: Kermit Ruffins and his band were the perfect ensemble to reintroduce this great venue. How did securing him for this important night come about, and why was he the right person to first take that stage after the closure?

TB: Kermit has that old charm; he has an old school style that perfectly fits the venue. When we asked him to open it he jumped at the opportunity. He was also influenced by many old musicians from the ’40s and ’50s era. It just felt right. He’s a new generation preserving the old.

RC: Does Blue Note Entertainment Group have any plans to do something similar with like-sized historic clubs across the United States?

TB: Yeah, we’ve been talking about that. We’ve been looking into other old establishments that are also on their last legs. Maybe assisting them and helping them out or purchasing them in order to keep them alive.

RC: In the end, what does success look like for Arthur’s Tavern?

TB: To be there for another 85 years.

Courtesy of Cathy Chelstowski.

Header image courtesy of Cathy Chelstowski.

In Issue 150 I listed my 150 desert island favorite rock albums, and offered a first batch of mini-reviews in Issue 151. I got a range of comments and e-mails, from complements to derision about my bad taste.

I admitted that I was fixated on albums from my youth through my twenties or so. This is hardly a groundbreaking concept, and it prompted me to do some research. Numerous articles have been written about this kind of “Neural Nostalgia,” as an excellent Slate piece called it, and its basis in memory and the way our brains work. In an article titled “Why We’re Obsessed With Music From Our Youth,” Neuroscience News noted, among other things, a phenomenon delightfully named the “reminiscence bump” (sounds like a dance floor hit to me), where, as they stated, “people tend to disproportionately recall memories from when they were 10 to 30 years old.” Should you wish to dig deeply, here a link to a study in Music and Science.

Well, it’s comforting to know that I’ve been scientifically validated as psychologically normal – at least when it comes to musical preferences. As promised, here are more mini-reviews of my favorites, perhaps evidence that some memories might be better than others.

The Allman Brothers Band, At Fillmore East

No one would argue that this is one of the greatest live rock albums of all time, featuring the Allmans at their absolute peak, which was an astounding musical height. The dual guitars of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts were telepathically complementary, whether writing the book on twin-guitar harmony or playing brilliantly grooving solos, if perhaps indulging a little too heavily in the pentatonic blues scale at times. The band cooks and grooves and Gregg Allman’s vocals and Hammond B3 playing are crushingly soulful. Of course, At Fillmore East is also of historical significance, having jump-started the band’s career and Southern Rock as a genre, and Capricorn Records as a label.

In my freshman year of college, the album was so popular that it was blasting from dorm rooms everywhere – you could pretty much walk around the quad and hear any song off the album by picking the window you wanted to stand next to. It’s also one of the best-sounding live rock recordings ever, with great dynamics, depth, tonal balance and presence, especially if you get an original pink-label Capricorn Records LP pressing.

Roy Buchanan

Though he’d been around for more than a decade before, in 1971, the PBS documentary Introducing Roy Buchanan blew the minds of guitar players everywhere. Wielding an early-1950s “Blackguard” Fender Telecaster through a black-panel Fender Vibrolux amplifier, Buchanan amazed viewers with his uncanny ability to coax all manner of blazing country/rock/jazz runs, melodies, twang, screams, squalls, pinch harmonics, multi-note bends, “chicken picking,” volume swells, wah wah, beyond-the-neck high notes, and most of all, incredible feeling. He soon inked a deal with Polydor Records and his eponymously titled first album features mostly country tunes like “Haunted House,” “Sweet Dreams,” “I Am a Lonesome Fugitive,” and blues – along with Buchanan’s signature song, the transcendent “The Messiah Will Come Again.” Like so many virtuoso but uncommercial musicians, Buchanan never got the recognition he deserved, had a troubled life and died too young on August 14, 1988 at age 48, found hanged in a Fairfax County, Virginia jail. It was ruled a suicide, which some people (including Buchanan’s one-time lawyer, who I spoke with many years ago) remain skeptical about.

Kraftwerk, Autobahn, Computer World/Computerwelt, Electric Café, Radioactivity/Radioaktivitat, The Man Machine/Die Mensch-Maschine, The Mix, Tour De France, Trans Europe Express/Trans Europa Express

I wrote about this pioneering electro-pop band extensively in “The Incalculable Influence of Kraftwerk” in Issue 111. No other band offers their combination of electronic sonic innovation, memorable melodies, propulsive beats, and an utterly distinctive, elegant sound that is simultaneously futuristic and, now seen through the lens of more than a half-century, timeless, standing apart from all other music. Computer World/Computerwelt was uncannily prescient and still sounds light years ahead of its time, 41 years later. Considering the way pop music has evolved since Kraftwerk hit the scene, the band may in fact be more influential than those lads from Liverpool. Die Mensch-Maschine, indeed.

China Crisis, Autumn in the Neighbourhood

Released in 2015, this was China Crisis’s first album in 21 years. It’s superbly-crafted pop perfection, blending the band’s original new wave sensibilities with irresistibly catchy melodies, lush vocal harmonies, and synth-pop orchestrations (and they even sneak in some pedal steel guitar on “Because My Heart”). This is evident from the first note of the first track, “Smile (What Kind of Love Is This)” and doesn’t let up. “Autumn in the Neighborhood” has a stately unfolding Art Of Noise-ish groove, while “Everyone You Know” closes the album at a gallop. “Being in Love” echoes the band’s now-classic “Arizona Sky,” and “Fool” should have been a mega-hit, had we all not gone through an inter-dimensional portal in 2020 and wound up on Earth-Two instead of remaining in the reality we used to know.

Jim Dawson, Songman

Full disclosure: Jim is a friend. He became a friend because Harry Pearson, late founder of The Absolute Sound, played me the album’s closing suite, “City Song/Simple Song,” and I was bowled over. A few years later I met Jim at one of Harry’s parties and we hit it off. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it hundreds of times: I don’t understand why some songwriters get all the recognition while people like Jim don’t, though his songs are far better than many of the marquee names. Maybe it’s because, aside from the kids’ songs “The Purple Puppy Dog” and “Paws of a Pup,” his music isn’t available on streaming services yet. You can find CDs and LPs online and at used-record stores, though, and the original vinyl of Songman sounds superb – as of 2019 (the latest update I could find online), it was still on The Absolute Sound’s Super LP List, where it’s rightfully been for decades. The title song sums up the Meaning of Life with poignant, wise insight: “Sing a simple song/we all belong/only to Time.”

Black Sabbath

I heard the radio ad before I bought the album: “music that’s as subtle as an open wound!” Well. That, accompanied by the ominous devil’s tritone opening riff of the title track, was enough to hook my 14-year-old self into running to the record store in 1970. Though rousingly panned by critics at the time, I guess history has vindicated people like me who thrilled – and still do – to Tony Iommi’s genre-defining heavy guitar, Bill Ward’s pounding yet at-times-subtle, even jazz-influenced, drumming, Geezer Butler’s lithe bass and of course, the ominous vocals of Ozzy Osbourne. These songs still have a crushing heavy rock weight, and if, well, they hardly make Grand Statements like Dylan or Cohen, my teenage as well as sexagenarian self would say, so what? Although people can’t resist poking fun at Ozzy Osbourne sometimes (even us), the fact is that he has the perfect atom-smashing hard rock voice, and when this album first came out, rockers everywhere flipped out.

Black Sabbath, Paranoid

I guess critics can change their minds. In 2017 Rolling Stone named Paranoid Number One on its 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time list. No wonder – if Tony Iommi showed a propensity for writing memorable hooks on the first album, he established himself as the undisputed king here, with planet-pulverizing riffs in “War Pigs,” “Paranoid,” and perhaps the heaviest of all time, “Iron Man,” which really does sound like a thousand-ton giant demolishing everything in its path. Side Two wanders a bit but ends strongly with the incomprehensible “Fairies Wear Boots” (even Osbourne doesn’t remember what it’s about), which, like most of the album, is a pure adrenaline rush. Like their first release, you can hear that the musicians are playing together, live, and getting it done fast and furious, with good sound quality into the bargain. There’s real musicianship behind the gloom-and-doom trappings.

David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

When I was young, listening to the radio used to be really exciting. It mattered. I’ll never forget the first time a kid on the bus told me to listen to FM instead of AM, because that’s where the really heavy stuff was being played. In June 1972 I was at home listening to WNEW-FM, or maybe WPLJ-FM. (I was not drinking white port and lemon juice.) An astounding, otherworldly song came on with this freaky-sounding guy singing along with a 12-string guitar. I flipped. It was such a riveting song, different than anything I, or anyone for that matter, had ever heard before. Based on the lyrics, I figured it was called “Starman” and the DJ confirmed that, and announced it was David Bowie, from the just-released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars album.

I had to have it immediately. I called E.J. Korvette, a department store with a great record department, and asked if they had the album the song was on. The guy who answered the phone said they had one copy in the back; they hadn’t put it out yet. “Hold it for me!” Somehow (I didn’t have a driver’s license) I got there, probably begging my mom, bought the album, got home, put it on the turntable and then had my mind completely blown. “Five Years”… “Moonage Daydream”… “Ziggy Stardust”… “Suffragette City”…fantastic music, and Bowie’s alien persona (I didn’t know if it was a put-on or if the guy was really weird) made it that much more compelling to my 17-year-old ears. To say nothing of Mick Ronson’s bone-crushing guitar tone. We now know that Bowie was a restless musical chameleon, and this album was one of his most stunning guises…

David Bowie, Aladdin Sane

…to be followed by 1973’s equally mind-shattering Aladdin Sane. Bowie was rocking at this point, with Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder (bass) and Mick “Woody” Woodmansey (drums) providing relentless accompaniment, and for this album joined by Mike Garson, who would prove to be an absolutely crucial element to Aladdin Sane’s sound. His wild, sprawling, rule-breaking piano solo on the title track is one of the greatest keyboard moments in rock and roll history. The songs (“Watch That Man,” “Panic In Detroit,” “Time,” “The Jean Genie”) had a harder, more jaded-decadent edge, and Mick Ronson’s pulverizing intro to “Cracked Actor” gets my vote for the heaviest intro guitar riff ever recorded (apologies, Mr. Iommi). And there’s that iconic album cover.

David Bowie, Station to Station

I kind of lost David Bowie after Aladdin Sane. The Pin Ups album was a holding maneuver, Diamond Dogs was a letdown, and I just plain didn’t like Young Americans, thinking that Bowie, like Clapton, Genesis and so many others of the time, had watered down his music in favor of gaining commercial success. (Hey, I was a kid with an attitude. Now I tip my hat to anyone who can make a living in this crazy music business, whether I like their music or not.) And crucially, Mick Ronson was no longer in the band. But Station to Station was a return to rocking form with songs like “TVC 15” and “Stay,” and Earl Slick and Carlos Alomar brought their own guitar powers to the arrangements. George Murray (bass) and Dennis Davis (drums) added wallop to the rhythm, and the E Street Band’s Roy Bittan (keyboards) helped propel the proceedings.

The album yielded a hit, “Golden Years.” There’s sentimental value here, too; my mom loved “Wild Is the Wind,” impressed that this weird-looking rocker could sing so beautifully.

David Bowie, Lodger

The last of Bowie’s much-written-about Berlin Trilogy (along with Low and Heroes), this album received mixed reviews, and I have to agree (I don’t even remember how “Red Money” goes right now), but Lodger is on my list because it has some of my all-time favorite Bowie cuts, including “Yassassin,” “DJ,” the irresistibly campy ear candy of “Boys Keep Swinging” (well, this boy has slowed down a little over time), and “Red Sails,” one of the most intensely flat-out rocking songs Bowie ever recorded, featuring absolutely devastating, squealing, squalling guitar work by Adrian Belew. This song sounded 30 years ahead of its time in 1979. It still does today.

Iggy and the Stooges, Raw Power

I bought this, unheard, because of a rave 1973 review in Creem. I sort of knew what to expect – after seeing pictures of a bare-chested, crazed-looking Iggy Pop, and reading the author’s (wish I could remember who wrote the review) ravings about the music’s raw rock and roll onslaught, I didn’t think I was going to hear the Carpenters. Well, that reviewer was right. You want loud? You want treble? You want Iggy shredding his voice like a chainsaw trying to cut through metal? You got it!) The opening track, “Search and Destroy,” sounds exactly like what the title would have you think – a frantic, adrenaline- (or maybe amphetamine)-fueled onslaught of hyper-distorted rhythm and ear-piercing lead guitar courtesy of the great James Williamson, and a mix that isn’t very good, but somehow adds to the feeling of rock chaos.

David Bowie had mixed the album but it wasn’t his finest accomplishment, shall we say. Iggy remixed the album in 1996, and that remix…didn’t receive universal acclaim either. I’m an audiophile who cares about sound, a lot…and I’m going to say, in this case…whatever. Because the songs are devastatingly powerful, especially “Gimme Danger,” “Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell,” “Penetration,” Shake Appeal,” and the title track, which pretty much says it all. As has been noted by scribes more astute than I, the song even starts with a burp from Iggy. No, really.

It’s been a while since someone from Copper last visited DeVore Fidelity in New York City. By the time Bill Leebens went out to Brooklyn Navy Yard in 2016, John DeVore had already been building speakers for 16 years and was well regarded for his reviewer-darlings, the Gibbon Series. While I have nothing against these tall narrow towers, my aesthetic leans towards the boxier Orangutans. Leebens’ article (in Issue 19) mentions an “Uber-Orangutan” being in the works, and when I recently trekked to the former shipyards on the East River, I was expecting to audition the final result of a fully-tweaked top-of-the-line Orangutan Reference system, which I had previewed at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in 2018.

The four-piece O/Ref costs $88,900 and comprises nearly 500-pounds of wood, bronze, brass, and hardware spread across a pair of three-way speakers, each with a tweeter, super tweeter, and 10-inch woofer, plus two “Bassmachines” (subwoofers), both loaded with a 700-watt amp, 11-inch woofer, and 11-inch passive radiator. A massive array like that would definitely be installed in an acoustically perfect audio salon with equally expensive and esoteric amps, or so I thought.

There was no such showroom. DeVore Fidelity is a fully-functioning production facility stacked high with planks, drivers, raw cabinets from Box Furniture Company next door, and works in progress like an O/93 ($8,825/pair) on which employees Jenny and Dahlia were clamping a freshly-polyurethaned baffle. At the other end of the workshop is the “Monkeyhaus,” an office for John, but for a fellow audio geek, it’s nirvana in a 14- by 26-foot room with 10-foot ceilings, hardwood floors, and simple sheathing panels for walls. It’s also an encouraging sight for anyone thinking they can’t carve out their own slice of heaven in a loft, basement, or spare room with a few throw rugs and acoustic panels.

Aside from a computer workstation and lots of prime gear on racks from Box Furniture Co., the space is a mecca of music, with about 10,000 LPs, 45s, and 78s; tapes, both reels and cassettes; plus terabytes of digital files. At the far end, against a short wall, stood the famous O/96, DeVore’s bestselling two-way work of art with simple lines, a 10-inch woofer, and many layers of lacquer applied by hand over customizable veneers. The price of the O/96 starts at $13,200, and they’re back-ordered well into 2023. Unfortunately, there was no trace of the Bassmachines.

John DeVore. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

What John had set up for that day was the O/baby. Instead of continuing along the grand scale, he went smaller – as small as the micr/O, a 10 by 10 by 10-inch ($3,950) cube for shelves and near-field desktop listening. I think a hot-rodded six-cabinet set would be so fantastic, but I should defer to John regarding design and marketing: he built his first speakers while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1980s and was also a salesman at two landmark stores in Manhattan, Stereo Exchange and Sound by Singer. On top of that, John is a musician and a voracious consumer of all kinds of music.

The O/babys are 14.75 inches wide x 9.75 inches deep by 35 inches high and weigh less than 40 lbs. each. The height includes 12-inch oak stands – DeVore’s are optional at $995, but any wooden stand will do. I had no doubt the speaker would sound good, especially when I learned it was a junior version of the O/96. Priced at $5,700, O/baby is a minimalist speaker with a 0.75-inch thick baffle of birch ply under a blond oak veneer, creating a nice contrast to the dark gray cabinet. The drivers, built to DeVore specifications, are a 0.75-inch Vifa Danish textile-dome horn-loaded tweeter and a 7-inch SEAS paper woofer from Norway. Positioned closely together at the top of the speaker, both drivers fire directly at your ears.

O/baby. Courtesy of DeVore Fidelity.

As I sat on the couch snuggled with my new best friend, Roxy, the internet-famous cat, John spun the James Gang’s “Funk #49” (1970) on his homemade three-tonearm turntable. The track has a pronounced left/right channel separation and sounded like Joe Walsh’s gritty guitar amp was crunching its way into the room through the right speaker, but at 2:12 minutes, the song turned holographic with an avalanche of drums. O/baby played this classic rock James Gang cut with ease, and I’m sure they can even deliver Limp Bizkit if you wanted, but I wouldn’t use them as blasters. O/baby speaks a warmer, more emotive language, as evidenced by the jazz fusion cut from “The Dawn” (1998) by Erik Truffaz on Blue Note records. Expression and imaging increased as the musical landscape opened up with a better recording. Whereas “Funk #49” sounded like it was a final mix coming at me from an engineer’s booth, “The Dawn” made me feel like I was in-studio, live with the musicians, enveloped by the sweetness of a moody trumpet, funky keyboards, velvety bass, and the tight sizzle-thump of percussion.

O/96 speakers in the listening room. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

Driving the Babys was a vintage set of 55-watt per channel Komuro Push-Pull 845 monoblock amps worth around $15,000 per pair – but that’s in 1990s dollars! Wasn’t that overkill for those little speakers? I still remember a stereo salesman’s advice from my youth: buy the most expensive speakers you can afford, spend half that amount on the receiver, and finally, a quarter amount each on a tape deck and turntable. DeVore customers, on the other hand, are likely to fall in love with a particular model and then spend many times more on amplification, but you don’t have to. O/baby is meant to pair with almost anything, including tubes, solid-state, Class A, Class D, affordable, lavish, and even those compact desktop integrated amp/DAC combos. Nevertheless, I could have listened to the Komuro monoblocks and O/babys for hours while discovering new records from the Monkeyhaus library.

Despite my adoration of mega speakers, I thought about the performance, practicality, and magic of expertly crafted smaller ones. In fact, one of my all-time favorites, a pair of diminutive Spica TC-50s, which I had for 20 years, were two-way wedges with 6.5-inch woofers, and they were perfectly suited to my different apartments, equipment, and listening habits. The O/baby is in a different class and at the opposite extreme of price range (the TC-50 sold for $450 per pair in 1984), but DeVore’s design, craftsmanship, and flexibility with amplifiers should certainly keep audiophiles happy for many years through multiple equipment upgrades and any changes in musical preferences.

An O/93 being built. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

I will repeat and answer Bill Leebens’ question from many years ago, “So, what does the future hold for DeVore Fidelity?” Well, in the short term, the 6-watt Komuro K300S SET amplifier priced at $20,000. Yes, DeVore will make amplifiers in Brooklyn under the brand name Komuro Amplifier Company. In addition to being long-time friends, John considers engineer Nori Komuro as one of the greatest tube amp makers. So, John purchased Komuro’s circuit designs and is almost ready to ship the handmade K300S, housed in a birch ply chassis sandwiched between aluminum and steel plates. It features custom transformers, and hard-wiring, with not a single printed circuit board or capacitor to stand between the source and speaker. Beyond that, single-ended 845 monoblocks and push-pull 845 monoblocks are planned to follow. Also, as impressive as the three-arm turntable is, John insists he has no interest in entering the turntable business. However, designers live to design, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

While I never heard the O/Ref system that day, I got a better sense of the brand after examining and listening to the other pieces. And I can’t help but think there’s something else – something intangibly special about DeVore Fidelity. It feels like John and his crew imbue each build with genuine heart, soul, and a Brooklyn elan that transcends its physical qualities. It’s quite possible I was intoxicated by carpenter’s glue, polyurethane, and shiny veneers. I can’t be sure, so that’s why everyone should make a point to audition DeVore equipment for themselves.

DeVore Fidelity
63 Flushing Ave., Unit 259
Building 280, Suite 510
Brooklyn, NY 11205
(718) 855-9999
info@devorefidelity.com

Header image: DeVore O/baby loudspeaker. Courtesy of DeVore Fidelity.

Rock music and rhythm guitar are inseparable. Oftentimes, rock outfits feature two guitarists, one playing lead guitar and the other specializing in rhythm. Although this is not always the case – the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards and Ron Wood are often so intertwined that the idea of “lead” and “rhythm” is meaningless, and someone like Jimi Hendrix can cover everything at once – for all intents and purposes, separate lead and rhythm players are the “traditional” setup, if you will. While lead guitarists generally receive most of the praise, credit, and attention, it’s the rhythm players who drive the songs – or keep them on track, or both. Furthermore, rhythm guitar playing is arguably the most difficult aspect of guitar playing.

What?! In theory, syncopated down strumming should be relatively easy to learn, and truth-be-told, if you’ve got a knack for guitar – it is. Still, why is it so hard to master the seemingly simple rhythms of old Stones or Pixies songs? The reason is that rhythm guitar playing is often idiosyncratic. Sure, you can cop the riff to Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold,” but you will never be able to play it in the infuriatingly particular way that Neil Young does, and that’s not because Neil Young is a virtuoso, it’s because Neil Young possesses something intrinsically inside of himself that is singular to him. No matter how hard you try, you will never sound the same. Maybe you’ll come close, but you’ll never quite get there.

This is just one reason why rhythm guitarists are incredibly important to music, especially rock music. You can have an amazing solo but without steady, driving, and memorable rhythm playing and riffs, you hardly have a song. So, today, I am highlighting five of the blue-collar workers of some favorite bands. Their impact may seem low-key on the surface, but their collective legacy is larger than life.

Kelley Deal – The Breeders

The Breeders have been an incredibly important alternative and indie rock band over the last 30-odd years. While Kim Deal is predominantly known as the on- and off-again bassist for the seminal indie rock band the Pixies, it’s her work with The Breeders where she really shines. Kim is generally one who garners the most attention, yet it’s her twin sister Kelley who over time has become more and more important to The Breeder’s sound and overall development as a band. So much so, that I argue that without the input of Kelley Deal, Kim Deal’s Breeders may never have had developed their own strong identity, or separated themselves from their deep-rooted ties to the Pixies and Throwing Muses (The Breeders began as a side project to the Pixies and original member Tanya Donnelly of Throwing Muses). In the early years, Tanya Donnelly (who formed her own band, Belly, in 1991) actually played lead, with Kim handling bass as she did in the Pixies. The credits on The Breeders albums can get a bit confusing, as a lot of their albums credit both Deal sisters simply as “guitars.” To that end, it’s also important to note that the Breeders are an indie band, and basically have next to no formal “guitar solos.” I chose Kelley Deal as the better rhythm player as I feel her playing and style in that regard exceed that of Kim’s, and her chord progressions and structure are far more prevalent in The Breeders’ songs. Having said all of that, it’s incredible to think that Kelley didn’t even pick up the guitar until the age of 30, and didn’t join The Breeders until 1992 at the age of 31. Just a few short years after picking up the instrument, Kelley’s defining moment came with The Breeders’ 1994 indie rock masterpiece, Last Splash. Kelley’s arpeggio-laden, punk and surf rock-inspired playing helped define a sound that would go on to be imitated by many but mastered by only one – Kelley Deal. While she’s no virtuoso, her playing, style, and songwriting are distinctive, a huge part of a watershed moment in 1990s indie rock.

Kristin Hersh – Throwing Muses

When it comes to women who shook up the world of 1980s and 1990s indie rock, Kristin Hersh just about has it all. Her stream of consciousness delivery, coupled with her sometimes traditional, oftentimes jagged, dissonant, and aggressive rhythm playing are a key element of what sets her band, Throwing Muses, apart. While the band was originally formed by both Hersh and her best friend Tanya Donnelly, once Donnelly broke away from the band in 1991, Hersh took control. Her songwriting and guitar work, both with and without Donnelly, are some of the finest of the genre. Albums such as House Tornado, Hunkpapa, The Real Ramona, Red Heaven, and University are essential to any ’90s indie rock playlist, and Kristin Hersh’s angular guitar rhythms are front and center the whole way. Hersh’s emboldened and chaotic style is often punctuated by extreme dynamic shifts, staggered by rhythms that could only have come from the oblique, rage-laden mind of one of indie rock’s most mesmerizing figures. If you haven’t witnessed to Kristin Hersh’s surreal, anguish-filled style, I suggest you give a listen. She will not disappoint.

Johnny Ramone – the Ramones

Punk rock guitarists don’t ever get any credit. Punk rock playing as an art form is criminally underappreciated. When it comes to the Ramones, it’s a tale we’ve heard endlessly. Four bums from Queens clad in leather and chains took the stage one fateful evening at CBGB, and as the story goes played an entire set in 12 minutes, and the rock world shattered on impact. We know the legend. We remember the songs (“I Wanna Be Sedated,” Rock and Roll High School,” “Rockaway Beach” and so many others). However, what made the Ramones the quintessential punk rock group was their three-chord primitivism, which represented the absolute apex of their technical know-how and musical abilities at the time. Johnny Ramone armed himself with a cheap surf-rock Mosrite guitar and strummed chords relentlessly on the down-stroke. He played as fast as he humanly could, for as long as he possibly could during each short burst of a song.

The true unintended brilliance of Johnny Ramone’s barbaric playing was his inability—or refusal – to make it through even a simple guitar solo. Johnny Ramone was a pioneer of punk rock and rhythm guitar playing. Though he never intended it, he inspired droves upon droves of imitators who ironically aspired to play as fast and simple as he did. It goes to show that you do not have to be gifted with supreme talent or virtuosity to make an impact, or create meaningful, lasting art. Hey-ho – nobody could go like Johnny Ramone.

Malcolm Young – ACϟDC

When you think of ACϟDC, rhythm guitar might not be the first thing that comes to mind. Although lead guitarist Angus Young is an icon with his schoolboy outfit, shorts and onstage antics, rhythm guitar is the bulk of what we’re hearing. Few will remember that in the band’s infancy, Malcolm Young was the lead guitarist, and when Malcolm’s younger brother Angus joined the band, for a time they shared lead guitar duties before Malcolm turned the role over to his then-teenage brother full-time. While Angus Young deservedly gets an immense amount of credit for the success of ACϟDC, it’s Malcolm who was the group’s de facto leader up until his health-related departure and subsequent retirement from music in 2014. While rhythm guitar has always played an integral role in rock music, it was Malcolm Young, along with a select few (like Pete Townshend, Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, and James Hetfield of Metallica, among others), who took rhythm guitar to newer, heavier levels as rock moved through the 1970s, ’80s, and beyond.

When it comes to style, sound, and relentless groove, Malcolm Young had it all, and yet kept it simple, playing open chords through Marshall amplifiers set to relatively low gain for a cleaner, less-overdriven but immensely powerful sound. Before Malcolm came along, a lot of rock rhythm players banged out loud, overdriven power chords, which do have their place, but can you honestly say there is a hard rock band with more power and force than ACϟDC? I think not. Many will label Malcolm Young as “repetitive,” and while there may be a hint of truth to that, Malcolm Young’s legacy and contributions to the evolution of hard rock, and heavy metal are indelible. Just listen to tracks such as “Problem Child,” Highway to Hell,” “Back In Black,” and “Thunderstruck.”

Keith Richards – the Rolling Stones

When it comes down to rock rhythm guitar, there can be only one Number One, and that is Keith Richards. Early on, Keith was heavily inspired by the likes of Chuck Berry and Elvis’s guitarist, Scotty Moore. As he progressed, Keith honed his signature sound and technique, much of it involving playing in open G tuning with five strings (discarding the bottom string on the guitar). and wrote some of the greatest songs and riffs in rock history. Jagger may be the voice, but Keith is the Rolling Stones. His direct, incisive, and unpretentious style is the reliable engine which still drives one of rock music’s greatest bands nearly 60 years later. Keith Richards is an enigma wrapped in a miracle, somehow managing to become one of the most notable and flamboyant rock stars in history, all the while refusing to impart his flash and flair for the dramatic into his playing.

Keith’s ability to play under absolute control, while his life generally often resided in unadulterated chaos, is part of what makes Keith Richards the true maestro of rhythm guitar. Keith is a master of playing off his counterparts, and his work alongside Stones guitarists Brian Jones, Mick Taylor, and Ronnie Wood is nothing short of mythological, to say nothing of his songwriting partnership with Mick Jagger. His distinctive, syncopated, ringing style is what makes songs like “Street Fighting Man,” “Start Me Up,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Honky Tonk Women.”

The age-old image of Keith: scraggly, sweat-soaked hair, loose, tattered clothes, a leather jacket, worn leather boots, a smoldering cigarette dangling precariously from his lips, and a beaten-down Telecaster slung over his shoulder and hanging low below his waist, was the definition of punk rock before anyone ever thought of the term, and is still is the image by which rock music has come to be defined. Rock would be irrevocably different if not for the influence of Keith Richards, Guitar God in capital letters, and most people cannot name even one single solo the man has laid to tape. If that’s not a perfect demonstration of the lasting importance of rhythm guitar in rock music, I don’t know what is.

Throughout rock history, a great many guitarists have come and gone. Some left us too soon, and some perhaps stuck around for maybe a bit too long. Oftentimes we tend to focus on what’s loudest or flashiest. It’s indeed easy to get swept up in an awe-inspiring solo, and truth be told, I like what the likes of Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads did as much as anybody. Still, when it comes to rock music, it’s about the song first and foremost, and you can’t have a song without a backbone, without rhythm driving it along.

Think about it. Lead guitarist Ace Frehley is amazing, but KISS simply isn’t KISS without Paul Stanley revving the engine. (Frehley was one of the founding members of the band.) How about the Who, or Creedence Clearwater Revival? Seminal rock bands, driven by rhythm guitar. On the punk rock side, we’ve got people like Steve Jones (Sex Pistols), Poison Ivy (the Cramps), and Johnny Thunders (New York Dolls) defining the music.

The rhythm guitar keeps the train moving. It’s the foundation of the music we love. If you’re picking up the guitar for the first time, I suggest focusing on your rhythm playing initially. You’ll be better for it in the long run. If you play your cards right, you might just be the next unsung but essential rhythm player to help usher in a new wave of music. At the very least, you’ll be a part of a legion of lunch pail workers who keep rock music anchored.

Header image: Kelley Deal, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Santos Diaz.

(Copper Issue 165 featured Part One of our coverage of the Audio Engineering Society AES Europe Spring 2022 convention from The Netherlands. Part One covered presentations on the use of analog vs. digital equipment during audio mixing; the trend towards mobile audio wearables; and the challenges faced by engineers in the archiving and restoration of audio from analog disc recordings. Part Two continues with some academic research studies conducted by AES members, and a look at car stereo system designs.)

Perceptual Optimization of Hybrid Stereo Width Control Method Compared with Loudspeakers Reproduction

One of the biggest trends in the audiophile and engineering arenas is the explosion of interest in immersive sound. The early quadraphonic and surround sound efforts from the 1970s and ’80s now seem crude, thanks to digital technology, and immersive audio is becoming more and more accessible in both the pro and consumer markets.

However, while systems that can reproduce audio content mixed for multichannel immersive sound listening are now within the reach of many, the vast majority of listeners, as well as a large percentage of audiophiles, still do the bulk of their listening in stereo, on speakers or via headphones. This poses a number of challenges: how does immersive content successfully collapse into a hybrid stereo program with a minimum of detail loss due to inverted phase relationships, inter-channel crosstalk and midrange EQ overcrowding? What does a successful stereo mixdown entail?

Presented by audio research scholar Mitsunori Mizumachi (of the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyushu, Japan), who conducted the study with colleagues Yui Ueno and Toshiharu Horiuchi, Perceptual Optimization of Hybrid Stereo Width Control Method Compared with Loudspeakers Reproduction attempted to address these hurdles and explain some of the acoustical science behind them.

Head-Related Impulse Response (HRIR) relates to how a sound is captured by the ears. As a sound is heard by the listener, their ears and head transform the sound, which provides localization cues. The process can be mathematically modeled, and HRIR is one method that can be used to create simulated binaural renderings. However, the process, which often involves head and torso simulators for recording, suffers from the deterioration of localization performance.

The researchers found that deployment of a hybrid stereo width control, which adds a monophonic signal into the original stereo sources to shrink or widen the perception of stereo width, could characterize spatial attributes to individual sound sources, while HRIR could handle the overall soundstage spatial impression. The use of the hybrid stereo width control to adjust amplitude and phase-adjusted crosstalk elements was subject to meticulous tweaking, especially for different music genres. The researchers’ findings were predicated on perceptually optimized parameters, as opposed to amplitude measurements or other objective data.

There were 11 participants in the perceptual optimization listening tests whose ages ranged from 21 to 24. All of them were pre-tested as having normal hearing. The stereo width control was calibrated in 11 steps. The control settings ranged from 0 to 90 degrees in stepped increments.

The test subjects were asked to compare between the width control methods and select the sound source with the perceived widest stereo range. The classical music chosen for the listening tests were:

• Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 (Tchaikovsky) by Anne Sophie-Mutter and Wiener Philharmoniker (Deutsche Grammophon)
• Serenade in G major, K.525, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (Mozart) by Takacs Quartet (Decca)

An RME ADI-2 DAC FS digital-to-analog converter and Sony MDR-M1ST headphones were also used in the tests.

Overall, the hybrid method appeared to yield a higher above-the-mean response for the orchestral music, but pulled closer to the mean with less variance with the string quartet piece.

During the Q and A segment of the presentation, Mizumachi made note that with pop or jazz music listening tests, localized placement of specific instruments within the soundscape was more crucial to the perception of spaciousness due to the smaller ensembles and the specific instrumental roles within those music genres than with classical music, where the reverberant room was a more significant factor, even with the Mozart string quartet piece. Additionally, he acknowledged that the subjectivity of perception could be affected by the age of the listener, since younger people spend more time wearing headphones and engaging in video games and other content where immersive soundscapes are more common.

Depiction of HRIR binaural rendering in stereo. Courtesy of AES.

Depiction of the hybrid stereo rendering method. Courtesy of AES.

Depiction of loudspeaker test setup and a sample graph of how data was calculated. Courtesy of AES.

An A/B graphic comparison of the hybrid method vs. amplitude method. Courtesy of AES.

Survey of User Perspectives on Headphone Technology

Hosted by Milap Rane from the University of Surrey (UK) Institute of Sound Recording (IoSR), Survey of User Perspectives on Headphone Technology is co-authored by Phil Coleman, Russell Mason, and Soren Bech,

One reason the authors were motivated to conduct their survey was that there is a dearth of research literature on the topic. The few published studies are limited in their context and specificity, perhaps surprising given the current ubiquity of headphones, in-ear monitors (IEM), earbuds, and related products, and the wider range of applications that have emerged of late, especially in VR and immersive content.

The goals of the 38-question survey conducted by Rane and associates were:

• Obtain a current assessment of the average headphone user’s experience and catalog any problems they presently encounter.
• Create potential ideas, directions and solutions for future headphone technologies, to address the problems that exist utilizing both existing as well as new technological advances.

The survey asked questions about music, spoken word (podcasts, audiobooks), telecommunications, TV, video, radio and web content. The context of the survey included home, outdoors, and public transit environments.

The authors received the following results from the 406 respondents:

• The 18 – 30 age demographic comprised over half of the respondents.
• 3 percent used headphones 3 hours a day, with nearly 25 percent listening up to 6 hours a day, and 20.8 percent over 6 hours a day.
• Over-ear headphone users comprised 49.2 percent, IEM users 27.34 percent, earbud listeners 14.06 percent and on-ear users, 8.59 percent.
• Music was the most listened-to content at 39 percent, followed by telecom (phone calls) at 23 percent, film/TV, radio, and web listening at 18 percent, and spoken word at 14 percent. Earlier surveys previously had spoken word in second place.
• Contextually, home use was the overwhelming preference, ranging from 75 to 98 percent in each content application.
• Respondents were asked if they encountered issues in the following areas: degree of noise cancellation, transparency (i.e., the ability to hear desired outside environmental sounds), comfort, sound quality (intelligibility, and the ability to customize their EQ preferences), hearing fatigue, microphone sensitivity, and concerns about headphone leakage and privacy.
• New headphone features that respondents would like to have in the future included: 3-D audio, wireless connectivity across multiple devices, and more flexibility in controlling volume and the perceived stereo sound field.
• Unsurprisingly, customization preferences were wanted more for home listening, while noise cancellation was the most-desired feature for outdoor and public transit environments.

The most-desired new feature cited (at 21 percent) was for improved noise cancellation, with a call for “smart” noise cancellation that would better allow for more clearly-heard public transit announcements. 9 percent requested improved form factors in headphones design, and 8 percent wanted better sound quality. Only 6 percent requested spatial audio capability.

Milap Rane and headphone category preferences. Courtesy of AES.

Milap Rane and headphone usage breakdowns. Courtesy of AES.

Automotive Audio: Tuning a Car

Car stereos are a major environment for music listening, especially during work commutes. Newer cars with onboard computers that offer GPS, audible safety alerts, and other functions make car sound system quality even more important. Automotive Audio: Tuning a Car was presented by Hope Sheffield, an acoustic engineer for Harman International and the designer of the multi-speaker sound system in the Lincoln Navigator SUV.

Sheffield, who began working with Harman in 2018, explained that the automakers dictate the performance parameters, number of speakers, space availability, budget, noise cancellation parameters, communication requirements and other parameters, and the “vehicle tuners” then design the car’s audio system to best meet those specifications, both in terms of hardware and DSP (digital signal processing) software.

Sheffield noted that the main difference between tuning a room and a car is that a room can be acoustically treated to maximize the performance of selected equipment, whereas acoustic treatment of a vehicle is not an option. This forces a vehicle tuner to tweak the equipment to best suit the automobile’s particular internal environment.

Acoustic challenges of car stereo design. Courtesy of AES.

As the shape of a vehicle inherently creates interior surfaces that are parallel or close to parallel, the vehicle tuners’ primary obstacles are in dealing with reflections and phase cancellation issues within the small enclosed space.

Since vehicle cabin sizes are somewhat standardized, the tuning techniques used for each type of cabin (compact car, SUV and so on) have a particular baseline. However, interior seat material variances, different types of window glass, and other factors that can alter sound wave reflections mean that the vehicle tuners have to construct customized workarounds.

Less-than-optimum speaker placements, accounting for differing numbers of passengers, and other variables also introduce compromising elements to a vehicle tuner’s design plan. While the driver’s listening position is something of a priority, great pains are taken to tweak the sound system design to maximize the listening experience for both the front and rear passengers as well.

From an acoustician’s perspective, the design goal is to get constructive sound wave interference, where having sound waves in phase will generate a positive “bump” in clarity and fidelity, as opposed to destructive interference, where out-of-phase waves will cause different frequencies to be anywhere from attenuated to inaudible.

Sheffield noted that a properly tuned system with only four speakers can sound better than a 20-plus speaker system that suffers from unwanted reflections and phase cancellations, even though the latter might be more successfully marketed at a higher price point.

Comparing a four-speaker and 28-speaker car stereo system. Courtesy of AES.

Sheffield cited the flexibility of 3-way speakers in being able to interface with a car’s DSP systems to optimize low-, midrange and high-frequency response to personal tastes without sacrificing sound quality. Also, multiple speaker arrays allow for expanded DSP capabilities that allow for immersive sound aspects, such as height perception through a vehicle’s roof and D-pillar speakers. The use of separate tweeters for high-frequency customization, and mid-woofers, woofers, and subwoofers to better subdivide and adjust the lower frequencies also would be unworkable without DSP technology.

The vehicle tuning process begins with taking graphic measurements from particular spots within a proposed vehicle, to compare the acoustic sweep responses with different speakers in the targeted cabin enclosure. Delay times are also measured, as manipulation of delay times is one of the most critical elements in the tuning process.  The engineers will also use pink noise across an entire system to mimic the human perception of music and other sound sources.

The data is constantly compared with the vehicle tuners’ subjective listening assessments, to ensure that the tuners aren’t ultimately being fooled into making erroneous decisions.

Sheffield and her colleague have created a new Acoustic Prediction Tool (APT) for Harman that aids them in calculating optimum frequency levels to pinpoint the designs of their speaker crossovers, for the best overall audio response and to keep speaker coloration to a minimum.

Graphic display of acoustic response sweep tests. Courtesy of AES.

Sheffield’s custom designed APT algorithm. Courtesy of AES.

These final calculated parameters are then applied to each vehicle model variant, and then final listening tests are conducted in an actual test prototype vehicle. The final listening tests may result in tweaking the audio system’s EQ filters, delay, channel gains, limiters and phase inversion (speaker polarity), and evaluating the system’s speaker alignment and dynamic performance. The listening-test criteria emphasizes naturalness (bass, midrange and treble frequency evenness) and image focus (left, center, right, and additional channels).

Sheffield indicated that the skew of the system’s imaging focus will often be for optimized listening from the driver’s seat, which would be on the left for North America, parts of Asia and Europe (conversely, on the right for UK, Japan, Australia, and some other nations). She noted that side speakers often will be designed to carry the midrange, which often requires delay and other manipulation for those frequencies to mesh seamlessly with the front left, center and right channels. Mounting speakers on the dashboard creates other issues because of windshield reflections, and makes achieving a balance between the front and rear more difficult. She also noted that it can be particularly challenging to tune a system to best reproduce the sound of a low-frequency instrument like an upright bass, which will often require delay or filtering to keep the bass from sounding thin, unnatural, out of phase, or sounding significantly different between the front and rear seats.

Sheffield starts her speaker alignment process by balancing the left and right speakers, then bringing in the center one(s). By tweaking the speaker polarity and delay parameters, she strives to achieve the proper level of naturalness for vocals so that the center channel(s) delivers the right level of imaging in the overall soundscape. Next, also using polarity and delay adjustments, she calibrates the rear and side speakers and subwoofer, with care taken not to cause the midrange to become indistinct.

Additional features that vehicle tuners also have to also consider are the following:

• Anti-noise technologies are used by some companies including General Motors. The process is similar to that used in noise-cancelling headphones, where microphones pick up the sound of unwanted noise, which is then combined with an out-of-phase signal to cancel it out. In the case of a vehicle, this noise cancelling maintains a quieter interior environment.
• When tuning a system designed to have surround sound capability, the system still has to sound just as good for source material not designed for surround, or for when the system is playing in stereo mode.
• Harman’s Virtual Venues surround-processing is designed to recreate the sound of different spatial characteristics from famous concert halls, theaters and arenas. It uses reverbs and algorithms within the DSP software, and the corresponding hardware needs to be compatible with the Virtual Venues technology.
• In-Car Communication (ICC) systems need to not only cleanly reproduce the sounds of the computer’s voice for safety alerts or GPS directions, but may also utilize microphones built into the car’s interior that will pick up conversation from the front and rear passengers and augment them through the car’s speakers for enhanced articulation and clarity.

Sheffield displayed a commanding knowledge of automotive audio engineering, and her insights into the particulars of vehicular sound system design were especially fascinating in light of how far in-car audio technology has advanced.

Our AES Europe Spring 2022 coverage will conclude in Part Three, which will include topics including vinyl record mastering; listening room customization; and acoustical design for houses of worship.

The Cable Doctor Show started modestly as a live TV call-in question and answer show on tech and installation issues. Of the three TV programs I’ve hosted, this one was my longest-running public access (and at times leased-access) television show. It was on the air for over 14 years. The brand, via media and my Cable Doctor retail business, was active for almost 30 years. Starting in the late 1980s, the show aired into the early next century. We had many different approaches, kinda like seasons if you will.

At one point we were on satellite, reportedly covering one-third of the world. We broadcasted live from our 23rd Street studio with a feed to Manhattan Cable next door. Then the show was beamed up to a live satellite, then fed to Denver and relayed to a satellite transponder, and out to North America and Canada, Hawaii, and the Caribbean.

Remember those tremendous satellite dishes on people’s front lawns? Those were C-Band satellite dishes. They were monsters really. The video quality was decent, but the programming was a lot of public access or UHF low-powered broadcasts. One time on a live show I received a call from Hawaii, and others from Calgary and the US Virgin Islands.

The cost for the satellite uplink was $750, and then studio and other expenses. Even with a sponsor, the cash outlay was significant. At least to me, and then there was the long-term viability of C-Band to be considered. At the time, RCA had recently released a digital satellite TV system. It was a small dish approximately the size of a pizza tray and was able to receive commercial cable television programming. These new systems took off, thus putting C-Band into decline.

From the not-so-old days of broadcasting: a C-Band satellite dish. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Vsatinet.

Working the phone. I was cold-calling companies like Blockbuster Video and Philips, looking for sponsors. This usually entailed patience on my part. If I was lucky that meant having my call getting transferred all over a company’s phone system in search of the person who oversaw company advertising. One time, I wound up talking to someone who was an executive at Philips North America’s media relations. He could not commit to anything, but he had a spokesperson on a media tour for Philips’ MiniDisc player. His thinking was that a related slot on my show might bring me to the attention of the company, and thus making me a known quantity to Philips. I agreed, and a few weeks later Ron Goldberg, a consumer electronic journalist (now founder and chief product officer at digital health company Motum), would appear on The Cable Doctor Show.

I had the practice of scheduling my on-air guests to arrive to an hour before we went on the air. That served multiple purposes. One was to get the guest comfortable with the environment, and to go over their segment.

Ron and I hit it off and we found out that we’d met before. When I was on tour with the rock band Renaissance about 15 years earlier (see my article in Issue 123), he was on the concert committee that booked them. We had met briefly backstage. He asked if I was going to the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This was in the early 1990s. I did not know about the trade show and Ron filled me in. It sounded great; I could tape interviews and show products. This looked like it might be a good opportunity to expand The Cable Doctor Show’s content.

Registration for the media/press was not a problem. I was certified as a media attendee. Ron and his friend, consumer electronics writer Stewart Wolpin were staying at Circus Circus and they made a reservation for me. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) happens in early January each year. (There used to be a Summer CES in Chicago but those stopped after 1994.) Being my first time attending, I had to make decisions about what I would cover, without any facts or knowledge about the show. I had no idea of what to expect. My thinking was that I could arrive on the second day of CES and be able to easily cover it. This was wrong, of course. I had no knowledge of the dedicated press day that took place before the show, or the opportunities to schedule individual meetings with company representatives. I was an unknown, so nobody was looking for appointments with me. I had no idea how big the show was.

When I first walked onto the convention floor it was overwhelming. The Las Vegas Convention Center’s Central Hall is tremendous. Hundreds of booths and displays; it seemed like every consumer electronics company in the world was represented there.

Things can get crowded at trade shows at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Pattymooney.

Later that evening I met up with Ron, Stewart Wolpin, and syndicated columnist Harry Somerfield’s at an RCA press conference. They made me feel welcome.

At that point in time my service center (repair shop) was open and doing business. We were sitting around a big table having drinks and chatting after the RCA press event and someone asked me about VCR repair. After giving an explanation of why a VCR would eat a tape, I remembered one of my technician’s workspaces. I was telling the table about how I noticed a glass on his bench area that was three-quarters filled with little screws. When I saw that, I realized there were a lot of VCRs around the city that were missing screws. Everyone at the table cracked up. In truth, I told the tech that going forward, all screws must be reinstalled! And I kept an eye on the glass to make sure it never got any fuller.

The next day I met up with my new friends as they covered the high-end audio exhibits, which, in the 1980s and 1990s, were located in places like the Las Vegas Jockey Club, the Sahara, Alexis Park, and other locations away from the Convention Center. This was a gas. Walking in and out of the exhibit rooms (which were rearranged hotel rooms) was very cool and I started to get a feel of how much fun the show could be. That night we split up. The others had dinners with manufacturers’ press people scheduled and I did not. The following day I walked the Convention Center floor. At the time (the early 1990s), CES was only located in the Central North Halls (the Convention Center has since expanded significantly) and some off-site venues where high-end audio manufacturers exhibited. Still, it was overwhelming. So much energy and so many attractions.

Memory lane: a hallway at the Alexis Park Hotel, Las Vegas, where the high-end exhibitors used to be located. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Linux Journal.

Being with some of the highest echelon of the industry’s press was a great intro. I knew nobody at first, but at the press conferences I met other journalists and editors. Ron, Harry, and Stewart were industry veterans, experienced media people, and they knew everyone. Better yet, they talked about The Cable Doctor Show in glowing terms, and it really helped to legitimize me to the press corps.

One of my new friends was Brent Butterworth. Brent, an audio journalist and consultant to this day, mentioned that he was interested in collaborating with me on The Cable Doctor Show. At the time Brett was one of the editors of Video magazine. The other two editors were the late Jim Barry, and Stan Pinkwas (still working as an editor). The magazine was located at 460 West 34^th Street, a big industrial building on the southeast corner of 10^thAvenue. Video occupied two floors. The top floor was editorial, and the floor below was for testing and reviewing products. Lancelot Braithwaite ran that department. Lance is a legend in the industry.

We were going to tape The Cable Doctor Show at the magazine’s office every Monday evening. I would bring Chinese takeout for the three of us. I would show up after 6:00-ish when the offices were empty or emptying out. We would put together a makeshift studio on the floor we were going to use that evening. It could be torn down after the taping.

With production improved and my costs mostly evaporated, the show moved on to this new format. Lance was a voice of authority on new products and a welcome addition on many segments. We had guests; turntable expert Michael Fremer (The Absolute Sound, The Tracking Angle) did a show on high-end audio.

We tried different things. We wanted to do some call-ins, but we were not live. Brent thought we could fake it, so we set up a phone and he simulated a call. I had no idea what he was going to ask me. So, I picked up the phone and in a weird voice Brent said, “Cable Doctor, I have some schmutz in my viewfinder on my video camera. How can I clean it off?” Trying hard to keep a straight face, I explained how to detach the viewfinder and clean the glass. We both decided that the phone simulation was too corny, and it was abandoned. To this day it is still a standing joke between us. A year or so later, Brent had taken a new job at CurtCo Media in Malibu, California. At the time they were the publisher of Home Theater Technology and the Robb Report. That meant his relocation to the West Coast and the end to our collaboration on the show.

By then I was covering consumer electronics events regularly. Press conferences and product announcements. I would tape part of the proceedings and interview the media spokesperson or whatever celebrity they hired. Slowly, over time, the companies and public relations firms accepted me as a legit journalist. However, although I was invited to press conferences, it was a few more years till companies and their PR reps accepted The Cable Doctor Show enough for me to get product loans and the use of review samples. The consumer electronics reporters and press treated me like an equal from the get-go.

At a Dragon Systems press event I met Richard Dreyfuss. I asked him why he was helping promote their voice-activated typing program (Dragon is now offered by Nuance) and he told me that a close family member had a disability that necessitated having to use voice control rather than hands-on typing, making his interest in that technology personal. At a Sprint event at the Supper Club in Manhattan, magician David Blaine joined us for an hour or so after he did an amazing show where he sat underwater drinking red wine and reading a newspaper. I still have no idea how he did it. Athletes were also were hired for meet and greet press events. Walter Payton was at a Fuji event. Joe Theismann seemed thrilled to meet me, but Boomer Esiason was lukewarm. Dan Marino spent a good 10 minutes joking with me at a Samsung event. He told me that they gave him flat-screen TVs for every room in his southern Florida mansion.

Walter Payton (center) with Fuji executives.

Joe Theismann and Ken Sander.

At the last Summer CES in Chicago, I was interviewing boxer Riddick Bowe. He was admiring my Sharp LCD camcorder that I had on a one-month loan. That camera was a breakthrough for Sharp, with its 8-inch LCD screen. The camera was revolutionary at the time, and at that moment, Sharp owned the LCD market. Riddick liked the video camera too and he took it from me. He was half-kidding, but also wondering if he could get away with liberating the camera from me. I had to ask his manager Rock Newman to get it back from him. My interview with Robin Leach (Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous) was less dramatic. He was charming and gracious.

Also, at that summer CES, Lutron introduced the first 900 megahertz wireless home phone. We were on the 14^th floor of a hotel, in Lutron’s suite facing a park. Stewart took the phone and elevatored down to the lobby and went to the park across the street from the hotel and Ron called him. We were amazed that the phone was able to work at such a distance. This was a major breakthrough and a prime example of why I loved this work.

Another time I was afforded a chance to sit with Muhammad Ali at an event for The Silk Road at New York’s iconic Puck Building. Also attending was mister “no más,” Roberto Duran, and Larry Holmes. Holmes and I had a brief chat while getting some cake and cookies at the dessert table. Roberto Duran invited me to join him briefly for a picture while he was having lunch.

Muhammad Ali and Ken. Photo taken inside the Puck Building.

Ken with Roberto Duran.

There is much more to tell, and I will in future stories. Altogether I have 25 years of CES attendance.

Header image: 1982 Consumer Electronics Show, Chicago. Courtesy of Wikipedia/Alan Light.

Yamaha has recently released a slew of A/V receivers in their higher-end AVENTAGE range, with upgraded power transformers, amplifier circuits and many other features. Some of them offer powerful sound-tailoring capabilities, such as their parametric EQ editor.

For readers who own certain Yamaha A/V receivers, what I am about to discuss may be of no surprise. Users have the ability to configure a compatible Yamaha RX Series or AVENTAGE receiver’s performance for better sound, via the company’s handy and extremely flexible Yamaha Web Editor SetUp page.

If your compatible Yamaha AVR is connected to your home network, you’ll have the ability to dive in and fine-tune its EQ and other sound parameters via the Yamaha Web SetUp page, which you can access via entering your own AV’s IP-specific address followed by typing in the word “setup,” as in this example (instead of “xxx” you’ll put in your unit’s server address from your home network): http://192.168.0.xxx/setup/

If you don’t own a Yamaha receiver, you may find what I’m about to discuss to be useful anyway, since many brands of A/V receivers have similar internet connectivity and room-correction setup capabilities.

Yamaha’s room-correction system is known as YPAO, or Yamaha Parametric room Acoustic Optimizer. Using a calibration microphone and test tones, it automatically adjusts a multichannel audio system’s speakers for level, phase, speaker size, and the distances of the speakers from the listener. In more advanced versions, it can apply EQ to compensate for the peaks and dips in frequency response, especially in the bass, that are encountered in every listening room. High-end Yamaha AVENTAGE receivers can even determine the optimum locations for the height-channel speakers in a Dolby Atmos immersive audio setup.

With the app, which is very slick and features a number of configurable EQ and other control capabilities, it’s possible to configure the receiver without even having to be in the same room as your speakers. (Some older Yamaha models won’t have the computer-control capability, but all YPAO-equipped receivers will have access to the utility via on-screen menu. Some also allow access to YPAO using a mobile app.)

Yamaha Web Editor parametric EQ setup screen.

Like other room-calibration programs, YPAO works by assessing the different volume levels of different frequencies as output by a test signal through each speaker. Interestingly, Yamaha’s YPAO room correction typically operates by turning down, or perhaps more accurately, attenuating certain unwanted frequencies, rather than boosting frequencies that are lower in volume in order to attain a flat in-room response. And this makes good sense.

When it comes to food, I know I often prefer a greater number of skinny fries compared to the same amount of potato prepared as fewer chunky fries. Why? Because the greater ratio of deliciously fat-coated-surface-area-to-potato-content of the thinner fries holds more flavor than chunky versions. (I’m not adverse to triple-cooked fat fries, but I do love skinny ones. In moderation!) Enough about food! What about improving the sound of the system?

As noted, Yamaha offers three main interfaces for using YPAO: 1) the computer network interface which we are considering here (this requires either a laptop or desktop computer) on your home WIFI network; 2) a mobile or tablet device application, and 3); an on-screen TV graphical display which provides a visualization of the edits you make. The graphical visualization (provided by the TV’s on-screen display interface) displays your EQ curve adjustments so you can see what your raw data input curve looks like which you have input in the online editor setup. This is very helpful because it allows you to see how smooth (or not) your curves look rather than just giving a cold number as per the online setup interface.

The beauty of the online interface, though, is that if you want to tweak the results of the EQ to personal taste, you can very easily just enter a numerical value, rather than using the clunkier cursor required by the standard on-screen menu. You can save your edits for different listening purposes, such as for daytime or nighttime listening, or different jazz, metal, jazz-metal, (you get the picture), or other genres – even save settings for a specific album. Generally, you’ll most likely want to set up a curve that will be suitable for the majority of your listening.

You’ll soon discover a raft of additional editable options. Here are a few I have benefitted from:

Turning on dynamic range compression (DRC) can level out the extremes of your listening volume thresholds, which may be useful for late-night listening to recordings with extreme dynamic range, especially when others are in the house asleep or you have cantankerous neighbors. There are options to set the threshold of volume limiting applied.

An Extra Bass feature can be useful in matching the bass output from your main speakers to a subwoofer. It’s probably best not to turn this on if your main speakers are set to “Small” in the speaker setup menu (when using smaller speakers with limited bass output, say below 60 to 90 Hz, the low frequencies are typically routed to the subwoofer) I have my speakers set to “Large” because I enjoy listening to their full-range output and having the subwoofer come up to meet them in a complimentary way, rather than limiting the low-frequency content that is sent to the main speakers. (For more on the subject of setting an A/V receiver’s speaker settings to “Large” or “Small,” see my “One Size Fits All?” articles in Issue 150 and Issue 151.)

With the Yamaha AVENTAGE A/V setup utility, you also have support for true stereo bass, instead of summing all the bass to mono, even if you have more than one subwoofer, as is the case with some other A/V receivers. This may be significant if you don’t want to miss out on the joy that is true stereo bass. (If you set your subwoofer configuration to Left and Right, both subs will still deliver the LFE – low-frequency effects – channel in mono, but otherwise keep true stereo bass frequencies. What this means is that you may then set your stereo bass crossovers at a higher frequency and avoid obvious localization issues. Perhaps start out at 90 Hz and experiment up to 150 Hz and see what works best for you in your room, keeping in mind that at higher frequencies of say 90 Hz and above, particularly if you are using only one subwoofer, you might hear unwanted localization of the subwoofers. If you are using multiple subs, particularly at lower crossover ranges below 90 Hz, localization issues are usually far less impactful.

The menu offers a stereo bass setup option.

The utility also offers the traditional wide-ranging bass and treble tone controls if you want to make quick general adjustments. It also provides an input trim function via the online set up which is useful for matching the volume levels of different input sources. Similarly, you can set the receiver’s maximum volume setting to avoid unwanted excessive volume…or worse…

If you’ve ever heard people complain about the apparent redundancy of Yamaha’s DSP surround-sound modes, maybe it’s because they haven’t heard these virtual sonic environments at their best. The Yamaha Online Setup Editor enables tweaking of the DSP parameters including the room size and “liveliness” among others. If, like me, you have found some of the presets to be too “full on,” try backing the effect level down and experimenting with the room size setting. It’s also fun to hear the Hall in Vienna scaled down, or New York’s Bottom Line made bigger. You may surprise yourself. The Role Playing gaming mode has a very compressed and punchy personality which you may enjoy when applied to rock, jazz-rock and metal.

Another hidden gem of a feature is the ability to assign the stereo-to- surround sound up-mixing of your 2.1 sources to 5.1 or greater, for each audio source.

In Part Two we will look more at the available parametric equalizer settings, which allow for really precise fine-tuning.

Header image: Yamaha AVENTAGE RX-A8A 11.2-channel A/V receiver.

Open-reel tape devotees are aware of the current state of support for the format, which is now entirely the province of the niche. As far as machines go – leaving aside ultra-exclusive hardware such as the Ballfinger models – the market consists mainly of pre-owned hardware. For those nervous about buying anything second-hand, there are specialists in the USA and Europe who refurbish machines from TASCAM, Technics, Studer and others to good-as-new or even better-than-new condition. Blank tapes are still available but costly. As for pre-recorded music, the new tapes are expensive, too, in part because of the price of fresh blanks, and are of limited repertoire. I am content with my library of commercial tapes produced from the early 1950s to the mid-1980s.

That leaves everything else that’s tape-related. Obviously, eBay is full of used addenda, such as splicing blocks, but there remains surprising support for reel-to-reel from suppliers of brand-new goods. Clearly targeted more at the professional clientele still using analog tape, they appeal as well to domestic enthusiasts such as I. A quick search via Google yields suppliers of spools, head cleaning kits, rubber pinch roller cleaners, empty library cases, splicing tape, oils, and other useful adjuncts. Other sources will produce custom Perspex/Plexiglas dust covers to order, and I suppose a deeper, more patient search might even uncover new head demagnetizers.

What delighted me no end were the efforts of a hi-fi manufacturer that now joins companies such as Doshi Audio, which produces the Evolution Tape Preamplifier, and other tape-oriented brands sharing that spirit. Doshi’s preamp is not machine-specific; you just need to access the output of a tape deck’s heads in order to bypass the built-in preamp, and it’s easy-peasy to connect to my Denon DH-710F and others of that topology. The product I am about to discuss, however, has its potential sales limited to owners of a specific deck, so kudos, then, to Transparent Audio for delivering a real treat for a finite number of tape buffs.

A fellow enthusiast and Nagra IV-S owner in the UK, an inveterate scourer of the internet for tape-related tidbits, noted some time ago that a dedicated cable had been produced by Transparent Audio for the Nagra IV-S at Nagra’s behest. At first, I scratched my head, wondering what could be squeezed into the 7-pin Tuchel connector used for the deck’s line-out, but I figured, what the heck, I’ll chase down a set. After all, I love the IV-S, which I use to play my treasured first-generation 1/2-track 7.5 ips tapes. It has enabled me to hear the 1950s Broadway performances of My Fair Lady and West Side Story as if recorded last week.

My friend discovered that Nagra had specified impedance-matched cables for the IV-S which do not use the 7-pin connector, but instead exploit the quartet of 4 mm (or “banana”) sockets on the opposite side of the IV-S. I had never even paid attention to them, as I had always installed my deck with the Tuchel-to-RCA cable for playback.

Tuchel 7-pin output and cable.

Before pestering Transparent Audio with a barrage of questions, I turned to Petronel Butuc of The Audiophile’s Clinic in the UK who services tape decks and knows his Nagras. His first lesson for this novice was to explain the 4 mm sockets’ purpose relative to the more widely-used Tuchel connector. He believes the 4 mm outputs serve two roles, one practical and one electrical.

His first thought was about the possible need for speedy swapping of cables in the field – and it must be stressed that the IV-S is a portable (if heavy) unit definitely designed for mobile usage. There’s no question that the 4 mm plugs can be changed more quickly with simple in/out insertion than unscrewing the Tuchel, replacing the cable with another Tuchel-terminated lead which has to be lined up with the connectors’ notch locators so that no pins are bent, which is then tightened. I tried swapping both types, timed the operation with a freshly-serviced Gallet chronograph, and found that Petronel was right, though it saves only a minute or so. On the other hand, every minute counts for professional users.

As for the second possibility, it’s about the integrity of the connection, which in turn is about the sound quality – and that is surely why Nagra collaborated with Transparent. While the Tuchel 7-pin does provide a locking collar, it makes the signal contacts for the left and right channels’ output through seven tiny pins, whereas the Transparent-made alternative provides far greater surface contact area with four 4 mm plugs.

The Transparent Cable with 4 mm connectors, in situ.

OK, so they aren’t screwed in like the Tuchel, but I suspect most Nagra IV-S owners who are likely to purchase the dedicated cables – i.e., audiophiles – are not using them in the field to record soundtrack dialog for films on location, or to interview soldiers under fire. The mechanical security of the connection therefore is moot.

Next, Petronel provided the technical specifications from the Nagra literature, which – as you will see – would affect any comparisons’ validity, swiftly noted by those of you who are moved more by numbers than subjective sound. So, before getting to the performance, please note the following electronic differences between the Tuchel 7-pin output, and the four 4 mm sockets:

According to the Nagra schematics, the LINE OUTPUT CONNECTORS (7-pin Tuchel connector) possess the following configuration:

Pin 1 = Channel 2 (Right) output voltage 1V at 0 dB, minimum impedance 500 ohms
Pin 3 = Channel 1 (Left) output voltage 1V at 0 dB, minimum impedance 500 ohms
Pin 7 = Ground

This is in parallel with the 4 mm sockets, which are specified as:

LINE OUTPUT RIGHT: Channel 2 (Right) line output on banana jack, 1V at 0 dB, impedance load 5k ohms
LINE OUTPUT LEFT: Channel 1 (Left) line output on banana jack, 1V at 0 dB, impedance load 5k ohms

Petronel also notes that for the 4 mm (banana) outputs, a 1.5nF capacitor is fitted between the hot (signal) and ground. What these differences would reveal about the sound in measurable terms is difficult to qualify for a number of reasons, which will explain clearly why my findings in this report are strictly subjective. And yes, I realize that there are savvy measurements guys among you who know how, say, 500 ohms vs 5k ohms will affect the sound.

Tuchel 7-pin (left) and Transparent Cable with 4 mm termination (right).

Thus, allow me to state emphatically that we are not comparing like-with-like here. The ultimate conclusions and observations are strictly subjective, aside from the aforementioned practical concerns about easy connectivity versus a locking mechanism. Please take note of this: I do not want a barrage of “what-about”s from anyone who wants to point out the obvious – that they are bound to sound different. Our only interest here is: Do the 4 mm outputs with the Transparent cables sound better than the 7-pin output? So, to preempt the trolling, among the variables with which we must contend are the following:

Relative output levels: I dealt with this by using a test signal and matching the levels, as A/B’ing the two types of outputs is possible with the preamp I use thanks to its option for adjusting input levels. Thus I was able to switch from 7-pin to 4 mm from the hot seat via the remote, completely factoring playback levels out of the equation.

Cable types, lengths, and differing RCA plugs: My Tuchel 7-pin cable may be a modern replacement or update rather than an original as supplied with the Nagra IV-S from new. It consists of 5.5 feet of Sommer Peacock Mk II AES/EBU OFC with spring-loaded, gold-plated Neutrik RCA phono plugs. The Transparent cable comprises a 6-foot pair of Reference interconnects with the company’s top-grade RCA plugs, also gold-plated. Transparent separates the source end into robust 4 mm plugs with a nice, tight friction fit.

Before entering into the listening regimen, I contacted Transparent Audio’s Karen Sumner for some background information on the project, especially regarding the choice of the assuredly high-end Reference level interconnect, as Transparent has a number of ranges above and below. A pair or Reference interconnects terminated in RCA phono plugs at both ends retails from $3,400, while the Nagra IV-S-specific version adds a charge for converting it to 4 mm bananas at the tape deck end.

Karen told Copper, “The Nagra IV-S Reference Transparent Cables were the result of a collaboration between Nagra and Transparent. We decided at the time that Reference was the optimum performance level and price point. In addition to the special termination on the source end, the cable is calibrated for the Nagra.

“Reference is the first product in our lineup that is calibrated to its source. The special termination requires quite a lot of extra labor and comes with a $200 upcharge from the regular suggested retail for Reference RCA cable. We, of course, would provide the special termination on Ultra, Super, or Plus RCA cables for Nagra IV-S owners. But I am not sure the termination upcharge is justifiable for cables that are less expensive than Plus. Also, a product of the performance level of the Nagra IV-S should have higher performance cables hooked up to it than MusicLink.”

This candid reply was to-the-point: I have compared numerous levels of Transparent cables over the years, and the sonic hierarchy is clearly audible – even moving from the two least expensive lines – so I have no doubt Reference was selected for discernible performance gains and matching. Crucially, though, a Nagra IV-S in top condition will now set you back $5,000 – $6,000 and I have seen mint examples sell for double that, so Karen’s observations about price and value are consistent with what she has maintained over the decades.

But forget about the cost for a moment: when you have a source component as close to perfect as the Nagra IV-S open-reel tape deck, why would you compromise on the cables?

Next time: the sound…

For more information on the Transparent Nagra cable, please contact Transparent Audio at support@transparentcable.com, or:

Transparent Cable
47 Industrial Park Road
Saco, ME 04072
207-284-1100

Images courtesy of the author except where noted.

The 1980s proved to be even more successful for A&M Records than previous decades. (Previous articles appeared in Issue 160, Issue 161, Issue 162 and Issue 165.) In the late 1970s Illegal Records, a small independent label run by Miles Copeland, released a record by his brother Stewart’s band – The Police. At the time featuring Henry Padovani on guitar, the single “Fallout” was the first Police single, and the band eventually edged out Padovani in favor of British guitarist Andy Summers. They soon recorded their first album, Outlandos d’ Amour, with a budget of £1,500.

While Miles Copeland was not too enthused by the music the trio made with Andy Summers in the lineup, he did take an immediate liking to “Roxanne,” and used the song as a springboard to sign the group to A&M. Not only would the band start making hit records, their song “Every Breath You Take” would become A&M’s longest running Billboard Hot 100 single, spending eight weeks at the top of the chart. Once The Police essentially disbanded in 1986, Sting would continue with the label for several more years in more of a jazz/rock direction.

Miles Copeland also successfully ran the A&M-distributed I.R.S. Records (International Record Syndicate) label. The label and its subsidiaries featured such groups as The Fleshtones, the Cramps, Buzzcocks, Wall of Voodoo (“Mexican Radio”), Skafish, Klark Kent (who mysteriously bore a striking resemblance to Stewart Copeland), Suburban Lawns, the Tom Robinson Band, and the Stranglers, and would top the Billboard Hot 100 with The Go-Go’s “We Got The Beat.”

In the same era, a musical theater troupe called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, taken over by Danny Elfman from his brother Richard, recorded the soundtrack for Richard’s film The Forbidden Zone, and appeared on the Gong Show without getting “gonged.” Shortening the name to Oingo Boingo, the band became a favorite in Los Angeles, and cut a handful of records for A&M after waxing a four-song EP for I.R.S. Records. Today, Elfman is one of the preeminent film score composers in the industry, and original Oingo Boingo guitarist Steve Bartek has worked with him all these years as his orchestrator.

While the following tune is perhaps politically incorrect to today’s ears, Elfman has stated that in those days, he wrote lyrics to mock or make facetious jabs at certain groups of individuals, often grabbing ideas from a newspaper article he had read. The song is nothing without the equally bizarre video, which handily summarizes the early Oingo Boingo spirit. “Little Girls” leads off their first (1981) full-length LP, Only A Lad.

Many of the bands listed above made an appearance on the 1982 documentary film Urgh! A Music War. While it never received wide distribution in theaters, and has had only spotty releases on video (in nearly complete form on VHS, and edited for the made-to-order DVD), the soundtrack album was released on A&M, and both the film and 2-LP set have become cult favorites. The two-record set included live performances by Devo, The Police, Echo and the Bunnymen, Klaus Nomi, Gary Numan, Wall of Voodoo, Dead Kennedys, Oingo Boingo, the Cramps, the Go-Go’s, John Otway, Skafish, and plenty of others. The full video can be found on YouTube as a playlist. Here is a sample, featuring Devo.

Changing styles more often than the weather, classically-trained British artist Joe Jackson released his power pop and slightly reggae-influenced debut album Look Sharp! In 1979. After a few records with the record’s lineup, he would drift into contemporary Latin and jazz sounds and explore many other musical avenues, including some of the neo-classical works he had written while studying music (on the overlooked 1987 album Will Power). His incisive lyrics often dealt with relationships, and his earlier albums were his own variation on the angry young man approach that Elvis Costello took with his early albums. Here’s a single from Jackson’s second album, I’m The Man.

Joe Jackson wasn’t the only one with a heavy dose of wit. The lads from the UK, Squeeze, had their own musical twist. Full of clever wordplay courtesy of the Chris Difford/Glenn Tilbrook songwriting duo, and at one point featuring Jools Holland on keyboards, the group would release a handful of albums for A&M, including the hit single “Tempted” which featured Paul Carrack (Ace, Roxy Music, Mike + The Mechanics) on keyboards and lead vocals. An example of the group’s wordplay can be found on the title track to their Cool for Cats album.

The Human League was one of the synth-pop artists A&M had in their catalog. Their smash hit, “Don’t You Want Me,” is arguably both an earworm and an annoyance but, once you learn that they were attempting to channel KC and the Sunshine Band, the song makes sense…especially the chorus. The band would have other hits on A&M, including “Human” and “(Keep Feeling) Fascination.”

Bryan Adams first made his appearance on A&M via a 1978 Canadian single, “Let Me Take You Dancing,” which was shortly thereafter remixed and sped up by producer John Luongo, becoming a dance club hit that Adams to this day disowns, as he was disappointed by the sound of his sped-up vocals. (You won’t even find it on YouTube.) Since then, many of his songs have become staples of rock radio, including “Cuts Like a Knife,” one of his breakthrough singles and the title track of his third album.

It’s rare for a band to break out from Australia or New Zealand but, if Men at Work could do it, so could the New Zealand based group Split Enz. Their first album for A&M and their commercial breakthrough outside of New Zealand, 1980’s True Colours, was originally released in four album jacket color variations, with side two laser-etched with graphics. This is “I Got You,” their best-known hit.

Singer/songwriter John Hiatt spent several years at A&M recording a handful of albums, one of which was his successful record Bring The Family, on which the following track “Memphis in the Meantime” is featured. The album’s “Thing Called Love” became a major hit for Bonnie Raitt.

UB40 took their name from a British unemployment benefits attendance card. Their brand of reggae pop brought them worldwide success. Their take on Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine” (which UB40 knew from a recording by reggae artist Tony Tribe) had two chart runs, the second of which in 1988 took them to the top of the charts in many countries around the world. This song appeared on the cover songs album Labour of Love, released in the US on A&M. So influential was their version that Diamond began doing the song in concert in a reggae style.

The next installment in the A&M Records 60^th anniversary series will take us from the 1980s into the 1990s with other notable A&M successes.

Header image: Joe Jackson, courtesy of www.joejackson.com.

After completing my relocation back to the East Coast, I was in closer proximity to my brother and we had the opportunity to commiserate more often, usually on the front porch of the family cabin, smoking our one and only favorite substance – meat. The smoker required constant supervision, not because of its own nature, but rather because of nature. There is a path that runs through the front yard frequented daily by black bears. The neighbor a half-mile north feeds stale donuts to them and the bar a half-mile south puts out garbage for them to amuse their patrons, who stand at the back door and take pictures through the glass. You never know when a bear will come wandering through, and we were hungry for the baby back ribs ourselves and didn’t want them purloined by nature’s vandals.

As we sat there, tasty adult beverages in hand, we came to the startling conclusion that we weren’t getting any younger. This also meant the musicians we wanted to see perform were also not getting any younger, as reinforced by the tickets I once had for B.B. King and had to return because of an illness that prevented him from playing. What sealed this realization was when I saw a photo of Keith Richards’ arthritic knuckles, which make you wonder how he even takes the stage now, much less how much longer he can continue to play. Far too many artists were passing right before our eyes or retiring and we determined, right then and there, we would do everything we could to take in their acts the next time they were within driving distance, rather than lose the opportunity after their last performance. Like the Blues Brothers, we were on a mission from God.

This required a new strategy, which was quite easily derived (QED). Between the two of us, we had 1.5 good eyes. Since my brother had the best vision, he would drive when we got close to “civilization.” We would take my MINI Cooper as it could hang a U-turn on a dime; well, at least on a quarter. I’d buy the tickets, which probably had been scalped at least once before I would have the chance to buy them, so they wouldn’t be cheap. We’d split the cost of the meals and he would pay for the hotel. Seriously, I got the better part of the deal. He usually paid for the hotel with airline miles, and had to sit on an airplane for countless hours of international travel to earn those miles.

After securing tickets to Eric Clapton’s 70^th Birthday Tour performance on May 1, 2015 at Madison Square Garden, we headed out in the MINI, sneaking up on New York City from the west. Our destination was the Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Chelsea. Feeling like we were in a Stephen King movie, we spiraled down into the gates of hell – the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel – making sure to stay in the far-right lane. Into the darkness we went, a world covered in white subway tiles stained the color of diesel exhaust. Immediately upon exiting the tunnel, we took an exit to the right, made a quick left, a quick right and went down an exit ramp. We were now on West 30^th Street.

You cross over Seventh Avenue and the hotel is on your left. You’ll know you’re there as New York City has its Traffic Task Force headquarters on the right and there will be a large number of police cars parked perpendicular to the street, on the sidewalk. Really. Don’t even think of trying it yourself. Instead, pull over to the left curb, hand the keys to the valet and check in to the hotel. You won’t be needing the car until it’s time to leave NYC. Just be prepared for sticker shock on the valet parking fee.

If you’ve arrived early, you can play tourist, as there are numerous attractions in the area right around the hotel. The Empire State Building is a couple of blocks away and has some amazing views from the observation deck on a clear day. For us, it was time to rustle up some grub. Koreatown is only three blocks to the east and you can get a nice bowl of Jjamppong, a seafood stew in a fiery red pepper broth. Or better yet, you can get Korean BBQ, USDA prime beef cooked to order right on your table at Baekjeong NYC.

Next, we went to go shopping at Han Ah Reum, Korean for “one arm full of groceries,” or H Mart as it’s more widely known, with 84 locations throughout the US. H Mart is an Asian grocery store that packs more specialty items into a small storefront than you would ever consider possible. The one in NYC’s Koreatown is small. They are usually big-box stores. I shop for items I can’t get anywhere else, not even on Amazon. We take the goodies back and stuff them into the mini-fridge at the hotel.

Then, we were off to Madison Square Garden. And here’s why we picked the hotel. You exit out the front door, take a right, go to the corner, take a right and go one block. You’re now standing diagonally across the intersection from MSG.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Ajay Suresh.

Madison Square Garden is what you’d expect of a multipurpose arena designed for professional sports. The seats down low are designed to be used for flexible seating arrangements, since different sports have different-sized playing areas. Consequently, they are all folding metal chairs and they really pack them in there for a concert. Seating is cramped. If you’re big and tall, you most likely will have your knees in the back of the chair in front of you. However, you get a good view of the stage from most areas, especially if you can get seats about stage-high, or just below the first mezzanine. Getting to your seat is easy, as there are relatively few stairs to climb for an arena this big, and escalators in well-lit corridors.

The concert was exceptional. Steve Gadd (drummer extraordinaire), Paul Carrack (multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, and former member of Roxy Music, Squeeze, Ace and others), and Nathan East (one of the most-recorded bass players of all time) were members of Eric’s band; all of them on our bucket list of artists to see. John Mayer, Doyle Bramhall II, Jimmie Vaughn and Derek Trucks were special guests. It was a great evening of blazing guitar intensity. Clapton played a mixture of hits, blues standards and deeper cuts including “I Shot the Sheriff,” “Layla,” “Key to the Highway,” “Wonderful Tonight,” “Let it Rain” (which he rarely played in concert) and many more. It was spectacular.

Eric Clapton in concert at Madison Square Garden, May 1, 2015 Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Steve Proctor.

The acoustics aren’t bad for a big arena, and the sound system was excellent. There are only two downsides to attending a concert at MSG. First, the cost of a beer will set you back the cost of both your first- and second-born children. Second, when the concert is over, you’re ushered down poorly-lit fire escape stairs and the locals are in a big hurry to catch their trains. Hang on tightly to the railing as they will run over you as if fleeing a burning building.

After sleeping off the exposure to a massive amount of humanity, we were up and at ’em at 5:00 AM. Yes, you read that correctly. Here’s the game plan: first, call down to the valet and have them get the car from the parking garage; it could take a while and since you arrived early, it’s probably many layers deep in the queue. They might need to move 50 cars before they can get yours out. Pack up and head downstairs to get explicit instructions on how to find the Lincoln Tunnel. Your car has been deep underground all night and the GPS has gone brain dead. It has no idea where it is as it can’t see the satellites. It will believe it’s in a network of slot canyons between tall buildings, so you need to know exactly how to get out of there. It’s easy. Three left turns and a right turn and you’re in the tunnel. However, you can’t rely on signage to get there. The only signs you’ll see, until you’re at the tunnel, are maybe 18 by 24 inches and are on light poles on the side of the streets, not overhead where they can easily be seen. And most likely, at that hour, it’s before sunrise. Hence, the need for explicit instructions from the valet.

After you climb out of the far side of the tunnel, you’ll realize why you left bright and surly in the morning. You’ll want to be on the journey home by 6:00 AM. That’s because there are seemingly, or maybe literally, hundreds upon hundreds of busses headed into NYC and once they drop off the commuters, you will no longer be able to make a left or right turn at an intersection. That’s no joke. Once you climb up from the tunnel, it’s two or more lanes wide of busses coming at you until you get well into the salt marshes. The crosswalks will be completely full. Keep going, confident you made the right decision to hold off breakfast until you get to central New Jersey. By then, you’ll notice that everyone is going in the opposite direction. Congratulations, you’ve survived it. And the traffic won’t be getting any less intense in 2022. There’s a lot of cheap real estate in NYC these days, but that won’t last for long. Nature abhors a vacuum.

We would return again that fall for Clapton after he threatened to discontinue touring because of his arthritis. The show was an add-on to the tour, and with the same lineup of artists in the band as he had for his birthday concert. Once again, a great performance. We hadn’t initially planned on this concert, but we were in Newark, New Jersey the night before to see Roger Waters at the Prudential Center and it was just a short swim across the Hudson River.

The first half of Roger’s concert was great, playing many of the songs you’re accustomed to from Pink Floyd. The second set was disappointing, to say the least. It began with the launching of the pink pig helium balloon with the Star of David on its back. The set consisted entirely of a political diatribe. By the end of the second song, there were quite a few empty seats as concertgoers just got up and walked out.

We also saw Sir Paul McCartney at the Prudential Center, another great concert, even if he started 45 minutes late. He played a double set with a six-song encore of Beatles tunes. I’d like to write more about these concerts and give them their own article, but I have been unable to contact the venue’s media relations people for information I need.

Our last foray into NYC before the pandemic was to see Jeff Lynne’s ELO at MSG. It was another fantastic concert replete with a laser light show. There was some humor here as a guy in front of us stood up and danced to every ELO song, proudly proclaiming that one to be his favorite. During “Telephone Line,” he finally collapsed and was silent for the remainder of the concert. We were worn out, too, just from trying to see around him.

We remember the ELO show as being wonderfully balanced. Clapton was all about the music with little show to get in the way. ELO was about the music as well, but it also had the light show. So many concerts are so much about the show that it gets in the way of the music. I’m sure that Eric and Jeff would have a choice of the best musicians for their band. Both had stunning sound and were well-rehearsed. I’m sure the old adage applies of once you think you know the music, play it again another one thousand times just to be sure.

Next issue, we’ll move on to a venue with really comfy seats and legroom for the big and tall. Can you guess what it is? Hint: my grandmother took me there as a small child to see the Christmas and Easter pageants.

For Clapton fans who are interested, Eric will play MSG again on September 18 and 19, 2022. Tickets are already on sale.

Previous installments of this series appeared in Issues 164 and 165.

Header image courtesy of MSG Entertainment.

Let’s begin by setting the stage. I have a very large collection of digital music, representing the equivalent of well over 4,400 albums, most of it classical. A number of years ago, I went through my entire collection of CDs and ripped them to FLAC files. I’ve done the same thing with my more limited collection of SACDs and DVD-As, ripping them at the highest possible resolution. I even digitized my entire collection of vinyl.

Why did I do this? Three reasons, really. First of all, I moved from a relatively large home to a considerably smaller condo and there simply wasn’t enough room for my entire collection. The second reason is that I also own a lake house (we call it a cottage here in Canada) about three hours north of Toronto where I live, and I wanted to have access to my entire music collection in both locations. And finally, as I get older, it’s just a lot easier to choose what to play from the comfort of the couch rather than getting up, bending over, and rifling through a collection of disks.

Don’t get me wrong: I haven’t thrown out my vinyl and CDs, but a lot of it is in boxes in a storage unit. And I still play LPs and CDs fairly regularly. But most of my recent purchases have been digital downloads, at the highest-possible resolution. However, relying on a largely digital collection has left me with some conundrums. Herewith, a couple of confessions:

First: On more than one occasion I have purchased an online download, only to discover that it was already in my library. Oops. There goes another 20 bucks down the toilet.

Second confession: Over the years, I have made a number of attempts to catalog my collection, in part to avoid such embarrassments, but also so I know what I actually own. I’m quite sure I have dozens, potentially hundreds of albums that have not been played in years, largely because I forgot about them. And regardless, as someone once said, men love making lists. But unfortunately, none of my attempts to create a catalog have succeeded so far.

What I really want is something that will go out, scan my digital files, and generate a database that can be queried, or generate reports that will show – for example – all of my chamber music recordings, or how many complete Beethoven symphony cycles I own (it’s 30, by the way. And yes, I know – I have a problem).

By training, I’m a software engineer, and I did make some early attempts to build my own software to catalog my collection. But, frankly, I haven’t done a lot of coding for years and I’m getting a little long in the tooth. Everything I tried to build was clumsy and not at all intuitive or, for that matter, effective.

So where did that leave me?

Enter Google. A (not-so) quick search identified a large number of programs for cataloging digital music. I tried out quite a number of them. You can see my results below:

Classical Music Collector – Not updated since Oct. 2011
Classicat – The last revision was 2011, and it’s no longer available.
Muso – I couldn’t get it to install.
Reprtoir – I didn’t test it because the price is based on the number of tracks and it would have cost hundreds of dollars a month for a collection the size of mine.
MediaMonkey – This is a commercial product (although there is a dumbed-down free version) that did the best job on my library, but it has no reporting capabilities and it doesn’t pick up all of the relevant information.
Musicnizer – It did a reasonable job of scanning files but lacks classical-related tag information.
My Music Collection – Same as above, and lacking in reporting.
MusiChi Suite – Showed a lot of promise, but the full version is no longer available and the free version is a VERY old version.
MusicBee – Free, but again not suited to classical music.
Clementine – Hasn’t been updated in six years.
Songbird – Hasn’t been updated since 2013.

And yes, I know all about Roon and jRiver. They both have beautiful user interfaces and they do a pretty good job of finding the metadata for a lot of recordings. But they’re not encyclopedic and, in any case, I wasn’t really looking for a streaming interface; my goal was to create a catalog. (For the record, I stream using Volumio on an Allo USBridge Signature connected by USB to my DAC.)

Ultimately, I gave up in frustration. I simply couldn’t find any software that did everything I wanted. Even a combination of tools just wouldn’t do the trick. Moreover, in the process of testing all of the above software, I made an important discovery:

The metadata on most classical tracks is largely incomplete, inconsistent, inaccurate or poorly organized. And ultimately, even the best software cataloging tool is going to do a poor job without accurate information. There’s that old expression in the computer industry: garbage in, garbage out (also known as GIGO).

Take, for example, this album:

The metadata looks like this:

So, what’s wrong with that?

Well, pretty much everything. The name of the opera is missing, as is the composer. And the information about the conductor and the orchestra is lumped in with the soloists. The only information we have to work from is the Artist field which contains very little detail about who does what. And, unfortunately, this is typical of many CD rips, as well as a lot of downloads.

Another depressing discovery was that the quality and accuracy of the metadata varies from one record label to another, from one download source to another!

As it turns out, any music catalog application is fundamentally useless, unless you’re willing to do the work of fixing all your metadata.

And so, I dug in; after all, what choice did I have? Using a free program called MP3Tag (which, notwithstanding its name, supports pretty much every audio format including DSD), I started by spending a few hours every day, over the course of several weeks, cleaning up and re-tagging music files. One of the other nice features of MP3Tag is that – once you’ve corrected the metadata – you can export all or part of your music library as a CSV file which can then be opened and sorted in Microsoft Excel (or any other compatible program). You can download MP3Tag here:

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html

I started by ensuring that I was using a consistent system for assigning genres to all of my tracks. That was the easy part because I already had my music (mostly) organized in folders by genre.

But it wasn’t long before I realized that I was facing a nearly impossible task. I had successfully worked my way through about 20 percent of my collection, one album at a time. But this was after weeks of effort, and it became obvious that I could be looking at months of tedious, repetitive work before I finished manually re-tagging every album in my collection. I just didn’t see that as a realistic goal.

And then I had a sudden realization. Most of the data that I needed was already there, in the names of the music folders themselves. For example, here’s a typical folder name from my library:

Mozart Symphony #38 – Klemperer, Philharmonia

If I could simply capture that information, it would probably provide me with all the information I needed to build a catalog. The only challenge is that I would need to use a consistent naming scheme for my music folders which – fortunately – I do, for the most part. So I turned back to my programming background. And the question I asked myself was: how can I automate this process as much as possible?

Through a process of trial and error, I tried a number of approaches, but the one that worked the best was to create a series of scripts to do the “grunt work.” I’m going to share the fruit of my efforts (below), but here are some caveats you need to be aware of:

1. The scripts I created are written using Linux/UNIX shell-scripting language. I wish I was an expert in Microsoft PowerShell – but I’m not. If you don’t have access to a Linux environment, don’t panic. There’s a free program called Cygwin that will allow you to run Linux scripts and other utilities on any Windows PC. And, since Apple Macintosh is largely based on UNIX, these scripts also work on Mac OS (using the Bash shell). You can download Cygwin here:

http://www.cygwin.com/

2. The tools are designed to work in a very specific way, with specific naming conventions for your music folders. If you want to use a different convention, you’ll need to know a bit of programming yourself. I realize this is a big ask. But the tools come with some documentation, so that may help.
3. As with all free software, these tools are provided on a “use at your own risk” basis.
4. Be aware that Windows sometimes does funky things with upper- and lower-case names in files, and even funkier things with special characters like the umlaut. One of the reasons I ended up using Linux is because it does a much better job.

In the simplest terms, here’s what you need to do:

1. Download the scripts. You will find them here:

FTP: music.connectability.com (use a free FTP client like FileZilla).
The user name is: anonymous
There is no password

You can download a ZIP file or a Linux archive (tgz) file containing the entire script library. In the alternative, you can also download the files individually.

2. Install them on your Linux computer, or in Cygwin, or on your Mac in a Bash shell. You’ll find detailed instructions in the README and HOWTO files.
3. Make sure the computer you are using has full access to your digital music library.
4. Read and follow the instructions in the README and HOWTO files. If you get stuck, you’ll find instructions for contacting me in the README. I won’t guarantee quick response, but I’ll do my best to help.

Once you have run the utility (it’s called scan-music), you will end up with a CSV file which can then be opened in Microsoft Excel or any other compatible program (for example, LibreOffice, which is free). If you’re really clever, you can probably import the results into a database like Microsoft Access or any one of several free databases. Once you do that you can run searches and sorts to slice and dice your music catalog in whatever way works best for you.

And here’s an example of what the results might look like (I apologize for the small type):

I wish you good success in your cataloging. Hopefully, I’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Header image: portrait of Charles Gounod by Théobald Chartran, published in Vanity Fair, February 1, 1879. 

Marin Marais (1656-1728) lived in Paris his whole life. That is, except for the many months of the year when he was stationed at Versailles as a musician for the royal court, a post he held for nearly four decades. His training was the absolute best available: composition and conducting from Jean-Baptiste Lully and viola da gamba from Jean de Sainte-Colombe. With that kind of pedigree, it’s no surprise that his music is thought to represent the best of the mid-Baroque period.

Although Marais did write a few operas (you can read about one of them in an earlier Copper column: https://www.psaudio.com/copper/article/semele-its-not-just-an-opera-by-handel/ ), he was and is best known for works for his own instrument, the bass viol or viola da gamba. Held between the knees like a cello and with the same range, a gamba has six strings and frets on its fingerboard. Marais’s pieces include solos, duets, and trios, usually in the form of suites. Several recent recordings celebrate these beautiful compositions.

Many of Marais’s suites were published in a multi-volume set called the Pièces de viole. Viola da gambist Atsushi Sakai has recorded Book One of that set, accompanied by Christophe Rousset in a release on the Aperté label. Sakai and Rousset move hand-in-glove, producing a nuanced interplay that is especially ideal for the preludes introducing each suite. The tradition was to play these as if they were improvised, focusing on the contrasting and ever-changing moods and motifs. Of course, the reality for performers is quite the opposite: it takes extreme coordination for two players to seem to be playing extemporaneously at the same time. For Sakai and Rousset, the result is as natural as a chat between two good friends.

The recording includes six suites and the Tombeau de Monsieur Meliton (a tombeau was a type of musical lamentation meant to pay homage to somebody, but we don’t know who Mr. Meliton was). Some of the suites in Book 1 require two viols, and for those, Sakai and Rousset are joined by Marion Martineau. Interestingly, both gambists are playing 21^st-century instruments by maker Judith Kraft, done in the style of specific exemplars from around 1700.

While Marais’s far-wandering preludes and tombeaux are fascinating, there is much to be admired in the more regularly structured courtly dances such as this Gavotte for two viols and continuo. Sakai and company make an effective choice to keep the underlying pulse steady while not tightening the rhythm too much, allowing it to flow.

“Continuo” is a term that can be interpreted in many ways in Baroque music. In his new recording of Book 4 of the Pièces de viole, gambist François Joubert-Caillet is accompanied by his own string ensemble, L’Achéron, with another gambist doubling the bassline in the continuo to bolster the harpsichord. The result on this four-disc set on the Ricercar label is a pleasingly rich sound. Joubert-Caillet and his group have also recorded Books 1 – 3 in recent years, but the use of more players is especially appropriate for Book 4, which includes a suite for three viols playing in counterpoint. While the three gambists do not have the same cellular-level connection heard in the Sakai recording, it’s a vital and interesting interpretation.

Another reason to give the Joubert-Caillet recording a listen is because it he begins one of the suites a cappella, without continuo. If you’re a fan of Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suites, you might find it intriguing to hear an earlier (and decidedly French) approach to that genre.

In the Prelude to Marais’s Suite in D minor, Joubert-Caillet uses a delicate, almost lacy tone, allowing rubato to shape the rhythm of constant eighth notes. After the opening statement, a lutenist from L’Achéron joins in – so subtly at first that you wonder if your ears are playing tricks on you.

Much of Book 4 of the Pièces de viole, with a couple of Book 2 suites mixed in, can be found on Marais: Works for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord. Gambist Mélisande Corriveau is featured on this ATMA Classique recording, with Eric Milnes on harpsichord. The duo album boasts not only fine playing, but also particularly well-engineered sound.

The third movement of the Suite No. 1 in D Minor is a courante, a stately dance in triple meter. Marais, who was ahead of his time in his penchant for giving instrumental music programmatic names that evoked particular images, called this movement “La mignone” (The sweetheart). Corriveau plays with clarity and elegance, and just the right touch of romantic longing. Her instrument is a 1691 original by a renowned London maker called Barak Norman.

A good source for more programmatic movements is Marais at Midnight, part of the acclaimed Music from Aston Magna series on Centaur Records. On the recording, gambist Laura Jeppesen is accompanied not by a harpsichord but by a theorbo, a six-foot-long bass lute with sympathetic strings. Catherine Liddell handles that impressive instrument, which was a favorite among composers throughout the 17^th century.

The album’s title comes from descriptions of the concerts that Marais and his colleagues would give for King Louis XIV and his family. Apparently they were quite the jam sessions. According to a report from that time, “those who wished, played, and those who wanted to, listened.” And they tended to last until midnight.

Jeppesen and Liddell create an easy collaboration, intimate and precise. The repertoire goes beyond the often-recorded standard-length suites and includes excerpts from the Book 2, Suite No. 3 in D Major, with over 20 movements, all of which have programmatic titles. This one is called “Les voix humaines” (The Human Voices). Cellist Lynn Harrell used to say that the cello was the instrument closest to the human voice; perhaps Marais was thinking something similar about the viola da gamba when he wrote this.

If you enjoy the mesmerizing pace of Marais’s slow movements, I recommend the movie about him, All the Mornings of the World. Starring Gérard Depardieu, the 1991 film unfolds very much like one of the composer’s prelude-style meditations. But King Louis also loved to dance, so you can bet that Marais’s skill at writing pieces like this rousing little theme-and-variation movement called “Le basque,” from Book 4, Suite No. 5 in A Major, was a big reason for his long employment in the royal household.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/portrait de Marin Marais, Musée de la musique, Paris.

Rufus Wainwright’s childhood must have been wall-to-wall music. Both his parents and most of his aunts and uncles were folk singers. But thanks to an obsession with opera that gripped him in his teen years, not to mention a determination that brought him to the brink of self-destruction, Wainwright has developed a sound and style – and reached a level of global success – that separates him from the rest of his musical clan.

His father is Loudon Wainwright III, who has been singing his own sardonic songs since the 1960s and has a new album, Lifetime Achievement, due out in August. Rufus’ mother was Kate McGarrigle, who died in 2010. She sang and played banjo as part of a duo with her sister, Anna. Kate McGarrigle wrote songs, too, of a very different style, often infused with old tradition and quiet sadness. As Rufus wrote in one lyric, “I just want to be my dad, with a slight sprinkling of my mother.” It’s fair to say that he’s achieved that goal, although there’s also much more to him.

In 1976, when he was three, his parents divorced, and his mother took Rufus and his infant sister Martha, who would also grow up to be an accomplished singer-songwriter, to her native Montreal. Wainwright soon started singing with the family. He has been writing songs since his early teens. That’s also when he realized he was gay, and his openness about that identity in his songwriting has always inspired his fans. Besides writing unabashed songs like “Gay Messiah,” he painstakingly recreated Judy Garland’s 1961 live recording at London’s Palladium in his 2006 show Rufus Does Judy, which he is currently reviving for the third time.

But Wainwright’s own songs are his true legacy, combining an operatic sense of melody, a symphonist’s ear for orchestration, and a poet laureate’s gift for expressing the intricacies of the human existence in words. He got his first chance to share those gifts widely in 1998 when Van Dyke Parks helped him get signed with DreamWorks Records, which put out his debut, Rufus Wainwright. The songs were irrefutably original, from “Damned Ladies,” cataloguing the unfortunate (and preventable) deaths of opera heroines, to the autobiographical boarding-school memoir of “Millbrook,” to “Matinee Idol” comparing the late, beautiful River Phoenix to Hollywood’s golden age.

Among the album’s most touching moments is “Beauty Mark,” a loving note from Wainwright to his mom, acknowledging both their similarities and their differences and thanking her for her unconditional love.

With the debut landing on critics’ best-of lists and winning awards, not to mention the word-of-mouth buzz among new fans, Wainwright’s career was launched in a big way. Now living in New York, he created a spectacular follow-up in Poses (2001), which helped to cement his popularity.

The title song deals with the preposterous glamor of a young, gay, just-hatched star, featuring the notorious line, “Now I’m drunk and wearing flip-flops on Fifth Avenue.” The song “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” is another piece of self-analysis laced with biting sarcasm. An unusual touch of the fantastical flavors “The Consort,” conjuring up medieval castles with a choir of trumpets, grippingly produced by French-Canadian Pierre Marchand.

Wainwright’s meteoric rise took a bad turn as his addiction to crystal meth worsened. Not long after Poses, he found himself going blind. He reached out to a veteran celebrity with his own experiences with substance abuse who happened to be a huge admirer of the young Wainwright: Elton John convinced him to go to rehab.

He emerged clean, ready to work, and at a whole new level of poetic access to his emotions. What followed was a set of two CDs, released in 2003 and 2004, called Want. Wainwright seems to offer the listener his very soul. “Go or Go Ahead,” from Want One, is a terrifying, beautiful exploration of the process of addiction and recovery. 

Want Two has its own treasures, including the aforementioned “Gay Messiah” and an insightful take on the life of an unfulfilled woman, called “The Art Teacher.” The latter is also an example of the pianistic challenges that Wainwright often sets for himself – he keeps an endless current of eighth notes going in both hands as he sings. “Memphis Skyline” is another standout from this album, a tribute to songwriter Jeff Buckley, who had recently died. One verse mentions Buckley’s recording of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” a song that Wainwright would soon make his own stirring version of for, of all things, the soundtrack to the animated movie Shrek!

The predominance of the Catholic faith in his native Montreal often seeps into Wainwright’s songs. One example is the opening track of Want Two, “Agnus Dei,” which uses the Latin words from the Mass while evoking Jewish or other Middle Eastern music. In fact, in 2020, after a massive explosion occurred in Beirut, Wainwright performed this song (remotely) in a charity fundraiser with the Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila (I wrote about them for Copper in Issue 43 ). Here is the album version:

It took a few years to write and complete the next album, Release the Stars (2007), in part because Wainwright was preoccupied with a new relationship with the man who is now his husband. Many of the album’s songs reflect that love, often with a sense of puzzlement and doubt that a successful pairing could actually happen to him.

Release the Stars also shows a new political side to Wainwright. “Going to a Town” expresses anger, exhaustion, and disappointment at the direction he felt the US was heading under George W. Bush. “I’m so tired of you, America” is an often-repeated line. The richly-layered arrangements and lush production by Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys intensify the effect.

When Wainwright’s mother died in 2010, he responded with the album All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu. His pain seems so raw that he can’t express it with his usual effectiveness. But by Out of the Game in 2012, he has crafted his grief into more controlled and understandable art. Although he intended this album to be scaled back, as a contrast to Release the Stars, he ended up hiring Mark Ronson to produce a sound at least as dense and impassioned.

The first few verses of “Montauk” imagine Wainwright’s daughter, a toddler at the time, coming back as a grownup to visit her aging dads. But the last verse is a reminder that the past watches over their home on Long Island: the spirit of Kate McGarrigle.

Wainwright’s most recent album is Unfollow the Rules, released in 2020 just after COVID hit. Unable to tour, he streamed a performance video of the entire album with his band (masked and at safe distances during those pre-vaccine months), shot in the ballroom of an old mansion in Laurel Canyon.

Once again, this is a tour-de-force of production, this time courtesy of Crowded House’s Mitchell Froom. Consider “Early Morning Madness,” which swoops from sonic desert to sonic cathedral and back again. And once again, Wainwright manages to capture common human experiences in a way that invites us to recognize ourselves in his words.

Header image courtesy of Wikipedia/Oliver Mark.