Issue 167

Vinyl is a medium which my opinion is torn on.

I like the sound, the experience, the large cover art, and the ability to read the liner notes without a magnifying glass. It’s also a medium I can watch as it plays – I first played records when I was three years old and spent hours watching the LPs spin on the platter. I also formed a visual identity with each record label from a young age.

Yet, vinyl isn’t perfect. Pops, clicks, warpage, groove burn (wear), off-center spindle holes, recycled vinyl, and a handful of other issues sometimes make the format less than ideal. Some records play perfectly, while others can vary from a few defects to largely unplayable.

CDs were exciting to collect in the early days when old favorites were reissued, and when new releases finally made their way to the format. I had many enjoyable years, traveling down to a favorite record store every Friday evening, as they played tracks from the newest releases over the systems in the stores.

CDs were not without flaws either, although they were fewer in number. CD rot, cracking hubs, scratches (the worst of those being label-side scratches that could render an entire disc unplayable), and dirt could cause playback issues. The sound of early CDs often left a lot to be desired due to engineers learning a new format, primitive digital equipment, and the fact that the labels would use any available master tape as opposed to digging for original, good-sounding tapes.

Buying music as downloads gets around the physical playback issues, but you lose the tactile experience of owning and collecting your music. On the plus side, downloads often offer higher resolution than CDs, so that is attractive to some of us. (Although the music industry really needs to get back to 24-bit/88.2 kHz or 24-bit/96 kHz as a standard for “high-res,” as opposed to 24-bit/44.1 kHz, which seems to be growing in popularity – corporate America’s way of cheapening the product, as usual.)

So. Did I have a sudden revelation? Do I now hate vinyl?

Not at all.

It’s the type of vinyl I buy that has changed. I primarily buy vinyl that has never been reissued digitally, or never reissued in its original form (such as an album that may have been revised, remixed, re-sequenced and so on in later releases).

I also limit my purchases, when possible, to sealed, new old stock (NOS) records. In my experience over the past 15 years or so, the quality of the used records I’ve encountered has dipped substantially, mostly in terms of groove burn. Buying locally, I’ve found that about six in ten LPs purchased ended up on my reject pile because they had excessive wear. They may have looked good with a visual inspection and played with minimal noise after a cleaning, but groove wear is something that can’t be seen, or cured by cleaning the record.

I also discover older records that I have never been able to find sealed, and make the best of it by trying to purchase vinyl that is (hopefully) graded properly, which itself is an uncertain process. I’ve done well with the quality of some used records, but purchasing others was a dismal failure. I have, however, had much better luck through Discogs sellers than I have through any local purchases I have made in a long time. It’s a far cry from the 1990s when the stores had more good-quality vinyl than I could ever afford, even at their lower prices at the time (when everyone was dumping vinyl to buy CDs).

So, what changed?

To be honest, I’ve never had as many issues with buying sealed records as I have with buying new vinyl manufactured today. From where I’m sitting, I can glance over at my record shelves and spot the records that gave me problems. As much as I would like to post a “hall of shame” list of specific titles or labels I’ve had issues with, I won’t. But, I will point out the issues that have made me largely swear off buying newly-pressed vinyl.

• Off-center pressings. This one has bothered me the most, and has happened in far greater numbers than it should. I can count on one hand how many off-center pressings I’ve purchased in decades past, and that includes buying new old stock sealed records manufactured decades ago. An off-center record was very rare. With records pressed in the past 15 or so years, however, that number is shamefully high. It’s even worse when buying a multi-LP set and one of the two records is off-center, rendering the entire set unacceptable. Also, can anyone explain to me how one side of an LP can be off-center? Most of the newer vinyl with concentricity issues I’ve purchased are worse on one side than the other.
• Noisy vinyl. Granted, vinyl in the late 1970s and early 1980s could sometimes be of dismal quality, thanks to pressing plants using recycled vinyl. But in today’s world, aren’t we all using virgin vinyl? Yet I’ve purchased many new records that are noisy, and a trip or two through the record-cleaning process doesn’t help. I’ve also found that records pressed from colored vinyl are inherently noisy, with very few exceptions (there are some).
• Scratches and scuffs. I have encountered a couple of LPs where I have seen physical damage on the record, fresh out of the sealed jacket. One of these was a nicely-mastered 2-LP set where, after obtaining two copies, I still could not Frankenstein together a good set. This is completely unacceptable. Other records I’ve purchased have had a light tick through one or two tracks on a side and sure enough, there’s a faint scratch in the vinyl. This is especially maddening when I pay a premium for a 2-LP 45 RPM set, and find it flawed in such a manner.
• For the most part, I’ve had almost no issues with warpage, unless the records have had shipping damage. Yet there are still some that have minor warpage (like a “bump”) that is unexplainable.
• Digital masters. I have noticed in some cases that the vinyl equivalent of a digitally-recorded album can sound different, even better. (And I have a theory as to why that is, but don’t have the space to explain it here.) Yet so many of these reissues start with compromised masters. Recent recordings are often “brickwalled” for digital release, and that same mastering ends up on the vinyl. I have also had some vinyl reissues (from a major label) that sound lifeless – the dynamics don’t sound “brickwalled” but the sound is somehow dull and flat.
• This is what ultimately made me stop buying most new vinyl. With recent price increases, and the product I receive being a gamble in terms of quality, it’s not worth the expense or inconvenience. $25 to $60 or more for a title I’m interested in is money I don’t care to spend anymore. The recent fad of “single-stage” or “one-step” vinyl pressings (where stampers are made directly from the lacquer) elevates that cost even further.
• Limited quantities, creating deliberate rarity. This isn’t so much a physical aspect of vinyl, but the idea of manufacturing albums in quantities small enough to get the vinyl collectors worked up into a frenzy. For someone simply wanting a copy of a record they would like to play, it pushes the price and availability out of reach. Making matters worse are the flippers who buy these up on the day of their release or through preorders, with no intention of opening them but instead, selling for a massive profit to collectors who missed out.

I was once caught up in a phase of buying new vinyl with no real rhyme or reason. Yet while looking at my shelves here, there are many of these LPs I’ve played only once, though they have been sitting here for several years. In a few cases, I wanted a complete collection of reissues, even if I didn’t care for all of the titles in the series. In others, I’d read glowing reviews of the sound or music, but was disappointed once I played the album. (And in some of those cases, the reviewers always seemed to get pristine copies, or at least never mentioned if their copies had any flaws, whereas mine ended up having one or more issues.) Some of these record purchases were impulse buys, which we are all guilty of.

Do I still buy new vinyl? Yes, but infrequently now. It’s often to support an artist I like (buying direct from their own online store), and it will often be for a rare edition not available through retail. Titles with a superior mastering from original tapes also catch my eye, but today I ask myself if I really need a record before I buy it, and just about always answer “no.”

Honestly, with the long list of titles on my want list at Discogs, most of which I can buy sealed new old stock copies of, I can safely say that I have plenty of vinyl purchases to make in the future which are not new vinyl. More than I can afford, in fact!

The bottom line is, I would probably partake in more new vinyl purchases if the cost weren’t prohibitive to me, and the quality wasn’t a moving target. For the prices asked, I deserve and demand far better than what I’ve often ended up purchasing.

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/Ashley Ibarra.

(Cat haters might want to hit the “Next” button, but if you do, you’ll miss a new photo of Otis, my neighbor’s Golden Retriever, formerly the cutest puppy, with three tennis balls in his mouth.)

[From Part One (Issue 165): I love dogs. I will pet any and every dog that crosses my path (as long as their owner says it’s okay). When I was growing up, we couldn’t have dogs or cats because of my brother’s allergies. As a result, we became the neighborhood reptile experts, with a rotating array of lizards and snakes occupying terrariums in our house (usually alligator lizards and gopher or bull snakes – garter snakes don’t do so well in captivity). Our mom was cool with that, and it made for great show-and-tell days at school. Neighbors would call us to say there was a lizard or snake in their garage and ask that we come get it. It was fun, but I would have loved having a dog.]

I never outgrew my fondness for snakes, but they may have outgrown me! This is a Burmese python in a classroom wildlife center.

Part One left off with the catnapping of Smokey and Sammy, a covert operation to rescue them from a neglectful owner. Smokey was a robust and confident black cat, full of personality, who became the alpha cat in the neighborhood, but he was not mean about it. When I would pull into the driveway, he would greet me, rearing up on his hind legs to meet my outstretched hand as I bent to pet him. Sammy was a sweet, very affectionate orange tabby. At this point, the household also included Hunter, my Bengal cat, and Ben, a young Rottweiler who had joined the menagerie following the death of Henry, a gentle giant of a dog. All of the cats were indoor/outdoor.

Smokey.

Sammy.

My chronology is a bit fuzzy, but somewhere in there, we also fostered a young mother cat and her four kittens. Although she and two of her kittens were subsequently adopted, we decided to keep Lily, a black female, along with the runt of the litter, a cute little guy who I felt just had to be named Spud. Spud’s mother had shunned him, stunting his physical development, resulting in his having a rather awkward gait. (Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of either of them.) Although Lily was very sweet with me, she did not like Sammy, and tormented him to the point where he would spend most of his time hiding behind the couch. My girlfriend decided we should give Sammy away and, over my objections, took him to be a classroom cat at a school for developmentally disabled children. I just didn’t think it was a good environment for him, and my apprehension was borne out. Within a couple of days, we got a call from the teacher saying Sammy had escaped and was nowhere to be found.

I was really upset and went to see if I could find him. That night, I patrolled the school grounds, calling out to him. I used a Sony Walkman D3 cassette recorder as a sort of hearing aid, putting it into record mode with the volume up and using earphones. After about an hour, I had to give up. Imagine my relief when the teacher called the next day to say he had been hiding somewhere in the classroom all along. I convinced my girlfriend that we should take him back.

Some time later, Hunter and I moved out into an apartment. He took being an indoor cat again in stride. Maybe a year later, a small black cat started showing up on my patio. Hunter seemed to be interested in her (I just assumed it was a female based on its build), but I wasn’t sure if I should let her in – the last thing I wanted was for Hunter to get territorial and start spraying. I should note that all of my cats have been spayed or neutered, but that doesn’t always guarantee against their marking territory. The visits, with the two of them separated by a sliding glass door, went on for weeks. I finally took a chance and let her in. Within minutes, she and Hunter were having fun playing and chasing each other around the place. I asked my neighbors in the complex if anyone owned her, but no one said they did. I hadn’t been feeding her, and I didn’t keep her just yet, but I ultimately decided I would. She needed a name, and my girlfriend chose “Miss Pearl.” I was cool with that, until one morning when she jumped on the bed, walked toward me, and then turned to walk away. The view was educational, to say the least, as I thought, “How did I miss those balls?!” Miss Pearl was a boy! She then became “Mr. Earl,” without the need for any complex gender-reassignment procedures (aside from the requisite neutering).

My favorite picture of Mr. Earl.

Hunter and Mr. Earl did just fine in the apartment for a few more years, after which I was finally able to buy a house. Once I was all moved in, my girlfriend suggested I take Sammy, since Lily was still harassing him. Soon I had three indoor cats. Although I live in a quiet residential neighborhood, a lot of wildlife passes through my yard, including raccoons, foxes, skunks, and opossums. It just seemed too risky to let the cats out.

My Three Sons – Hunter, Sammy, and Mr. Earl.

All was well until young Mr. Earl developed a bad case of asthma. His first serious attack resulted in a clinic stay where he was given oxygen and steroids, but he recovered quite well. Some time later, he had another attack, leading to the same treatment and result. Unfortunately, the third time was too much for him, and I had to call the vet come to the house for euthanasia.

A few years passed (uneventfully, in the cat world) before Hunter started to decline. In 2015, he was approaching the age of 19, and was losing control of his body in various ways. Once again, euthanasia was called for, but this time the vet couldn’t work in a home visit. I had to bring him to the office and hold him while he got the injection. Sweet Sammy (whose age I had estimated to be about ten) adjusted quite well to being an only cat. He had gone from being skittish (to the point where a knock at the door would send him into the farthest reaches of the closet) to welcoming visitors. He even won over my current girlfriend, who had not been particularly fond of cats in the past.

Three years later, he developed health issues that required daily fluid infusions. I never thought I’d be able to put a needle in my cat, but the vet showed me how, and Sammy was very cooperative. Sadly, though, soon it was his turn to go. His timing was actually fortuitous, as we were going to be taking a three-week trip to England in a month or two, and it would have been difficult to find a cat sitter who could do the fluid infusions. In the living room, after the vet had done her job, she said she didn’t know of another man who loved his cats as much as I did.

For the first time in over 20 years, I was without a feline companion. It was very strange to come home from work and not have a cat greet me. I even re-wrote the lyrics to “Town Without Pity” as “House Without Kitty” as a form of closure (but now I can’t find them). After our vacation, I started thinking about getting another cat.

I checked out the online listings from our local shelter and saw a beautiful two-year-old female. The shelter workers called her “Aretha,” due to the fact that she was quite vocal. They said she didn’t get along with the other cats and should go to an “only cat” household. I think they thought she would be difficult to place, because when I went there and asked to see Aretha, they lit up. She was in a large outdoor enclosure that was tall enough for me to walk into without stooping. I sat down and she came to me, jumped on my lap, and started purring, so I decided to take her. She made herself at home instantly when I opened her carrier in the house. She found the litter box, water bowl, and food dish in a matter of minutes, then curled up to sit with me on the couch.

Maddy, an hour after coming home.

With no disrespect to the “Queen of Soul,” I renamed her Maddy in keeping with my tradition of naming my cats after British musicians. Maddy Prior, whose voice I love, was the lead singer for Steeleye Span, a folk-rock outfit from the 1970s. She was also one half of the Silly Sisters (with June Tabor) as well as being a guest vocalist on Mike Oldfield’s Incantations album.

Maddy with the beautiful markings and soft fur.

Maddy (the cat, that is) is definitely feisty. I found out later from a friend who volunteered at the shelter that it wasn’t that Maddy didn’t get along with the other cats; she was actually attacking them! I have seen Maddy’s aggression on several occasions when neighborhood cats have passed by the sliding glass door. She puffs up, yowls, and seems fully ready for battle. The same reaction happens with dogs. I don’t dare let another creature in the house. This made it impossible to accept my ex-girlfriend’s offer to give me Lily when she was moving into a place with limits on pets.

Maddy has some behavioral quirks that are pretty amusing. She is a champion tail-chaser, reaching brief bursts of over 100 RPM. She will then fall over, grabbing her tail and a hind leg, kicking her chin repeatedly in the way cats do with their prey. Like a lot of cats, she really enjoys playing with rubber bands. I am grateful that, unlike a lot of cats, she does not eat them. Maddy is now around six years old, and looks to have a long healthy life with me.

One happy cat.

Now, once again, here’s Otis the Golden Retriever. His puppy picture was in Part One. He is now almost fully grown at 60 pounds. Otis is ball-obsessed, and he delights in catching tennis balls in midair with an acrobatic leap. He can fit three tennis balls in his mouth!

In the previous episode (Issue 166), we looked at the work of Flo Kaufmann of FloKaSon in Switzerland, the man who decided to preserve the Neumann disk recording legacy by keeping vintage Neumann lathes running. In Part 12 of this series (Issue 162) we had looked at Len Horowitz and his nephew, Jacob Horowitz, of the History of Recorded Sound in Los Angeles, California. Len was a Westrex employee who decided to preserve the Westrex disk recording legacy by purchasing their disk recording department in 1995, when it closed down.

As a result of the efforts of the aforementioned gentlemen, a number of Neumann and Westrex products are still in use to this day. There is also a whole other world of individuals who have been instrumental in preserving disk recording equipment and technology in a number of ways. It’s a bit of a grassroots movement, of people experimenting with ways of using disk recording equipment with relatively low resources and plenty of creativity. At this point, my dear readers, I must warn you that we will be exiting audiophile territory and entering a world where sound quality may not be a primary concern, or any concern at all! However, no discussion of disk recording at this stage could be considered complete without a mention of the individuals who never gave up on the vinyl record and kept making records with whatever means they had available, just to keep the medium alive.

It is largely through their efforts that a lot of equipment was rescued from the scrapyard and a lot of the know-how was preserved. In this respect, I believe that while the sound quality of the products of this scene may not always be up to my (admittedly high) standards, they are of major historical significance in the study of the disk record as a medium.

We could perhaps trace the history of this movement in the work of Emory Cook, who realized in the 1950s that certain underprivileged and distant small markets could not sustain a pressing plant in the traditional sense, which needs to produce a certain amount of output in order to be economically viable. These markets had historically been underserved in terms of the availability of recordings to the general public. One of the many innovations of Emory Cook was the development of a press that worked with sintered vinyl instead of extruded vinyl. It was slow, but it could be operated for very small runs. It did not require the usual complex industrial setup around the press, so the idea was that a record store could have one of these in the back room. They could display a catalog of available titles, but not carry any stock, and  would press the titles that the customer would choose on demand, while they waited. It was a groundbreaking idea and saw limited implementation in some Caribbean islands.

Pretty much at the opposite end of the world, in the 1980s Peter King in New Zealand put together a custom disk recording lathe and restored a couple of lathes he got from the BBC, using washing machine parts, with the aim of cutting records one by one directly on plastic. After much experimentation, he settled on the use of polycarbonate, of the type commonly used in roofing, and also used the same material to build the roof of the building that housed his workshop!

From Peter King’s website: http://peterkinglathecutrecords.co.nz/history.htm.

Back to the other end of the world, sometime later, Michael Dixon, a lathe cutting artist, lathe restorer, and teacher based in Tucson, Arizona decided to restore vintage Presto (and sometimes other makes such as Rek-O-Kut) lathes. Inspired by the work of Peter King, Dixon cuts records one by one on plastic blanks. Some of these are works of visual as well as sonic art. He has become the Presto lathe expert, restoring and selling these machines and offering advice and training as well as using them himself.

Michael Dixon of Tuscon, Arizona, lathe cutting artist, lathe restorer, and teacher. www.michaeldixonvinylart.com.

This revolution was promptly joined by several others, and coordinated through an internet forum called the Secret Society of Lathe Trolls, created by Steve Espinola, who is known as a restorer of vintage electric pianos under the name Doc Wurly. He started the forum hoping to get some information on a vintage lathe he had found, but it soon attracted every practitioner and expert of the art the world over, and expanded into a major resource of information and a place where ideas can be exchanged.

Others kept on joining in, and younger faces started appearing, thereby ensuring that there is indeed a younger generation interested in carrying the medium into the new millennium.

Steve Espinola, founder/administrator of Lathe Trolls (www.lathetrolls.com), Brooklyn, New York.

In Mexico City, Konstantin Tokarev started by building his own CNC milling machine. He used that machine to make parts from which he assembled two disk recording lathes of his own design, using a standard consumer turntable as a platter. He then went a few steps further and designed a low-cost stereophonic cutter head, which he is now selling to others.

Hardware from Konstantin Tokarev Assatiani, Mexico City, Mexico. www.instagram.com/kostyantokarev.

John Harris in New Zealand, obviously inspired by the work of Peter King, and located close to where King’s workshop has been for decades, decided to also build his own disk recording lathes, which he also uses to cut records one by one, entirely bypassing the need for pressing plants for small runs of records.

John Harris, Christchurch, New Zealand. www.johnnyelectric.co.nz.

Germany’s Thorsten Scheffner, of Organic Music and its studio, has also built his own disk recording lathe, of a unique design, which he uses to cut master lacquer disks for the traditional process of vinyl record manufacturing. Unlike most designs, Thorsten’s lathe uses a stationary cutter head. It is the platter that advances under the head, in a similar manner to the early lathes of the acoustic era. Thorsten also owns and operates Neumann and Scully lathes, in a facility known for audiophile-grade mastering.

Thorsten Scheffner, Organic Music studio, Obing, Germany. www.organicmusic.de.

Evidently, by now the ecosystem of experimenters is extremely diverse. In the next episode, we will dive further into this world and present a few more of the individuals involved.

Header image courtesy of Konstantin Tokarev.

Copper contributor Larry Jaffee is the co-founder of Making Vinyl, an industry organization dedicated to fostering cooperation among those in the record-manufacturing industry. Larry is also the author of Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21^st Century. I talked with him about the origins of Making Vinyl and Record Store Day, the state of vinyl today, and much more.

Frank Doris: How did Making Vinyl come into being, and what’s it all about?

Larry Jaffee: Bryan Ekus and I had been working together since about 2006 in various projects, some of them involving DVDs and CDs. I [had] stopped buying vinyl regularly – I was all in on the CD era because I was editing a trade magazine called Replication News, later Medialine.

The business was changing radically and everything was going towards digital [streaming and downloads]. I was reassessing my life and career. I decided to sell my record collection in 2010; I was moving and just wanted to downsize. I told a friend of mine and he was like, you did what? (laughs) At that point it didn’t really occur to me that I had done the wrong thing.

FD: I don’t think anybody would have thought that, at that time.

LJ: I did keep kept two boxes of records that were the most valuable stuff.

In 2013, a friend of mine sent me a PDF of a UK magazine about vinyl. Until then, it had never really occurred to me that vinyl was back. Then I met Tim Clair, owner of Record Reserve [on Long Island, New York] around June 2012. And in the dollar bin, I saw this jazz burlesque record from the early Sixties on Cameo Parkway. I bought it, put it on and I was like, “I’m back. I love this. Why did I [get out of vinyl?] Fast forward a little and I told Bryan, “maybe we should do a vinyl conference.” He thought it was too much, too soon. And in retrospect, he was probably right. So, we let it just sort of gel for a couple of years. Then he called me in the beginning of 2017. He said, “um, you remember that idea you had about doing a vinyl conference? I think we’re gonna do it.”

One of the reasons why Bryan thought the time was right was that he was the head of a group called the Colonial Purchasing Cooperative, which buys bulk raw materials for CD and DVD manufacturers, such as the plastic polycarbonate, and packaging. One of Colonial’s board members was Steve Sheldon from Rainbo Records in Santa Monica, which closed in January 2021 but previously was the oldest pressing plant in the U.S. I guess Steve might have said something to Bryan around that time about vinyl going pretty well at Rainbo.

I introduced Bryan to Michael Kurtz from Record Store Day [which had started in 2008]. I said to Bryan, “The industry knows you and me from the CD and DVD business. They don’t really know us from the vinyl world. We really need Record Store Day’s endorsement for the event, which I named “Making Vinyl.” There appeared to be some synergy. Michael and I were already friends, and we went to dinner with Steve Sheldon [and started to put plans in place].

Initially we were thinking about doing the Making Vinyl conference in Nashville but the hotels just weren’t available. So, Bryan asked what I thought about doing it in Detroit.  I told him Detroit was a lot better because Jack White [of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, solo, and others) just opened this factory there in February 2017. If we could get his seal of approval on Making Vinyl, it would be a big plus. Steve Sheldon was able to get a message to Ben Blackwell from Third Man Records [Jack White’s label], who got it to Jack. I was in Toronto on vacation at a baseball game with my kids – the Yankees were playing the Blue Jays – and I received an email from Ben who said that Jack really liked the idea.

FD: So, you and Bryan reached out to people from manufacturers, pressing plants and so on.

LJ: Yes, we knew who the biggest plants were, like United Record Pressing in Nashville, and Bryan had a few European contacts, who came over for the Detroit event. Executives from the big German plant Optimal Media, MPO in France, and GZ Vinyl in the Czech Republic – the biggest vinyl factory in the world – to join Steve from Rainbo and Don MacInnis from Record Technology, Inc., which presses audiophile-quality records.

We also learned about six or seven vinyl pressing companies that had recently opened or were about to do, such as Furnace Record Pressing in Virginia, Memphis Record Pressing, SunPress Vinyl in Miami, and Microforum in Toronto, not to mention, of course, Jack White’s Third Man Pressing. Jack White was interviewed by Ben Blackwell about why and how they opened the plant, and it was amazing. We ended up drawing almost 300 attendees. We realized we were on to something at that point. We thought, how do we top this? What happened was, the industry kept growing, and Little Steven Van Zandt keynoted in 2018.

Attendance was good at this Making Vinyl Nashville 2022 seminar at The Vinyl Lab. Courtesy of Michael Weintrob.

FD: Why did you decide you should create this organization?

LJ: We felt there was a need for a networking platform for people to meet each other. What we’ve learned is that vinyl manufacturing is different from the CD [manufacturing] business because that business became very cutthroat, dog eat dog, very price competitive. Vinyl is so different because it’s so expensive to get into it. The margins suck all the way around the value chain, and those in it help each other whenever they can.

FD: Can you give us any news highlights from the 2022 Making Vinyl conference in Nashville? Especially since COVID had shut things down previously.

LJ: We did a virtual event in December, 2020 as something of a pandemic stopgap. Regarding Nashville in 2022, we [now] look like geniuses that we chose to do it there because Jack White in March made a video plea for the major labels to get back into the pressing business themselves because the bottleneck of waiting for records [to be pressed for] as much as a year is unfair to musicians. Since Jack made that announcement, all these other companies have started talking about major expansion, such as United Record Pressing basically doubling their capacity in Nashville. The previously mentioned GZ Vinyl is opening Nashville Record Pressing and it also is part owner of Memphis Record Pressing, and is doubling its capacity. In addition, longtime vinyl mastering/cutting engineer Piper Payne had recently opened Physical Music Products, a Nashville facility. We held the June conference at a brand-new boutique facility with one press, The Vinyl Lab, which is also a performance venue.

At Making Vinyl, the record club Vinyl Me, Please announced they were going to open up a plant in Denver with partners, including musician Dave Rawlings and Gary Salstrom, who had run Quality Record Pressings in Salina, Kansas. Also announced at Making Vinyl was the opening of a Minneapolis plant by Copycat Media, whose parent company the ADS Group is among the largest CD replicators. So, while Jack asked the majors to get into the business, we found that there was this whole new focus on pressing capacity that has stepped up substantially in the past six months or so. Some of that is just coming online.

FD: There’s been some concern that in the wake of the Apollo Masters lacquer factory fire in February 2020, there would be a shortage of lacquers, but I heard that that was discussed at the conference, and in fact, it’s not a concern.

LJ: Yes. The Japanese supplier MDC stepped up their production and has managed to satisfy all the global needs, which I find amazing.

We ended the Making Vinyl event with T-Bone Burnett talking about his Ionic Original acetate technology that basically fortifies the disc [with a durable coating]. What is really interesting is that he claims that the sound quality improves after every play, as opposed to being degraded [like you’d have with standard acetate discs]. And T-Bone talked about the plan to auction off a recent Bob Dylan re-recording of “Blowing in the Wind” using this technology. [The one-of-a-kind disc was auctioned at Christie’s on July 7, 2022 for $1,769,508.]

T-Bone Burnett and Larry Jaffee at Making Vinyl Nashville, 2022. Courtesy of Michael Weintrob.

FD: Let’s go to another topic. There’s always been concern from savvy record buyers about the quality of new vinyl, going back to the 1970s when companies started to use recycled vinyl. But these concerns have carried into today. I just bought a new disc that has a pop on side one. Could you comment on that?

LJ: I think part of it that is there is a rush to get records out the door as fast as possible. That’s not to say quality control has completely gone away. I guess it depends on the plant. Some plants have better reputations than others. Labels like Resonance Records release great jazz records on newly-pressed vinyl.

Beyond the cutting and the mastering, plating is also extremely important. And, is it pure vinyl or is it reground vinyl? Does colored vinyl play a role in sound quality? I also think that the manufacturing of colored vinyl discs has actually screwed up the business in terms of creating production bottlenecks. It’s time-consuming to have to take off the molds and change the pellets [from regular to colored vinyl] and all that stuff.

Part Two of this interview will focus on Record Store Day, more realities of record manufacturing in the present day, and the mentality of audiophiles versus collectors and record buyers young and old.

Record Store Day, book cover.

Header image courtesy of Stacy Karp, A to Z Media.

“Ever been married, Evelyn?” I asked her over breakfast.

“Yeah, for about a year. I was 19 and he was 25. He had a red Camaro convertible. In retrospect, I think I was as attracted to that car as to the guy. All his friends were muscle car owners and we used to go on long rides as a group. Our destination was always a spectacular lookout or a great bar or restaurant on some scenic road. On long weekends, we’d often head for a racetrack somewhere. It was a lot of fun.”

“So, what happened?”

“He bought a new Vette without consulting me. He hadn’t even finished paying off the Camaro!”

“And that pissed you off?”

“It sure did; those payments put a serious damper on our lifestyle, let alone our future. But it was more important for him to be top dog than to be married.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, another guy in the club had bought a new Firebird, and he couldn’t stand anyone having a faster car than his.”

“So you divorced him?”

“No, I divorced his car. It was more important to him than his marriage.”

“You just told me you married him for his car, so didn’t you feed into that culture?”

“I didn’t realize that at the time. I just felt that once we were married, I should have been consulted before he made the purchase as we were now pooling our resources.”

“Yah, that does change things.”

“Anyway, I learned an important lesson from that experience: people are more important than things. Never put the people you care about in second place. This experienced embittered me against the endless search for status that seems to dominate Western culture. I determined never to value it again. Status is just a battle to be top dog without having the courage to actually clash.”

“Wow, them’s fighting words.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, Montana, not only do I not care about status, I no longer care what other people think of me. My mother’s done that for as long as I can remember, and it took all the joy and spontaneity out of her life. She was constantly self-censoring her words and actions to please others. I can’t think of a worse prison. How can you be yourself if you are constantly constrained by the fear of disapproval?”

“How sad for her.”

”Other people’s disapproval is none of my business; that’s their problem. Usually, it’s rooted in their phobias and preconceptions rather than rational thought. There’s nothing I can do about that so why agonize over it?”

“I agree, Evelyn.”

“These hypocrites have the gall to disapprove of others without knowing what they are suffering? That demonstrates a lack of understanding and compassion. The irony is, many of them have as much to be ashamed of as the people they criticize.”

“I’ve seen that too, Evelyn; they criticize others to shield themselves from their own guilt or shame. But what do you mean by suffering?”

“I’ll give you a great example. We were at a church picnic one time and a couple of the children were completely out of control. They were running around, screaming, sticking their hands into the food, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Their father seemed oblivious to all this. People started mumbling about him. After an hour or so, one of the ladies of the church took it upon herself to represent all the others to the father. She berated him publicly.

But she was the one who was humiliated. He garnered the attention and empathy of the whole group when he told them his wife had just slipped into a coma as a result of a terminal illness. They were at the picnic looking for a little relief from their pain.

Everybody’s suffering from some kind of pain, Montana. We ought not to be too judgmental till we learn what they are suffering.”

“Of course you’re right, but it’s just much easier to be critical…makes us feel superior.”

“Pushing other people down doesn’t make you superior, being great does. I’d like to do something great in my life, but no one can do anything great if they are crippled by a fear of criticism. Anyone who stands out makes themselves a target. Think of Christ, Galileo, Lincoln, Mandela, Martin Luther King; even the Wright Brothers were laughed at until they got airborne.”

“Some people just like to disapprove of others. Maybe they are jealous of their courage.”

“Exactly, Montana. Have you ever heard of Hildegard of Bingen?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She was a 12th century Benedictine abbess in what is now Germany. She had the courage to speak out against some of the local church’s abuses. She received a lot of criticism from those seeking to retain the status quo, but everybody knew she was right. When she wrote to the Pope about them, she was offered the prestigious position of Prioress in a stone abbey. She declined, preferring her humble wooden convent so she could focus on her devotions and writings.”

“Wow, that’s quite a sacrifice.”

“Right; she felt that poverty bred humility, which inspired sanctity, which opens the door to divine revelation. She wrote some of the most transcendent music to come out of the Middle Ages, music that inspires people all these centuries later. That’s greatness!”

Evelyn turned on the stereo and played a gorgeous choral melody without harmony or chords – considered the purest form of music in the Middle Ages.

“That’s angelic, Evelyn.”

“Everything she’s written sounds this heavenly. She’s my inspiration. She became great because she didn’t allow the distractions of status interfere with her creativity. And she did all that in an era when women were regarded as little more than chattel. She was eventually declared a saint.”

“I have a lot of medieval recordings. I don’t know why I’ve never heard of her.”

“Her music was always attributed to ‘Anonymous.’ Guess the church at that time couldn’t tolerate a woman with her talent occupying the same anointed position as men.”

“How did they discover she wrote it?”

“A musicologist found similarities between the style of Hildegard’s known music and what has been attributed to ‘Anonymous.’ He concluded that she was the actual composer, and a peer review confirmed those findings.”

“I don’t understand why the church would feel threatened by a female composer already on their staff.”

“Right, Montana, why would the Creator choose only men through which to reveal Himself? Are we not all God’s creatures? Was Mary not a woman? There is nothing in the words attributed to Christ that supports chauvinism. I don’t accept the teachings of the church unreservedly, and I question its history, but I feel sanctified when I hear music like that of Hildegard of Bingen resonating through those great stone cathedrals, and that’s enough to keep me coming back.”

Header image courtesy of Pixabay.com/Clarence Alford.

While browsing around Steve Guttenberg’s The Audiophiliac channel on YouTube, I came across several videos featuring Devon Turnbull, a multi-talented audio engineer and former clothing and graphic designer and graffiti artist, who now runs a small audio company in Brooklyn called Ojas (Devon’s original graffiti pen name pronounced with the same “j” as in jazz ). His latest project is a newly-constructed, one-of-a-kind complete system of electronics and speakers, currently featured at the New York branch of the Lisson Gallery as part of a show called The odds are good, the goods are odd.

At the rear of the bright airy space at 504 West 24th Street in Manhattan, is HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 1, a mix of performance, industrial, and interactive art for fans of unique design, great recordings, and bespoke equipment. Not to be confused with a consumer audio show full of audiophile blather and salesmanship to a particular market sector, the installation is rather a deconstruction of sorts: a break from mainstream production, cosmetics, technologies, and spatial limitations to achieve optimal form-and-function for pure analog delivery.

Each component in the Ojas installation is a sculpture within a greater sculpture made complete only when there are listeners in the cozy 14- by 27-foot room. A skylight shines over the wall of speakers, including a 31.5-inch Fostex subwoofer from Japan, housed in a plywood cabinet with a 400 watt onboard Class D amp. The massive main speakers have two 15-inch woofers based on the Altec 416B with AlNiCo magnets, a beryllium ribbon super tweeter, and a gorgeous 15-cell horn fashioned out of steel sheet metal – all weighing in at about 1,000 pounds. The speakers are evocative of Altec’s iconic Voice of the Theatre systems, whose utilitarian glory is inaccessible to most us, while Devon’s creation is fully tangible in all its grey splendor. There is, after all, a connection to Altec as Devon uses OEM drivers from Great Plains Audio, a company that continues to build classic designs by Altec Lansing and Western Electric. Devon also uses the newest iteration of Western Electric 300B tubes. However, the undeniable focal point of the room is that subwoofer.

The odds are good, the goods are odd, exhibition view. 504 West 24th Street, New York. 29 June – 5 August, 2022. © Lisson Gallery, courtesy Lisson Gallery.

Judging from the musical program, the Fostex is not there to play techno, heavy metal, or movie earthquakes in surround sound  – making it an even more fascinating piece. Considering that some residential subs are as small as 8 inches, one might wonder why such a large driver is necessary. Devon describes the issues with high-excursion subwoofers in one of his interviews, and there are good reasons not to use subs that rumble, pound, and slap air in an utterly conspicuous way.

Devon’s subwoofer provides seamless live-ness, pressure, and exquisite bass as the bedrock for music played on a hand-built turntable and 1970s Studer A810 reel-to-reel, both brought to life by a set of monoblocks based on Herb Reichert’s Flesh and Blood 300B amp design. Many people know Reichert as a veteran writer for Stereophile magazine, but he’s also an artist and self-described “gearhead.”

The day I attended, Devon played reels of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ Free for All, mixed by Rudy Van Gelder in 1964 and Dexter Gordon’s A Swingin’ Affair from 1962, both Blue Note protection copies of 15 ips ¼-inch master tapes, courtesy of Don Was, musician, producer, and president of Blue Note since 2012. The final cut was a taste of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” on a brand-new Analogue Productions Ultra Tape. The Blue Note tapes will probably be returned to the archive by the time this article comes out, but Devon has many other records and reels to play.

Protection copy tape of A Swingin’ Affair. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

Top view of the horn in the Ojas speaker system. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

So, how does the system sound? It is amazingly expressive, immersive, and lifelike with all the energy of a jazz concert, but the more significant experience was the aspect of communal listening and in sharing rare 60-year-old tapes with like-minded people by way of tubes and horns.

The show will run through August 5, with new programming announced regularly. The exhibition is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 am – 6:00 pm, on a drop-in basis. The Listening Room fits up to 15 people and visitors can stay as long as they want. And admission is free! On certain days, there are special presentations for which you can reserve a slot through the Lisson website, also free of charge. While waiting for an empty seat in the listening room, the rest of the gallery is available for browsing. For post-show refreshment, there is a wide variety of bars and restaurants in the Chelsea/High Line neighborhood.

Here is a sampling of the art on exhibit:

The odds are good, the goods are odd, exhibition view. 504 West 24th Street, New York. 29 June – 5 August, 2022. © Lisson Gallery, courtesy Lisson Gallery.

The odds are good, the goods are odd, exhibition view. 504 West 24th Street, New York. 29 June – 5 August, 2022. © Lisson Gallery, courtesy Lisson Gallery.

Jessi Reaves
Set to self destruct, 2021
Metal, fabric, paint, glass, sawdust, wood glue and lamp wiring
182.9 x 162.6 x 43.2 cm
72 x 64 x 17 in
© Jessi Reaves. Courtesy Lisson Gallery

The odds are good, the goods are odd, exhibition view. 504 West 24th Street, New York. 29 June – 5 August, 2022. © Lisson Gallery, courtesy Lisson Gallery.

If you cannot make it to the Lisson Gallery, you can check out the Sound Room at Public Records, whose system was co-created by Devon. Listening bars like Brooklyn’s Sound Room and Eavesdrop have been popping up all over the country. These intimate listening venues have their origins in urban Japan, where space for big equipment is beyond the reach of most music lovers who cannot not otherwise listen to large speaker systems and high-end tube gear while enjoying a glass of whisky.

As you might have guessed, Devon’s meticulous work is also popular with audiophiles in Japan. How’s that for audio street cred? To keep up with Devon and Ojas projects, follow him on instagram.

Devon Turnbull enjoying the music. Courtesy of Tom Methans.

The odds are good, the goods are odd, exhibition view. 504 West 24th Street, New York. 29 June – 5 August, 2022. © Lisson Gallery, courtesy Lisson Gallery.

Header image:

Ojas LLC
HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 1, 2022
Sound installation comprised of 2 speakers, 1 subwoofer, 2 amps and 1 turntable
Dimensions variable
© Ojas LLC. Courtesy Lisson Gallery

In the promotional trailer for the forthcoming documentary on the life of musician Richie Furay, narrator Cameron Crowe says, “unlike his bandmates and those he influenced who attained international stardom and are enshrined in music history, Richie’s name never became a household one.” This unfortunate fact remains one of rock’s great mysteries. As a member of two seminal bands, Buffalo Springfield and Poco, Furay helped not only create some of rock’s most lasting anthems, he helped shape a sound that would inspire bands like the Eagles and acts like Loggins and Messina. While there is great debate about who actually fathered the country-rock genre, there is little argument over the role Richie Furay had in forging a sound that continues to inspire up-and-coming bands.

Furay now comes full circle on the country front with In the Country, his first studio album in seven years. It presents his take on a number of songs that were made famous by others, and the result is an album of bright, breezy and open songs rooted in positivity and purpose. The first single and lead track, “Somebody Like You,” (originally done by Keith Urban) is a wonderful showcase for vocals that remain sweet and pristine and perfectly pitched for this kind of project.

The 12-song set features his versions of country classics like “The River” (Garth Brooks), “I’m In a Hurry and I Don’t Know Why” (Alabama), “Your Love Amazes Me” (John Berry), and “I Hope You Dance” (Lee Ann Womack). Also included are the crossover hits “Take Me Home, Country Roads” (John Denver) and “Walking in Memphis” (Marc Cohn), as well as Rickie Nelson’s 1958 smash “Lonesome Town” and the Julie Miller-penned Americana gem “Chalk.” There are two exclusive digital bonus tracks: Furay’s new rendition of Poco’s signature song “Pickin’ Up the Pieces,” and George Strait’s hit, “I Cross My Heart.”

To bring this project together, Furay teamed with multi-Grammy-winning producer and friend Val Garay (Linda Ronstadt, Kim Carnes, James Taylor), and recorded at Nashville’s legendary Blackbird Studio (see John Seetoo’s article in Issue 125). Garay assembled a group of first-rate Nashville session aces: drummer Victor Indrizzo, bassist Glenn Worf, keyboardist Steven Jay Nathan, pedal steel player Dan Dugmore, and guitarists Tom Bukovac and Chris Leuzinger. Some of these folks even played on the original cuts of the songs Richie selected!

Special guest appearances include John Berry, who duets with Furay on his hit “Your Love Amazes Me,” while country superstar Vince Gill joins Furay on “Lonesome Town.” In The Country also features Jason Scheff (Chicago) and Furay’s fellow Poco alum and Eagles bassist/vocalist Timothy B. Schmit.

Copper had the opportunity to speak with Richie about this project, about how his faith helps inspire his musical journey, and whether there just might be one more Buffalo Springfield reunion tour left in the tank.

Richie Furay, In the Country, album cover.

Ray Chelstowski: It’s been seven years since your last record. What prompted you to pursue this project at this time?

Richie Furay: It was Val Garay. I’d known Val since the Buffalo Springfield days and he came to one of my shows and asked if I’d like to do another record with him. We did my 1979 I Still Have Dreams record and hadn’t worked together since then; but we’ve been friends forever. So, he suggested doing this country hits record. When we finally got on the same page we both made lists of songs that we thought would work, and the very first song on his list was the first on mine as well. So I knew we were on to something. It’s one that I heard when I was fishing up in Montana in the early 1990s. The song was John Berry’s “Your Love Amazes Me.” From there we sorted out 14 songs.

RC: This record has a real focus on country music from the 1990s. Was that intentional?

RF: That was a time when I was probably listening to more country music. This was the music that my kids were listening to as well and I just latched on to it. It was kind of a challenge doing these songs from these really great artists. People were going to be familiar with the originals and I needed to just make them my own. We didn’t want to go in and do “karaoke.” We wanted to make the songs sound fresh and I think and hope that we captured that with this project.

RC: What were the criteria for a song making the list or not?

RF: First of all, I had to identify with the song in some way, either through the artist or the music. And these are all songs that have left a mark on me. It really goes all the way back to Ricky Nelson. I couldn’t wait for Ricky to come out and sing at the end of [The Adventures of] Ozzie and Harriet. He had a big influence on my life and that’s why “Lonesome Town” made the record. Another song I brought to the table is Marc Cohn’s “Walking In Memphis.” It’s also not a country song but we took what he had done with the piano and had guitars take over the riff that runs through most of the song. I think everything in the end came out kinda cool on that one as well. These songs are ones that I just identified with. Today people make their own little streaming playlists and I look at this like my playlist except with me singing the songs.

RC: The sound on this record isn’t overproduced. It feels very open and breezy.

RF: That was part of the original plan. Honestly I think that a lot of country music today comes out of a mold, and I can’t say that I really like that mold. So, what we tried to do was make everything as live-sounding as possible. I actually sang about ninety percent of the record live while the tracks were going down. Of course, they were tweaked, but it gives the record a whole different feel because I am playing off what’s being played, and what’s being played is working off of my vocals. So that helps us get that vibe that you’re talking about and it’s something that I think is really special.

RC: Where did you record the album?

RF: We did it at Blackbird. I had done most of my previous recording at either Quad [Recording Studios] or House of Blues (Recording Studio]. What a fantastic studio! The people are great and it’s just a great room to work in.

Val Garay behind the board at Blackbird Studio. Courtesy of Clyne Media.

RC: Vince Gill and Timothy B. Schmit make appearances on the record. Is there anyone else that you had hoped could join but their schedules didn’t align with yours?

RF: We talked about a lot of people. A few times we discussed Keith Urban. And recording in John McBride’s studio, we were told that Martina was going to sing on our record. But things happened. Timothy has always been so gracious and generous; he is always there to accommodate if he can. I also wanted J.D. Souther to come in and sing with me on “Lonesome Town” and we just couldn’t work out schedules. So, Timothy then suggested calling Vince and he was right on board, which was really cool.

RC: You remain in great voice. What’s your secret?

RF: You know, I gotta tell you that it’s God’s grace. I tried to take voice lessons when I moved back to Colorado but it didn’t work. It seemed to change the whole character that I feel like I have in my voice so I just abandoned that idea.

Richie Furay and John McBride of Blackbird Studio. Courtesy of Clyne Media.

RC: You are almost as well-known for your faith as you are for your music. How does your faith guide how you approach music?

RF: Well, I respect that the Lord has given me the gift that he’s given me and I think that my relationship with him helped me actually chose the songs that are on the record. They aren’t religious songs but they are songs that have deep moral reflection in them. With everything I do I want to respect Him. Even when I do a concert I don’t prophesize. He’s given me gifts and I tell them that I’m happy to share them all.

RC: What haven’t you done musically that you still have an eye on completing?

RF: Oh, I don’t know. I just had one very special moment three weeks ago when I got to perform on the Grand Ole Opry stage. It was the first time in 50 years. Listen, the journey has been incredible. I mean, Buffalo Springfield opening up for the Rolling Stones at the Hollywood Bowl without having a record contract? Being one of the first rock bands, with Poco, to play Carnegie Hall? I can’t think of what I want to do because so many awesome things have come my way.

RC: Do you think there’s one more Buffalo Springfield tour in you?

RF: Well, I’m getting together with Stephen [Stills] and Neil {Young] next week, but it’s not to do a record. I have a documentary that’s coming out next year and we’re wrapping up some of the interviews. Stephen, Neil, and I are getting together at Stephen’s house to do an interview that Cameron Crowe is going to moderate. So, I’m going to see them, but to tell you the truth, we did a tour together about 12 years ago and it was great fun. But as far as us getting together and doing it one more time, I doubt that that’s going to happen.

Richie Furay. Photo courtesy of Aaron Rappaport.

Header image of Richie Furay courtesy of Aaron Rappaport.

Writing memoirs is a strange process.

I have written 60-plus stories, but two things happened to curtail my writing.

First, I have almost run out of stories to tell. (After all, I can’t, in all conscience, make things up.)

Second, COVID 19 came along with all its restrictions which, I now realize two years later, put me in a writing and general funk.

Until I was stuck at home, I never appreciated just how much business travel had become such a large part of my life.

No shows, no dealer visits, no kibitzing with reviewers has made my business life much less interesting. Don’t get me wrong, business has been great due to the “COVID Bump.” My biggest problems these days seem to be caused by restricted supply from my manufacturers and, as we all know, price gouging by the shipping companies, causing massive price increases.

What follows are some random memories of travel to Hong Kong.

One.

I would fly to China about twice a year. Door to door from Long Island to Hong Kong took 24 hours, which caused severe jet lag. This rendered me useless for about five days. So instead of working right away, I would use this time to explore Hong Kong.

I am not religious but I am curious about synagogues in faraway places. Part of this comes from the fact that after the Holocaust in Europe, few synagogues remained intact. The only town that has really preserved them is Prague, deliberately not destroyed so Hitler could have a monument to the annihilation of the Jews.

In Mid-Levels in Hong Kong is the Ohel Leah Synagogue. Built around 120 years ago by the Sassoon family, it was completely restored in 1986. Its beautiful colonial Sephardic architecture is reason enough to visit.

It is the richest Jewish community in the world because it sold its air rights to some massive building that towers over it. The entry is actually guarded by Gurkhas from Nepal.

Ohel Leah Synagogue, Hong Kong. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/בידל הפייטן.

My hotel was across Victoria Bay in Kowloon, so I took the Star Ferry, the best and most entertaining way to get to Hong Kong Island. The hike from Central District was less so, as the aptly named Mid-Levels are halfway up a steep climb to Victoria Peak, which at 1,800 feet is the highest point on the island.

A sweaty trek through narrow walkways and outdoor escalators eventually landed me on Robinson Road and after a short walk I arrived at the synagogue.

I went there on Sabbath not to pray but see and be seen. The service was Modern Orthodox which is similar to the service I knew as a child, with women upstairs and men below closer to the Ark, which contains the Torah scrolls.

Around time I visited the synagogue, there were some 2,500 Jews living in Hong Kong.

A few were locals but most everyone else was an ex-pat. After the service, lunch was served to the entire assembly and I talked with many of them. People I met were friendly and curious. One person I met told me that he was the only person in Hong Kong who had the authority to approve title transfers, so every real estate transaction in the territory went through his office. This afforded him membership in the Aberdeen Marina Club, the most high-toned and exclusive private club on the island.

Two.

“Psst, psst.” I heard a whisper in my left ear.

“Do you want watches, jewelry or designer bags?”

I turned round. In front of me stood a short, scruffy-looking man with tousled hair and brown eyes.

“I have everything you want,” he continued.

When I originally visited Hong Kong in the eighties, the streets were full of such men offering you everything from watches to women, but there was a crackdown sometime in the nineties and most of these “vendors” disappeared.

Before I left home on this particular trip, a friend of mine asked If I could get him a counterfeit watch. I told him it was unlikely as I wouldn’t know where to find one, but he gave me the details anyway.

I looked at the man and said, “Can you get me an IWC Pilot’s watch?”

“Let me call someone,” he said, and pulled out his phone.

A few minutes later he said, “meet me at Mody Road and Minden Row in half an hour.”

I often stayed in Tsim Sha Tsui, the lower part of Kowloon opposite Hong Kong Island, so I knew where to meet him.

At the appointed time, he ushered me into a dark hallway and unwrapped this handsome watch. I photographed it and texted it to my friend back home in Great Neck.

He immediately texted back his approval for the watch and the price ($140), and the deal was done. (The real one sells for about $5,000.)

“You want to buy some shirts?” said my new friend. “I know this really good tailor who will make them to measure in one day.”

“Sure,” I said and off we went down Mody Road.

I bought three really beautiful, bespoke linen shirts. I think they cost me around $35 each. I still wear them today.

Three.

One evening in Hong Kong I visited an Irish pub with a good Chinese friend, David Cheung. I like Irish pubs in Hong Kong as there are often expats hanging around who are happy to chat to a stranger.

Delaney’s on Peking Road has great Irish pub food. Fish and chips, mushy peas, Yorkshire pudding, bangers and mash, and the obligatory Sunday roasts. Eating there is a welcome respite from the Chinese food, which I love, but after a couple of weeks of eating local cuisine, my body craves Western food.

I ordered fish and chips, and David, the Yorkshire pudding. The Guinness is particularly good there and smoothly washes down the starch.

That night, seated in the table next to us were two of the most unappealing women I have ever seen. Not only were they hard to look at, they were drunk and noisy. So noisy that I had trouble talking to David. At one point I went to the bathroom and while I was urinating, one of the women came in, hiked up her dress, took out her junk and peed in the stall next to mine.

Epilogue.

Hong Kong has changed dramatically in the last few years. The crackdown on dissent has been fierce. All the liberal newspapers have been closed or quashed. Candidates for office must be pre-approved by Beijing. Cameras are everywhere and everyone has a facial profile, allowing the government to track anyone, anywhere, at any time. (An acquaintance of mine has stopped visiting his favorite “massage parlor” for fear that if he was ever arrested, his interrogators would tell his wife where he had been.)

Most ex-pats are pretty much ignored by the authorities; nevertheless, many have fled. Singapore, which has an equivalent feel to Hong Kong, is a popular destination.

A Swiss friend of mine who still lives there recently went out to dinner at a favorite restaurant in Central. His girlfriend looked around the restaurant and noticed that he was the only non-Chinese person there. A few months previous, it was packed with foreigners, he told me.

I recently (finally) traveled to Munich, to the resurrected HIGH END show. While there, I bumped into a business acquaintance of mine. Edward was born in Hong Kong and has a business similar to my own.

I asked him about the situation there.

“Hong Kong is great,” he said.

“I have no problems with the mainland authorities; nothing has changed for me.” He continued, “We are Chinese, so joining with the Mainland makes sense.”

How’s your Mandarin? I asked this Cantonese speaker.

“Getting better every day,” was his reply.

Header image: Hong Kong as seen from Victoria Peak, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Benh LIEU SONG.

In Part One (Issue 166), we briefly covered some of the highlights of the Yamaha Web Editor SetUp online utility, which is designed to get the best sonic performance from an Yamaha A/V receiver. In this last installment we will look at the advantages of the latest version of Yamaha’s higher-end AVENTAGE A/V receiver firmware, and also how you can get the best if you have an older software version.

In particular, let’s look at editing the PEQ, or Parametric EQ, settings via the drop-down menus. The degree of functionality and control provided by a precise parametric EQ program is a very useful and powerful way of managing the problem frequencies and dips and peaks in your room’s frequency response. (See my articles in Issue 158 and Issue 159 for additional information.) Software such as REW Room EQ Wizard is extremely useful in measuring your room’s behavior. The results obtained from a program like REW can then be used to enter parameters into the Web Editor SetUp menus, or a similar online setup program for other A/V receiver brands.

One of the advantages of Yamaha’s Web Editor SetUp is that you can make adjustments to your system without having to be in the listening room (or one of the multi-room zones if the receiver has multiroom audio capability). The adjustments are executed in real time, so, on the other hand, if you are in the listening room you can immediately hear any changes you make. You may then save your settings.

What’s new with the latest Web Editor SetUp version compared to the older one? Significantly, you may select from more PEQ frequency ranges for even more precise fine-tuning. There is a new skin for the interface, which is easier to read and navigate, with larger fields and “sliders” for data entry. (At the time of this writing there’s, no way to minimize the fields that are of no interest to you, such as for channels of speakers that you do not have connected, so you have to scroll down to the elements you want to edit. This may be updated in a future firmware update but is a minor point compared to the abundance of controls and ease of editing provided.)

Yamaha Web Editor SetUp, screen shot of parametric EQ (PEQ) menu.

The software was developed primarily for sound installation engineers and system integrators. Having said this, it’s so easy to use and to hear the results of the sonic adjustments, that I encourage anyone who has a compatible Yamaha receiver, or other receiver brand that allows system setup via the web, to try it. Just remember to turn on your receiver first, because you can access the online editor app even if the receiver itself is turned off. Also, make sure you are on the same network as your receiver.

Although some users may prefer the visualization provided by the on-screen plotted graphical display, which is excellent, the power of the Web Editor SetUp app in fine-tuning specific problem frequencies may yield far more precise results than the standard on-screen menu can provide. Note that REW (or perhaps a similar program) most likely will provide far more precise measurements than you’ll be able to adjust for in Web Editor SetUp, but you can get very close. So close, that the edits made would likely be more than granular enough to effect changes far more subtle than you could audibly discern by the time you take Q factor, dB and frequency at any chosen bandwidth into account. It is that refined.

In fact, REW offers even more detail than you should perhaps implement. Why? You may not be able to even hear the differences in frequency response between very close frequencies. The temptation can be to adjust for tiny peaks and dips that are masked by the overall sound being output, but which would make no real-world audible difference.

Please also remember that these measurements are made with a microphone and not human ears, which play a huge factor in what is seen on a measurement graph compared to what we are actually hearing. Also, the microphone may not be picking up frequencies above 20 kHz that are in fact being output by the tweeter. As a result, if you try to adjust for “flat” high-frequency response as indicated by the measurements, you may wind up frying your tweeter. Conversely, trying to boost weak or nonexistent low-bass frequencies may put too much demand on the woofers’ and subwoofer’s driver excursion, or the ability of the power amplifier(s), to deliver enough output.

There are also limitations with the Web Editor SetUp app itself. You can’t select whichever frequency you want to edit, as with parametric EQs for recording studio use – there is a fixed selection of EQ points available. That said, the app offers a higher than ever degree of granular control and a better ability to zero in on problem frequencies. It will likely be far more than adequate for your requirements. How so? The newest firmware provides adjustment from as low as 15.6 Hz, for more-complete bass management. As an example of the surgical precision the app affords, you may now may adjust frequencies at 15.6 Hz, 16.6 Hz, 17.7 Hz, 18.6 Hz, 19.7 Hz, 20.9 Hz, 22.1 Hz (and upward).

Even the older version of the app offers 28 dedicated frequency bandwidths at one-third octave intervals, with control over the Q (the ratio of the center frequency to the bandwidth) starting at 31.3 Hz.

In addition, if you select the “Low Frequency” drop-down menu on the far right of the page under the PEQ menu, you now are presented with a real-time visual display of up to seven bandwidth edits. This means you may now see what you are doing in the online editor App without being obligated to switch to use your TV to view the edits as made through the receiver directly. Previously, this was the only way you could “see” your edits plotted. Now it’s in the online setup, which is much easier and intuitive.

Yamaha Web Editor SetUp, screen shot of speaker setup and bass management menu.

With the ability to adjust bass frequencies so finely, pay close attention to how much of a perceived difference you actually notice at 20 Hz, for example, given the bandwidth control you of the Q factor. The Q adjustment has the ability to cover a greater than 2-octave range (Q of.500) down to just a little more than one-eighth of an octave (Q of 10.080). Pinpoint accuracy aside, how much difference can you honestly hear? Getting it technically more accurate does offer a certain satisfaction and peace of mind though. What you certainly don’t want to do is make so many narrow bandwidth adjustments that you end up with a less-smooth waveform!

Our goal should be to make adjustments that are meaningful, but more importantly –perceivable.

There are some other caveats of making multiple adjustments to achieve the supposed holy grail of a completely flat in-room response. One is that more noise can be introduced into the system because of signal degradation and the fact that more amplifier power is required. This may be one reason why Yamaha limits you to seven bandwidths which are editable per speaker channel.

Header image: Yamaha AVENTAGE RZ-A780 A/V receiver.

When you walk into my apartment you stroll past the art in the foyer, and a dining room table, and enter the living room. (It’s the photo above.)

Look around. You’ll see photos on the wall, and nice furniture and various tables (all covered in books and magazines). You’ll also see a rather large philodendron plant that has occupied the same space (after six transplants) for 55 years. You read that right. 55 years.

It’s an aesthetically pleasing environment, perfect for socializing.

To most women who enter (mostly wives) there is always an acknowledgement (“amazing!”) of the reimagined design and transformation of the foyer/living room area that was created following a five-month renovation in 2019.

The entire apartment was taken down to the studs and totally rebuilt.

We (meaning me and my wife) only sit in the living room when guests are visiting. The apartment is large enough that we each have our own sanctuaries which reflect our own interests.

Most of the women sit in the living room and begin conversation. Most men, however, look around and notice there is no TV.

That’s right, no TV.

In fact, one would have to look behind the plant and a strategically placed floor lamp to find a small pair of Sonos speakers.

This was the agreement my wife and I made following the rebuild. She didn’t want to see any distracting technology in the living room. She also felt that a TV is the most distracting technology of all.

No TV in sight! Courtesy of Jay Jay French.

My reaction?

I was into it, although I did tell her that, minus the TV placed on a wall somewhere, I doubted that we would ever be in the living room when there were no guests around.

I was right.

We never sit there without guests in the apartment.

I walk by the living room every morning and stare at it for a minute or two and remember back in the “old days” when all my apartments (whether I was single or married) had a stereo system in the living room.

Now, the living room may as well have a velvet rope on stands (like a Smithsonian exhibit) as we pass by it every day.

My stepdaughter (when visiting) does sit there and reads, or is on her computer/iPad or cell phone. That’s about it.

Hey, I don’t have a problem with this arrangement because, in my sanctuary/studio, I have all the high-end audio toys and a 65-inch flat panel TV on the wall, plus a surround sound Sonos system.

“So I got me an office, gold records on the wall…”

In my wife’s sanctuary, she has a 55-inch flat panel and a Sonos surround system.

This has now led me to observe other friends’ houses/apartments to see if any audio systems are visible in the main listening room.

My observations?

Very few have anything more than a Sonos set up.

I’m not a shill for that company. They have just done an incredible job of cornering the market for casual listeners who want convenience, and it seems that most of my friends have just given up to it. That includes guys I grew up with who all had the latest stereo gear in their apartments.

That really makes me wonder…who the hell is buying all this crazy expensive stuff that Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, HiFi News and Hi-Fi+ write about every month?

Forget the fact that the most recent HIGH-END hi-fi show in Munich had many more insane turntables and arms than I’d ever seen!

If you go on Instagram to World’s Coolest Hi-Fi, you’ll see some really crazy stuff but also some rather pedestrian gear as well. The point of this need to show the world “what you got” is more than just the gear itself. It is also how it is displayed. Some of the more inexpensive gear is surrounded by plants and/or expensive shelving.

That says an awful lot in regards to that old high-end salesman cliché, the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor).

Well, back to my apartment. If you never walked into my studio, you would never know I was in the music/entertainment business.

That is how disconnected my living room is from my hobby now.

I’m actually fine with that.

Is anyone else dealing with this kind of new reality?

I would like to hear from you if you are.

Till next time…

Header image courtesy of Jay Jay French.

Recently, I caught up with virtual space traveler, traverser of the celestial world, musician, and author Billy Yfantis. He’s an experimental musician who has released five albums, the latest being The Nebula Voyager, featuring 19 instrumental tracks. Among other things, we touch on Billy’s latest music, the early origins of his career, his ongoing interest in space and science, his other career as an author, and a whole lot more.

Andrew Daly: Billy, with five albums out in the last three years, it seems you’ve been busy.

Billy Yfantis: Thanks for having me; it is such a great pleasure to discuss my music with you. It has been a very productive period for me, especially during the quarantine where I had time to mix older material and record a new one too. Of the five albums that [have been] released, they all have two elements in common: experimentation with hardware and software synthesizers, and a cinematic approach to composing by thinking in terms of moods and sound design.

I suppose that the digital technology and the streaming era [have] led us to a point of thinking about music-generated moods, and not about the associations [that come with the styles [of the] music. If, back in the 1980s and 1990s era, the association of the [musical genres] was with the cultural identity of an artist, then I believe that now, the cultural identity of the artist is summarized by the moods they generate through the music and the [overall] concept (the lyrics, artwork, song titles) of the album.

AD: What can you tell us about the cosmic journey theme of The Nebula Voyager?

Billy Yfantis, The Nebula Voyager, album cover.

BY: The Nebula Voyager is an album where its scope is to explore the science of astronomy beyond the popular science fiction perspective that we watch at the movies. The album explores the concept of interstellar clouds called nebulas, and offers awareness about the most important nebulas located in the universe. Each song title refers to a real nebula that has been recorded in official astronomical catalogs. Your cosmic journey could start by listening to the album while you look on the internet for information about the nebulas mentioned in the song titles.

AD: Your music is experimental. What did you use to get the haunting tones and sounds you created for this album?

BY: The sounds that were generated by a mix of software synthesizers (VSTs) and the hardware [synth] was a Behringer Neutron. While due to my scientific background, I am most familiar with the virtualization of the orchestrations [Yfantis has two masters degrees in information technology and is currently a Ph.D. candidate], by using a hardware synth I realized how warm the sound of a physical instrument is compared with a virtual one. I also did the mixing of the music on my own using an old version of the Adobe Audition DAW (digital audio workstation) which still sounds great even after all these years.

AD: I’ve heard music made from actual cosmic, planetary and celestial noise. Is this something that you have done or will do in the future?

BY: The track “Landing,” from my album Entering the Solar System, [features] the re-editing of sounds recorded by NASA and created by [the] InSight [lander’s] robotic arm as its camera scanned the surface of Mars. I was not sure if I would release it due to the lo-fi sound of the robotic arms, since I did not want to “touch” too much the original space sounds. Fortunately, I worked on it by maintaining the lo-fi elements and by adding atmospheric sounds to improve the musicality of the final output. My decision to release it was a correct one because today it’s my most popular track on Spotify!

Regarding the future, there are more plans to use actual space sounds. The lack of adequate audio material from space and the matter of the complicated licensing system for its usage currently leads me in the direction of looking for companies that build mechanical parts for rockets and spaceships. Unless I find original sounds from space, I intend to use sounds produced by mechanical parts used in space missions. A few years ago, I managed to record the engine sound of an airplane in Greece, so my next goal is to record the engine of a spacecraft somewhere in the US, where I have some contacts.

AD: Speaking of experimental music, you’ve experimented with some unconventional “instruments” like blenders and vacuum cleaners. How do you record and use those sounds in your music?

BY: I really enjoy recording the sounds made [from] objects that are located in houses, [and have] a personal excitement to re-use them as a medium to create music. Music creation as perceived by most creators is actually a “matrix” created by the old school mode of thought. Besides the music-making by using conventional musical instruments like guitars and drums, there is a parallel universe of environmental [sounds]. Regardless [of whether] you use an electric guitar or a chainsaw to produce music, both entities produce specific sounds with features such as pitch, rhythm, and dynamics.

Why should you record music by using an electric guitar when you could retrieve almost the same audio frequencies by using the recording of an electric blender? It might sound crazy but if you go deeper into electronics, there are mechanical and electronic parts that you can use to play music with a strange machine. Remember that synthesizers were designed out of experimentation with electricity, about controlling pitch through voltage. From a music genre point of view, progressive rock was also created by experimentation.

AD: As someone who has been interested in space and astronomy from a young age, what does space mean to you both from a musical standpoint and in general?

BY: In general, I consider space a source of information to trace back the roots of humanity, and [to] look into the future. The actual objects that we watch through the telescopes and the samples we retrieve from space’s “atmosphere” help us summarize information about the past and future role of planet Earth [and] the solar system. From a musical standpoint, I consider space a source of inspiration to create dreamy music, and maybe experiment with specific audio frequencies that I would not choose to experiment with if my inspiration was a down-to-earth subject like a gossip TV stories.

AD: What was life like growing up in Greece, and what initially got you hooked on experimental music?

BY: Growing up in Greece during the 1980s and 1990s era was not so different compared with the situation in other European countries. The only disadvantage was the fact that Greece is located in Southern Europe, which prevented many bands from visiting us for concerts during that period due to the distance from other big cities in Central Europe (like London, Paris, Berlin, and so on) and the associated cost of flights. Under this condition, during the pre-internet days, Greece had less access to important cultural events like big festivals, music conferences, US bands touring Europe, and so on. However, this fact led us to develop a DIY music scene and work harder than other countries to reach a specific point of professionalism in music.

My personal trip into experimental music was initialized after a funny incident during the early 1990s. I remember going for a walk with a friend when suddenly I heard a sound coming from far away. As I was approaching the source of the sound to find out what was all about, I realized that the “sound” was familiar to me. I stopped walking and said to my friend: “Dude, this is thrash metal!” However, when I finally reached the source of the sound, I saw that it was just a man working in a laboratory and using a cutting wheel tool on a metallic object! Then a brilliant idea came to me – if I mistook a cutting wheel tool’s sound for a thrash metal band, then why shouldn’t I create metal music with the use of mechanical tools? Wouldn’t mechanical audio frequencies sound as cool as a track by Slayer or early Metallica?

AD: What was your musical career like at the beginning of the ’90s, when the synthwave, prog, and experimental scenes were booming in Greece?

BY: During the early 1990s, I was experimenting with analog audio equipment and my “mixing tool” was a double cassette deck. I recorded a couple of demos, if I remember well, that included a mash-up recording of videogame effects (recorded directly from an Amiga 500 personal computer) and original Metallica music. I sent the demo to a Greek music magazine, but it was probably [considered] too experimental to “touch” the Metallica sound back then and it did not get very far. 30 years later in 2021, I felt confident about my decision to record that demo because Metallica themselves allowed even hip-hop artists to “touch” their material on the album The Metallica Blacklist.

My later effort to release material in the 1990s came around the late 1990s when I recorded some demos with original dance music, plus some mash-ups with samples from cult Greek movies. This time it was successful and the mash-up demo got a great review from the Greek Metal Hammer magazine and it was voted the best demo of the month! I continued recording material in the 2000s but I guess your question refers only to my activity during the 1990s period.

Billy Yfantis.

Prog music has always been very popular in Greece; however, most Greek bands became popular after deciding to leave the country and start a career abroad. Aphrodite’s Child is the most popular progressive rock band from Greece. The band was formed in 1967 by Vangelis Papathanassiou, Demis Roussos, Loukas Sideras, and Silver Koulouris guitar. As Wikipedia notes, 666 (released in 1972), their most influential album, has been included on numerous lists of the best progressive or psychedelic albums of all time. Other important Greek Prog bands that you could check out include Kostas Tournas (the Aperanta Chorafia album), Socrates, Akritas, Apocalypsis, and The 4 Levels Of Existence.

Experimental music in Greece has been active since the 1960s and probably the most popular composer is Iannis Xenakis, through his electroacoustic compositions, and installations in France. Some of his important works include Bohor (1962), La légende d’Eer (1977), and Mycenae-Alpha (1978). The scene reached its peak during the 1990s and early 2000s when the internet became widely available and affordable, and experimental musicians started downloading important software tools for the creation of experimental music.

Synthwave is also a popular music format here, although I am not familiar with the current Greek scene. However, French artists like Perturbator are very successful here and concert promoters are looking for other acts to bring here for live performances as well. A great new Synthwave release is the single “Night Driver” from the Greek guitarist Gus G; check it out.

AD: What were and are your main influences for your music?

BY: During the 1990s, I started composing music by having both music and cinematic influences. I consider my main influences [to be] albums from bands and artists such as Ozric Tentacles, Tangerine Dream, Hawkwind (the Love In Space album), Steve Hillage, and others. Regarding movies, I mostly liked the first The Matrix movie in 1999 and other older science fiction movies like They Live (1988) directed by John Carpenter, and Videodrome (1983) directed by David Cronenberg. Nowadays, my music influences are coming from the cinema and especially the sound design techniques that are being used in movies such as The Arrival (2016).

AD: You’re also an author. Tell us about the books you have written.

BY: I have authored 10 books, mainly discussing musicology and music technology matters, a photo book with photos from all over Europe, and a book of poetry. Punk Goes Science, Metal Goes Science, and Hip-Hop Goes Science (Volume I, and an extended version) are four bibliographic book guides that contain analytical bibliographies about the usage of the music genres of metal, punk, and hip-hop in scientific publications. For instance, Metal Goes Science includes a huge list of real books and papers that were published and discuss bizarre subjects on metal such as the association between black metal and ecology.

So, if you are curious enough, then in these four books you will find a ton of information about such strange subjects. Disadvantaged Populations And Technology In Music is a book discussing the digital divide by interviewing famous rock artists about their relationship with technology. My latest book, Power Ballads And The Stories Behind is a compilation of popular and obscure hard rock artists that discuss the meaning behind power ballads they have composed. You can find all the books at the most popular electronic book stores, including Amazon.

AD: What’s next on your to-do list?

BY: The next plans include the release of my sixth music album, in six months, and a lot of experimentation with new music hardware and software.

It was my pleasure to discuss with you and your cool readers my activities as a musician and author. Thanks a lot for your support. I really appreciate it!

If you would like to learn more about Billy Yfantis, visit his social media links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/billy.yfantis

Twitter: https://twitter.com/billyyfantis

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/billyyfantis

All images courtesy of Glass Onyon PR.

I first met Sunil Merchant at T.H.E. Show in 2021, an audio show that took place in Long Beach, California (as it did in June 2022, and I’ll be reporting in an upcoming issue). I was covering the show for Copper and Mac Edition Radio, and Sunil’s rooms were always crowded, with a positive vibe.  Without even knowing me, Sunil Merchant, owner of audio retailer Sunny Components in West Covina, CA, welcomed me like a long-lost friend, even though I looked like Jerry Garcia’s younger, shorter, Jewish brother.

I mention this because the same welcoming energy was extended to members of the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society (LAOCAS) in a recent event. I live outside Philadelphia, but have been in Southern California helping my mom with some repairs to her home, due to a slab leak, as well as overseeing a massive redo, the result of subcontractors missing a few vital aspects of their job. It was a quick 45-minute drive to West Covina from Anaheim. I missed out on the recent LAOCAS visit to Audeze, a visit that has now taken on legendary status, so I didn’t want to miss this one.

I’ve been sitting in on the lively Zoom sessions that the LAOCAS has been sponsoring during the pandemic, so I was familiar with some of the members, and their meetings with various luminaries in the audiophile community, so when they extended an invitation to their monthly meeting at to take place at Sunil’s shop, I couldn’t say no.

Left to right: George Counas (Zesto Audio), Sunil Merchant, Ying Kit Lee, Theresa Merchant, Cecelia (Sunil’s interior designer), unidentified man.

As I entered West Covina, I kept looking for stray dancers from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend but alas, they must have been on hiatus. After hitting traffic in Diamond Bar, I found his shop and was greeted by some wonderful Mexican food, provided by Jose “Gordo” Luna, of Gordo’s, http://gordocaters.com/ who was cheerfully ready with a choice of al pastor, carne asada, and marinated pollo tacos, to be washed down by some ice-cold beer. The food was so good that a few of us discussed the pros and cons of staying outside and enjoying the great food, or going inside with no food but listening to great audio. A few of us made the hard decision to enjoy a few more tacos and another cold beer before heading inside.

Tacos! This is Mexican food. Del Taco and Taco Bell are not Mexican food! Don’t forget!

Inside, we found Lenny Mayeux from Mobile Fidelity playing some tunes, while Sunil introduced himself, his wife Theresa, and his staff, and thanked everyone for coming. I for one think it’s amazingly generous when he, along with other manufacturers, extend their company’s resources to folks like audio clubs. There isn’t a guaranteed return on the investment, but they do it for the goodwill and positive energy it produces. I really appreciated the time, effort, energy and expense they put into making events like this happen. Dan Meinwald, importer of EAR-USA electronics, Townshend Audio turntables, and Helius Designs electronics, was also there to welcome the visitors and give an informative talk about these high-end components.

Sunny Components has two showrooms. There’s a main room stocked with price-is-no-object audio products from all over the planet (from companies like CH Precision, Stenheim, Vivid Audio, Wadax, Brinkmann Audio, and a variety of turntables paired with Bowers & Wilkins speakers), where Lenny and Sunil demonstrated a variety of gear ranging from streaming to analog. The room isn’t fancy, and the intent isn’t a glamorous presentation, but rather a nice comfortable environment for listening. There were four complete systems in the room, a treat to encounter.

The primary system being demonstrated featured Vivid Audio Giya G2 Series 2 loudspeakers in piano black. The other components alternated between CH Precision I1, Hegel 590 and Vinnie Rossi Brama integrated amplifiers, with a Technics SU-R1000 turntable as the front end.

Part of the main system that was auditioned at the event.

Other components on display in the main room (but not auditioned) included Vivid Audio Giya 1 Series 2 and Kaya loudspeakers, Bowers and Wilkins 802D4 speakers, Vinnie Rossi Brama electronics, an EMM Labs MA3 integrated D/A converter, and Audioquest Thunderbird cables.

Another system in the main room consisted of CH Precision 1 Series electronics including the P1 phono stage, L1 pre-amplifier, C1 DAC, D 1.5 SACD/CD player, T1 10 MHz clock, X1 power supplies, and  M 1.1 amplifiers. The latter allows users to adjust individual global feedback on both the mid/treble and bass for the Stenheim Alumine 5 SE speakers they were driving. The analog front end was a Brinkmann Balance turntable with a My Sonic Lab cartridge. This system was cabled with Audioquest MC Firebird, and HRS SXR stands were used throughout.

The fourth system featured a CH Precision 10 Series L10 preamp and M10 stereo power amplifier, with a Wadax Atlantis Reference DAC and music server. The Stenheim Reference Ultime 2 loudspeakers were bi-amped and featured the ability to adjust the bass, treble, and midrange by 1/2-dB increments. Audioquest Dragon cables connected everything together.

Wadax, CH Precision and other components.

Lenny Mayeux and Sunil Merchant with equipment including the Vivid Audio D2 Series 2 Speakers, EAR V-12 integrated amp, Hi-Fi Rose RS150 treamer/DAC, Audience cables and power conditioner, Kuzma turntable and arm, and My Sonic Lab Eminent EX cartridge.

Everyone I talked to was knocked out by the sound of the system we auditioned in the main room, which was open and airy, yet had a serious punch. This isn’t a trivial point, especially when one considers how large a space the showroom was. While I didn’t have any dedicated quiet time to listen, I can say definitively that the systems on display sounded considerably more detailed than the author’s Crosley turntable system, which is all he can afford on his Copper magazine earnings.

The second and smaller showroom was designed to welcome rather than intimidate customers who are just starting out on the journey of high-performance audio. This room showcased products from Bowers and Wilkins, Aerial Acoustics, EgglestonWorks, Bryston, Technics, Hegel, Marantz, AVM Audio, NAD, Innuos, Audience, Audioquest and others, along with pre-owned products. According to Sunil, you could easily put together systems starting at $5,000, including analog options, with the components in this room.

The group then moved to the smaller room, to audition some tiny, but wonderful Audience 1+1 speakers. The system we listened to consisted of the Audience 1+1s, HiFi Rose Model 150 streamer/DAC, Hegel H590 integrated amp, and REL T/9i subwoofers. [Disclaimer: the editor does PR for Audience.] It didn’t hurt that John McDonald, Audience’s chief wire winder and insulation tweaker, was there to demonstrate the speakers, and after a raffle which was held later on, he answered questions about cable technology.

John McDonald of Audience with the 1+1 speaker.

He dispelled the cynics with his demonstrations that showed the presence of magnetic eddy currents in supposedly non-magnetic metal. He did this by dropping a magnetized ball into different tubes of copper of the same inner diameters, with the thinner-wall tube letting the ball fall through unimpeded, while the same ball dropped into a thicker-wall tube was slowed down, taking it’s own sweet time. This opened up the discussion for the cable and anti-cable folks to have even more to argue about in whether cables make a sonic difference or not. Of course, for McDonald, the demonstration illustrated his beliefs that cables do make a difference, and that this is backed by science.

John also helped host a raffle conducted by the LAOCAS. And what a raffle it was. Sunil and Theresa paid out of their own pockets for a pair of wonderful B&W 600 Series speakers to be given to a lucky winner, as well as a pair of MartinLogan Motion 4i compact speakers. John McDonald provided a number of Audience cables, and there were lots of other prizes as well. I even ended up with some raffle items, courtesy of a friendly LAOCAS member, who, in an incredibly lovely gesture, upon realizing that I’d not won anything to that point, gave me one of his winning raffle tickets, so that I “won” a wonderful spool of Kirmuss Audio speaker cable and a Smithsonian CD of Tuvan throat singing! How cool was that? One LAOCAS member offered me a munificent $40 for the spool within minutes of winning it, which I politely declined, especially considering it was worth around $700, but more so because horse trading just after a raffle seemed in bad taste. I was totally jazzed by winning the cable, and look forward to trying it out. Folks seemed genuinely thrilled at the prizes they won, all of which were top-flight, and if Santa Claus was an audiophile, he’d have had some of these goodies in his bag.

This does bring up another important point that I would be remiss not to mention. Over the years, in different cities, I’ve heard a small number of unappreciative comments from members of the audio community. This almost makes one want to ask Miss Manners to write a handbook on good manners for people who are invited to events like this. The vendors are driving or flying in to appear, and the people running the societies and the owners of the stores and other locations where the events are held are putting forth time, money, and effort to make the events happen. Many dealers donate products. However, judging from some behaviors I’ve witnessed, I think that some attendees just don’t appreciate the efforts put forth on their behalf. This became an issue during T.H.E. Show last June, when an audio society member was publicly very rude to the show organizer, claiming their lifetime membership in the society as an excuse for their behavior. Inexcusable was more like it.

On the other hand, everyone I spoke to at the meeting at Sunil’s place had a great time, Sunil and Theresa were perfect hosts, and Lenny brought his seemingly endless passion for music to his presentations. You could tell he really loved the musical selections he cued up, which was a nice change from the all-too-prevalent demos that trot out the same old audiophile warhorses. One track that I’d never heard before and which really stood out for me was played on the Audience speaker system via the Hi-Fi Rose RS150 network streamer.

Caroline and George Counas of Zesto Audio.

It was “St. James Infirmary,” the great Louis Armstrong tune, from the album VooDoo Swing by Peter Schneider and the Stimulators. (http://www.stimulators.de) I urge you to check it out! A glass of bourbon with ice might be the perfect accompaniment. I was thinking cheap bourbon to go with the blues (rotgut with one cube of ice); however, my editor, the jetsetting Frank Doris, wouldn’t have any of that, so I’ll suggest some Pappy’s. Oh, to live the life that editors do.

Audio society meetings like this allow audiophiles to listen to some great gear, spend time with friends, meet other audiophiles, and directly connect with manufacturers. Without the willingness of people like them and facilities like Sunny Components, events like this wouldn’t be possible. I had a great time, and was grateful for the event.

I’m looking forward to breaking out some Tuvan throat singing recordings at our next dance party. My hero Richard Feynman gave me my introduction to this unique style of singing, so a really cool Big Bang Theory listening party lies ahead.

Bob Levi of the LAOCAS and John McDonald.

Chip Moore of the LAOCAS with George Counas.

John Williams, winner of the B&W 600 series speakers, with Sunil Merchant.

Lenny Mayeux and John McDonald.

George and Caroline Counas, (second and third from left) and members of the LAOCAS.

A good time was had by all.

Header image: Lenny Mayeux of Mobile Fidelity demonstrating the Hi-Fi Rose RS150 streamer/DAC.

Among other things, Elvis Presley invented the rock ’n’ roll comeback. Up until 1968, ”coming back” from a career break barely existed in the new style since most fell short, or failed. Carl Perkins’s 1956 car crash just before his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show interrupted his “Blue Suede Shoes” momentum at a crucial moment. When it leaked on his 1958 UK tour that his wife was only 13, Jerry Lee Lewis sought redemption by appealing to the only audience that might forgive him: country and western, and country-gospel. With many others (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Gene Vincent), fate delivered a cold, hard slap.

Elvis bombed during his first Vegas stint in 1956 just as he tried to break nationwide, and when called him up for peacetime Army service in 1958, he feared losing most of his listeners. His 1960 Welcome Home Elvis TV appearance with Frank Sinatra sent his career into ultra-safe mode. John Lennon liked to say Elvis “died when he went into the Army.” Presley had so much ambition that comebacks turned into a defining feature of his career. His talent, and what it signaled, foretold of such flamboyance and shock that the world needed time to keep readjusting. It’s still adjusting.

Now, the biggest Elvis comeback of all, Baz Luhrmann’s feature biopic, places all these others in a new context. Given its many flaws, and overbearing length, that’s impressive. History’s distortions can prove pitiless; pillars of the style have long since faded, or morphed into caricatures. Bloated biopics for Ray Charles and James Brown fell away almost instantly. And rock continues to manufacture irony: the idea of the Young Mick Jagger now gets trotted out and explained. Partly because Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie, and former wife, Priscilla, have not captured attention since Marie’s divorce from Michael Jackson in 1996, and major film references to the King have dropped off after Michael Madsen’s soft-core cameo as an apparition in Thelma and Louise in 1991, and a brief sequence in Forrest Gump (1994), the Presley persona hasn’t carried over into digital as much as some others.

Austin Butler as Elvis in Warner Bros. Pictures’ Elvis. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

So it’s important to understand: Presley once dominated a stage far bigger than a thousand Beyoncés or Harry Potters. It’s a measure of Luhrmann’s imagination that he senses just how much Elvis warrants another return, and has plenty of arresting ideas. Maybe one too many. Elvis broke the summer movie season open big, holding its own as a hit alongside Tom Cruise’s Top Gun sequel as a major blockbuster, and that contrast proves useful.

Luhrmann also makes the connection between Cruise’s All-American Action Hero and King Elvis, and the contrast effect helps Presley loom even larger. Elvis once acted like a Superman of Song, someone with the supernatural sweep and daring of a Marvel figure exploding into your imagination, a figure so wild-eyed and all-knowing he seemed to spring directly from cartoons. It was this “other” aspect that created a fascinating tension between Elvis, the surviving twin from Memphis, and the King, who straddled our inner galaxy. You can still feel the Elvis influence everywhere, in the way Lady Gaga careens through styles like a trickster, or how Madonna’s grizzled eminence sidesteps her many Hollywood flops. Presley’s volcanic heat lives on his recordings, but his signal has dimmed, perhaps because his range was so vast, his omnipresence so out of reach.

The very idea that Elvis could fall off America’s radar seems profane. And yet today Elvis needs reintroduction when some assume the most deflating things about him – that he “stole” black music, shot out TVs in drug rants, that his cartoon shadow stood for nothing more than American trash. You can trace a lot of this misconception to how Hollywood completely fumbled early rock ’n’ roll and has only caught up in lurching increments; the idea that someone as brazen and quirky as Elvis could wedge himself into a stock boy-meets-girl musical is preposterous, and tells of how thrilling his live act must have been for many. Luhrmann turns this tension between Elvis’s flair and the prevailing showbiz frames into a motif.

As the consensus King of youth music, post-Army Elvis found himself stranded as a movie star famous for awful films. Everybody blamed his manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, who played the game as though rock hadn’t changed anything. The legacy entertainment machine diluted Presley’s spark, and as long as the movies sold tickets, Parker couldn’t be bothered to change strategy. Luhrmann portrays this dilemma with a dazzling efficiency through a series of madcap montages and cacophonous travelogues that convey both the rush of Elvis’s fame and the fleeting nature of his flash. As the movie slows to its closing 2 hours and 40 minutes, you get the stale sense of time running Presley’s energy down the way it did in real life as the Sixties and rock’s next generation lapped him, and a crippling addiction to pills turned him into a has-been. It was a shock to learn he was only 42 when he died in 1977; he seemed to have lived for so much longer, and his career had so many odd corners and sideshows that it barely seemed possible he wasn’t at least 60.

In an early set-piece that replays the peculiarities of an early Elvis live show, Luhrmann stretches out an early sequence for Col. Tom Parker’s narration (Tom Hanks). “It is hard to overstate how strange he seemed…” Parker says, anticipating a giant belly flop. And then, in an instant, you see Austin Butler light into “Baby, Let’s Play House,” the thunderbolt strikes, the crowd goes batty, and the sequence delivers some second-hand hysteria.

Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker and Austin Butler as Elvis. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Luhrmann’s style precedes him; he finds his voice where the overwrought nestles up to the baroque. In many of his films, you see this same reach for redemption through refuse, as when a pair of amateur hoofers dance out a grandiose love affair in Strictly Ballroom (1992), or Nicole Kidman swings atop a chandelier through an after-hours club singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” hich segues into Madonna’s “Material Girl,” in Moulin Rouge (2001). The Great Gatsby (2013) presents the limits of this reach, if only for the added tension between the tragedy of the source material and this Australian’s response; it’s an outsider’s view of Gatsby, and that rings the bell sideways.

Like Elvis, Luhrmann commands a huge technique even while people keep underestimating him. Because he invests so much in flash and sizzle, few catch the number of striking details that spur this script (by Luhrmann with Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner). Parker describes Presley’s early look as passing strange, with “girl’s makeup,” and you suddenly remember that in addition to his pompadour, Elvis’s early good looks seemed markedly androgynous, what the Beatles later expressed through long hair. At one point, as “Heartbreak Hotel” whizzes by, someone calls out, “It’s a suicide note!” the number’s perfect thought bubble. Presley’s beleaguered mother, Gladys, gets an agonizing turn from Helen Thomson, who looks like half a ghost long before she dies. Sam Phillips (Josh McConville), Presley’s original Sun Records producer, gets lost amid one of the many postcard flurries, and yet Marion Keisker (Kate Mulvaney), the “secretary” who singles out Presley’s promise, finally gets some big-screen credit.

The first half of the movie luxuriates on the young Elvis and his wayward charisma. Presley’s sexual release feels so pent-up that its audience succumbs to a higher liberation, freedom sprinting ahead on a sweeping array of metaphors. Luhrmann portrays this all as part of black music’s continuum, where B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola Quartey), and Little Richard (Alton Mason) all share complicated feelings (every shade between envy and gratitude) about the King’s massive breakthrough.

Some choices seem questionable. Luhrmann brushes past how Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) was only 14 when Elvis courted her in Germany, or what we now call at least “grooming.” Her fortitude matches Elvis’s own inner furies once celebrity turns him into one more lonely figure, adored for being adored.

By 1968, tired of stiff hit movies and lack of live audiences, Elvis rebelled by hiring a young director, Steve Binder, to producer his Christmas special. His favorite segment involved sitting encircled by his fans, running down oldies with his original players, singing some original dirty lyrics to songs like “One Night Of Sin” (originally released as “One Night With You”). A huge hit, the counterculture largely ignored this TV material until Greil Marcus wrote his famous “Presliad” essay in Mystery Train in 1975. Marcus nudged history in the right direction. This comeback made you wonder: could rock ’n’ roll, the ultimate youth music, conquer middle age, retain its relevance, and sustain careers beyond that scary precipice of 30? Now we know that all those Sixties rockers had their eyes on Presley, wondering how they might confront the same dilemma.

By the time Elvis wins his argument with Parker and books Vegas, Luhrmann posits Vegas Elvis as the real Elvis, or at least the longest-lasting Elvis, reaching towards his early Sun Records moments: a figure so grand and abiding, if the hippies couldn’t sense it, it said more about their own elitist club. Now that history has remastered all of Elvis (in three giant box sets, great outweighing schlock), you can hear him singing straight through the morass, as if he could out-sing any injustice or any slight, sing America right back to its better nature, and sing a divided nation back into something worth arguing about. (This is where Luhrmann plays the biopic game better than recent hackneyed treatments of Freddie Mercury and Elton John: Presley had importance, but he also exuded good humor, as his best onstage self battled his private lack of self-worth.)

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Of course, conquering mainstream entertainment meant suffering its soap opera sins of gluttony and pills, so Presley died slumped over his toilet at age 42 in Graceland (”A whole lotta trouble runnin’ through his veins,” wrote Bruce Springsteen). To the rock culture he inspired, he had drifted into celebrity cliché.

The movie ends with 1977 footage of Elvis singing “Unchained Melody” at the piano, panting, howling, moaning, and exorcising Gawd Knows What for a scene that animates his pomposity with a twisted pathetic verve. Cross-cutting between Butler and the real Elvis, it’s a dazzling piece of editing that seals Butler’s gift for mimicry. You’ll think of another breakout performance from an inferior film : Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison in The Doors (Oliver Stone, 1991). Like Kilmer, Butler swivels effortlessly between homage and a unique, detailed actorly examination; his performance fuses fevered identification with critical distance.

Tom Hanks seems curiously miscast here: it’s not that he can’t or should play villains – he should definitely play more (his Road to Perdition character’s revenge plot almost counts). Hanks’s Good Guy persona looms so credulously it makes you want to see his venal side. And it’s not that we sympathize with Parker so much as sympathize with Hanks himself… it’s a thankless, two-dimensional role more suited to a Tom Sizemore or Mickey Rourke. Better yet, call back Brendan Gleason as the deliciously aberrant Trump from The Comey Rule (2020).

Parker as narrator waters down our desire for Elvis. Butler hits so many perfect notes, losing himself onstage or submitting to a song that carries him out of himself, that Parker turns into a distraction; he makes the least interesting vantage on this material. As Elvis tries to find something profound inside “If I Can Dream” to close his 1968 special, we don’t want to cut away to Hanks, wincing at greatness, worrying whether its sponsor might flee.

Sure, Parker pitched the world to the kid on that carnival Ferris wheel. But the musicians around Elvis had so much more to talk about, so much more to learn and share with others; their perspective has always gone underdeveloped. The script could use more of the backstage moments where Presley enjoys talking trash with B.B. King and fewer “loneliest idol in the world” sequences atop the International Hotel. Presley wound up hanging out with his Memphis Mafia yobs because he felt so stifled by the fixed Hollywood mindset that rock had supposedly blasted open. Turning a figure like Elvis into a mainstream star perverted his best impulses: that’s what Luhrmann dramatizes in his better scenes. When he died, Rolling Stone’s Greil Marcus quoted the poet William Carlos Williams (“To Elsie”), about how “the pure products of America go crazy.” Luhrmann links Elvis to that same poem’s “devil-may-care men who have taken/to railroading/out of sheer lust of adventure” in a movie that goes on too long but glimpses greatness.

Header image: Austin Butler as Elvis in Warner Bros. Pictures’ Elvis, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Hugh Stewart.

(Please note that this installment relates directly to the previous column, published in Issue 166.)

Having established that my comparison between the Tuchel and the four-banana-sockets line-level outputs on the Nagra IV-S open-reel tape recorder was not definitive in true A/B-testing terms in that it didn’t compare like with like, I embarked on a number of subjective listening sessions. For those who have read the last issue and may have forgotten, and for those who can’t be bothered, the brief recap is this:

Not long ago, Nagra approached Transparent Audio to produce a dedicated, impedance-matched output cable for the Nagra IV-S reel-to-reel deck, using the quartet of 3 mm banana sockets on the right-hand panel (see header image above). Although out of production, possibly thousands of Nagra IV-S machines remain in use, and are snapped up instantly when they appear on online selling sites. Please note that even one which has been worked to near-death after years of pro use will still command a couple of grand, while I have seen close-to-mint examples change hands for as much as $10,000. One needs to know the Nagra’s worth to provide context for the cost of the cables under audition.

As to why Transparent would offer such a service, beyond responding to Nagra’s request, it is an example of the company’s long-held practice of offering custom products. Indeed, the Transparent cables I use in my reference system are specifically matched to the preamp, power amp, and speakers which form its core.

A dedicated Nagra IV-S cable, therefore, is not unusual in that it is a perfect example of Transparent’s traditional equipment-matching services. It was also noted in the last installment that while the test pair comprised the company’s Reference cable, there are less-expensive cables in the catalogue which Transparent would also modify. However, CEO Karen Sumner disarmingly advised that, just as the most economical wires don’t justify modification to Nagra IV-S usage, it wasn’t worth going above the Reference – a rare case of a high-end audio manufacturer telling you not to spend more.

Nagra IV-S tape recorder. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/DRs Kulturarvsprojekt from Copenhagen, Denmark.

One suspects that most users operate the Nagra IV-S with the 7-pin Tuchel connector located on the left side of the Nagra IV-S. A colleague who has owned an IV-S for 40 years says he never even considered using those other outputs, the mysterious four banana (4 mm) sockets on the right-hand side. It is to this end that Transparent Audio produced at Nagra’s behest a variant of their Reference cable with four banana plugs, terminated in two RCA phono plugs, as is the Tuchel.

Equally briefly, and to disarm trolls, and some AES members and Boston Audio Society pedants, this means that not only were listeners comparing Tuchel-vs-banana (the primary raison d’être of this experiment), there were two different makes of phono plugs utilized, and the Tuchel was fitted to a different make of cable. What was ruled out as another possible cause of differences, though, was cable length, as the Transparent pair measured 6 feet while my Tuchel-terminated cable was only 4 inches shorter – surely that’s an insignificant amount?

Ultimately, if someone wants to undertake a definitive test just to hear whether or not the “four-banana” output is better than the Tuchel, one would need to implore Transparent to produce their impedance-matched Reference cable with a Tuchel connector and their own make of phono plugs. I have far-too-often taken advantage of Transparent’s good graces to even suggest it, so don’t expect a sequel to this.

The Transparent Cable for the Nagra IV-S.

It was thus decided, given the difference in phono plugs and cables, to take the opportunity instead to perform three utterly, unabashedly subjective tests, with no illusions about the results beyond pure, unadulterated, non-technical, unmeasured observation:

1) Most obvious was: Does the cable setup which Nagra ordered from Transparent sound better than the Tuchel-connected side?

2) The second was of a far more fundamental nature, especially for skeptics who find the whole cable thing to be audiophile mumbo-jumbo. (Yes, there are still dinosaurs who pooh-pooh this, as well as newcomers to hi-fi who agree with them.) This query was as simple and basic as to be banal, asking: Do cables sound different from one another?

3) As for the third, which I will leave up to you, the readers, to decide of its merits, value, or worth, whether economically, socially or politically, is: How much are you willing to spend in spite of or in acceptance of the Law of Diminishing Returns?

As a steady flow of seasoned listeners visits me in my role as a hi-fi reviewer, I was able to inveigle the aforementioned longstanding Nagra IV-S owner, who is an audiophile civilian and is not employed in the audio industry; a seasoned industry veteran who was the CEO of a major speaker company and UK brand manager of a major imported make; a manufacturer of turntables; and a marketing manager who is also an open-reel tape specialist/enthusiast/expert. It is crucial to note that none of them have any axes to grind, e.g., none of them represents a cable company which competes with Transparent. They were acting solely as fascinated enthusiasts, all with “golden ears” by any measure and limitless curiosity despite decades as audiophiles.

At this point, before expressing my own reactions to the trials, I am overjoyed to report that all four heard the same things, with remarkable consistency. It was a testimonial – OK, OK, not a scientific one – to the worth of subjective listening. Again, to disarm the measurements-only brigade, the sessions involved controlled blindfold A/B listening: I carefully matched the levels between the two outputs, and each listener was handed the remote control to switch between Input 1 and Input 2 on the Audio Research Reference 6SE preamplifier at their own moment of choosing. I did nothing to influence them, and they were not told which was which until well after they had voiced a preference.

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

As I do not own the adapter to convert the IV-S to 10-inch spool capability, all the listening involved tapes on 7-inch spools: 1950s 7.5 ips, 2-track pre-recorded tapes, including jazz and orchestral, as well as a copy from a master tape of a rock album. The average time each listener took to form an opinion was around 20 minutes.

Three of them definitively preferred the same cable, while the fourth listener was being either diplomatic or genuinely undecided, admitting to his own preference for a sharper, more clinical sound after decades of owning a certain brand of British electronics which I find so bright as to cause migraines. In the interests of balance, one listener uses all solid-state as well of his own making, a third uses a mix of solid-state and tube, while the Nagra IV-S owner actually uses Nagra tube electronics, so Listener No. 4 provided an additional type, which ensured that all four had individualist tastes. In other words, the listeners did not form a coterie of like-minded monomaniacs devoted to a specific audio school.

Back to the less-decisive listener: he experienced the same dilemma I suffer when asked to choose between two wines with identical scores, vintages, and terroirs, e.g., a pair of rival Chianti Riservas. But to put this into context, the three who did express assured preferences all noted that, while the differences may have been clearly audible, equally, they were subtle – hence Question No. 3, which is: “How much will you spend for a small gain?”

Because all four are realists who do not call for the smelling salts when told, for example, that a high-end cartridge costs more than $49, Question No 3 was swiftly dismissed with a universal “it is what it is.” Which tells you that the circa-$4,000 Transparent cable was preferred. In every instance, including with Listener No. 4, the Tuchel sound was described as clinical, more “hi-fi,” with less soundstage depth, but ultra-neutral. Whatever its sonic signature, all thought the sound was superb.

Again, universally, the Transparent cable was described as warmer, more lifelike, and with a discernibly more authentic soundstage, especially for the large orchestra recording. It was thus adjudged as more inviting, though two of the listeners felt that professional and studio users of the Nagra IV-S might prefer the sound via the Tuchel.

Even these seasoned listeners had to concentrate, repeatedly A/B-ing the playback. None leapt to any conclusions with a swift “A sucks” or “B is awesome” or vice versa. What staggered me – having not participated in listening panel sessions for some years – was the consistency from listener to listener. And I concurred with them, handily preferring the Transparent cable.

Thus, the answers to the three questions begged were: 1) the Transparent-via-3 mm-socketry solution was preferred, 2) anyone who cannot hear a variance between two entirely different cables needn’t ever worry about sound quality and should shut the f*** up, and 3) if that’s what it costs, then so be it. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.

Are there other lessons to be learned from this, for those who do not own a Nagra IV-S? Clearly, it was as revealing a demonstration of cable differences as any I have heard, and it should inspire all serious listeners who might feel their systems need a lift to investigate specialty cables within their budget. Next, it showed how a high-performance cable tuned to a specific component can extract better (or at the very least different) performance. As I said before, my reference system uses tuned cables, which for a reviewer is one less variable about which to worry. This includes the electrical AC mains wiring for the listening room, which has dedicated AC cabling from Transparent, Kimber, and others.

(Please note that the hi-fi room has its own mains ring, completely isolated from the rest of the house. As the mains transformer/distribution box for the entire neighborhood is on my land, on a pole sited less than 60 feet from my listening room, the AC power into my home is mighty pure, so I have yet to feel the need for AC conditioners or regenerators. But I suspect Paul McGowan is one day gonna convince me otherwise.)

In closing, thanks to Karen Sumner at Transparent Audio for assisting in this challenge, thus reaffirming what I heard last year when A/B’ing her company’s two least-expensive cables with a similar arrangement, but using a CD player with two sets of outputs. Again, the testing of the Nagra IV-S outputs wasn’t a NASA/university-science-lab-caliber experiment, just a bunch of skilled listeners using their ears. But what we heard throughout the demonstrations? Undeniable, inescapable and incontestable.

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.

(Copper Issue 166 featured coverage of AES Europe Spring 2022 presentations that included a look at the intricacies of tuning high-performance audio systems for automobiles; a study on the changes in how consumers use headphones, and advances in headphone technology; and a look at the challenges of mixing immersive audio content to stereo while minimizing loss of spatial perspective in the sound field. Copper Issue 165 reported on presentations on the use of analog versus digital equipment in recording studio mixing; a look at the trend towards mobile audio wearables; and the challenges faced by engineers in archiving and restoring audio from analog disc recordings. Although AES Europe Spring 2022 was held in The Netherlands, the wonder of digital streaming enabled people to cover and participate in the show remotely. This is the final installation of our AES Europe 2022 reporting.)

The Art of Cutting a Vinyl Master

Presented by mastering engineers Maggie Luthar (Soccer Mommy, Redd Kross) of Welcome to 1979 and NPR, and Jett Galindo (Barbara Streisand, Weezer, Selena Gomez) of the Bakery, The Art of Cutting a Vinyl Master was a fascinating look at how vinyl, once predicted to share a similar demise with Betamax tape, has once again become a commercially viable music listening medium.

Jett Galindo with Maggie Luthar. Courtesy of AES.

Galindo noted that the Neumann VMS70 cutting lathe with SX74 cutting head she was demonstrating has been customized and modernized to better accommodate modern music, and contains both brand new parts as well as vintage ones in order to combine the best of both worlds. Galindo conducted the demo as follows:

1. Selecting a blank 14-inch lacquer disc, she cleaned it of any surface dirt with compressed nitrogen before placing it on the lathe’s platter.
2. During the record cutting process, a vacuum attachment is used to remove the lacquer residue caused by the cutter head carving the sound vibrations (grooves) onto the lacquer master disc.
3. Galindo explained that RIAA equalization curve guidelines for vinyl mastering require an attenuation of low frequencies and a boost of higher ones. This is because RIAA playback parameters call for a reverse of that curve in order for the playback to theoretically result in a flat response. The use of the RIAA curve was also the result of commercial considerations, since lower frequencies take more space on a disc (i.e., wider grooves), so the parameters were created as a compromise between optimum sound quality and getting a long-enough playing time onto a record side.
4. Galindo also explained that mastering at half-speed not only helps with detail reproduction accuracy, but also puts less stress on the cutting head, since higher frequencies carry more energy. Half-speed mastering also results in clearer transients and a perceived boost in loudness.
5. The feed from the original sound source (in this case, a Pro Tools session) is split into two signals: a Preview track, which is fed into the cutting lathe, where an internal computer sees the signal seconds ahead of time in order to mechanically adjust for level, groove spacing, etc., and a Program track, which is the actual signal that winds up being used by the cutting head stylus to cut the lacquer master.
6. While older cutting lathes are not as automated as Galindo’s VMS70, she said that, while she doesn’t have to tweak things or press buttons on the fly as much as with a vintage machine, certain situations, such as a when there is a drastic dynamic change between two musical passages, will call for her to engage an “echo” button. It creates a barely-audible “ghosting” effect, but will keep the stylus from jumping too wildly and possibly out of the groove, thus ruining the master. It’s also engaged at the end of a musical program to make sure that it doesn’t inadvertently spill over onto the next track.
7. Once a session is completed, Galindo said that she will examine the freshly-cut lacquer master under a microscope to visually inspect the grooves. She said that she looks for indications of overlapping or grooves that are cut too narrow, both of which will result in flawed discs.
8. Luthar mentioned that the art of vinyl mastering is in the delicate balance between volume level, frequency content, and the space between the grooves. When the program is longer, then the level needs to be quieter in order to fit more running time onto each side of the master.

Galindo cleans a blank lacquer disc with nitrogen. Courtesy of AES.

Close-up of the SX 74 cutting head. Courtesy of AES.

The next step in the process is sending the freshly-cut lacquer master out for electroplating. A “mother,” which is a metal-disc inversion of the master, is created in order to stamp the actual vinyl records.

Luthar holds an example of a “mother” for stamping new records. Courtesy of AES.

When preparing source files for a mastering session, Luthar and Galindo reviewed the options, techniques, and tools that mastering engineers have at their disposal. Additionally, they dispelled some myths about the process. Some of their key points included:

• Vinyl mastering houses can easily work with the same digital master used for CDs or streaming; a separate digital master for vinyl is unnecessary.
• Certain genres of music that may have unusual sounds, like avant-garde jazz or some forms of hip-hop, benefit from having the mastering engineer communicate with the cutting house to make them aware of which sounds are intentional, in order that the content doesn’t get altered due to the cutting engineer mistaking the unusual sounds for errors that require correction!
• The geometry of vinyl is such that the portion of the groove that is closer to the center is smaller in diameter than on the outer perimeter of a disc. Sibilance, which often finds its way onto DIY recordings, may not be so noticeable on the earlier songs that are cut on the outer grooves, but can become an increasing threat to sound quality towards the end of a record’s side, as the distortion becomes much more apparent when the grooves are compacted (the diameter of the grooves decreases).
• The quality of a playback stylus can vary widely between record players. As a result, the perception of distortion on one system vs. another can often be traced to the limitations of a playback system, rather than any inherent problems with a vinyl master. Good vinyl-cutting engineers will often have to compromise on fidelity in order to get the master to create a mother that will sound good on lowest-common-denominator turntable setups.
• As the sequence of songs and their respective degrees of high-frequency content can have a bearing on the final sound quality heard on the vinyl, artists need to communicate with their vinyl mastering engineers to familiarize themselves with the options: reducing the level to preserve the high-frequency content; keeping the level constant and acknowledging it will result in some distortion; or re-sequencing the track order, in order to maintain the best-possible fidelity for each song over the course of a side (some tracks that are less-dynamic or have less high-frequency content will “suffer” less if located at the end of a record side).

Techniques that a vinyl cutting engineer may deploy include:

• De-essing (to decrease sibilance, a technique that should be used sparingly).
• Decreasing the amount of low-frequency stereo (in favor of more monophonic bass), to preserve groove space and to maintain a balance with mid- and high-frequency content during the lacquer-cutting process.
• Changing the track order. (The aforementioned sibilance issue is also one reason why vinyl albums would have the high-energy hit songs earlier on a record, and the ballads or other music with less high-frequency content towards the end of a side.)

They noted that managing expectations is another topic that frequently comes up, especially since there are now two generations of artists who were likely not raised on vinyl records. Some of these include:

• Running times: for optimum sound quality, the ideal length of one side of a vinyl record is between 18 and 20 minutes. Classical records may sometimes sacrifice some fidelity in order to squeeze an extra 4 to 5 minutes onto a side, but anything longer than that will result in noticeably compromised audio quality.
• Any unusual aspects of a record need to be communicated to the intended audience. Galindo cited the example of Taylor Swift’s vinyl release of her Red album, which was intended for playback at 45 rpm. A sizable portion of her audience, for whom this might have been their first-ever vinyl purchase, complained and returned the record because they were listening at 33-1/3 rpm, unaware that their turntables had 45 rpm playback capability!
• Galindo advised that one of the best ways for an artist to avoid problems when creating a vinyl master is to create a complete .WAV file for each side of the proposed record with all of the tracks sequenced, spaced, labeled, and timed.
• Preparing a chart (similar to a PQ sheet for a CD master) with all of the running times for each song, as well as the time for the gaps between songs, ensures that the cutting engineer won’t have to guess and avoid situations where a song might have intentional silence in the middle, which the engineer might think was the end of a song.
• Any elements of intentional distortion or other noise on a digital master may be exacerbated on vinyl due to analog format limitations, so artists need to acknowledge this in advance and communicate with the cutting engineer accordingly, if the engineer needs to tone the sound down with EQ or other means in order to preserve fidelity.

Galindo and Luthar concluded that the better communications are between engineers and artists when translating music onto vinyl, the greater the likelihood of good results all around. They exclaimed that since “engineers work like hermits and rarely get to talk to anyone new,” they’d probably welcome queries from interested artists!

Simulation-Based Acoustic Design for a Modern Urban Church Sanctuary

Simulation-Based Acoustic Design for a Modern Urban Church Sanctuary was presented by students Patrick Judy and Andy Morgan, along with acoustic consultant Dr. Braxton Boren of American University.

While houses of worship may be designed in similar ways to concert halls, Judy points out that although architectural acoustics may have a bearing on the construction, there are idiosyncrasies that can often make some church spaces diverge widely from the techniques used for concert hall acoustics. Some of these include:

• A preference for the sound to echo and surround a congregation, rather than an emphasis on the sound emanating from a specific area.
• The choice to employ or eschew sound reinforcement, as well as certain instruments that might require it (for example, synthesizers) or are designed to be heard acoustically on their own (such as pipe organs and pianos).
• The priorities, values and traditions of the particular faith inhabiting the space.

Redeemer Presbyterian Church photo model. Courtesy of AES.

Judy categorized the acoustic priority divergence among houses of worship into two camps:

Semantic: speech clarity, open-air, free-field

Aesthetic: mystery, cave, diffuse-field

Judy mentioned that an increasing number of houses of worship might alternatively hold classical services and contemporary services, with the sonic demands from the two music genres and liturgies often coming into conflict.

Referencing the latest acoustic design technologies in new church construction, Judy cited Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. The first Redeemer Church was built in 2012 on the West Side of Manhattan. Created as a multi-story ministry center, it was the first new church built in New York City in 25 years. The new East Side facility is being constructed on a 100-foot by 50-foot lot on East 91st Street.

Given the cost of real estate in New York, going vertical versus horizontal was decided upon as the most expeditious way to maximize the volume level (SPL) and sound quality within the space. The acoustical engineering designers at first decided on a traditional “shoebox” configuration. The general familiarity of that shape allowed for certain standardized ballpark metrics with regard to diffusion requirements, dealing with sound reflections in parallel wall spaces, and other considerations.

Original layout blueprints for the new Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Courtesy of AES.

However, further research led them to plan an asymmetrical layout that would offer improved sound and better seating views.

Asymmetrical layout blueprints for the new Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Courtesy of AES.

Judy noted that they tested sound sources with “a range of different receiver positions, so we had six different receiver positions that were listening from on the floor and three more in the balcony, a total of nine different listening positions around the virtual model.” The CATT-Acoustic modeling software they used was crucial for making adjustments in the virtual world, without the cost outlay of building physical structures that might have to be discarded and rebuilt differently.

Incorporated into the design were Redeemer Church’s reverberation time variants:

3D Geometric Model of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Courtesy of AES.

• Speech and gospel music requires a fairly short reverb time of 1 second.
• Classical music generally demands a reverb time of over 1.5 seconds.
• The difference in reverb times should be barely noticeable between when the space is occupied and unoccupied.

Some acoustic simulation models for Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Courtesy of AES.

These parameters came about as a result of cumulative feedback from artists and listeners at Redeemer’s West Side structure, which has a reverb time of nearly 2.5 seconds and was deemed comfortable by classical artists looking for acoustical support from the space, but excessive by a number of contemporary music artists that prefer more of a “dead” space where artificial reverb and delay can be deployed as desired.

The orange and white color scheme chosen for the acoustical absorption panels was not only visually appealing, but the fabrics conceal a range of alternating acoustic absorptive (1-inch fiberglass) and reflective (hard gypsum) surfaces designed to remove bass build-up and break up standing waves, respectively. The angled reflective panels also serve to minimize reflections from parallel surfaces.

After getting the CATT model tweaked to design the space with a reverberation time of roughly 1.4 seconds with hard seating in place, they managed to pare down the reverb time differential between when the sanctuary is occupied and unoccupied to only 0.2 seconds, thanks to the addition of upholstery to the seating.

Reverberation time graphic image of Redeemer Presbyterian Church interior. Courtesy of AES.

The last step was to create test anechoic recordings for both speech and performed music using the reverberation calculations for how sounds would manifest themselves in the various virtual room simulation options (occupied vs. unoccupied space, wood vs. upholstered pews, floor vs. balcony) and use these recordings to get approval from the clients.

The use of CATT simulation software to calculate the acoustic reflections in a virtually modeled space is a huge technological advantage that today’s sound designers have over their predecessors. Judy, Morgan and Boren have completed an engineering accomplishment that will mark a historic breakthrough for New York house of worship architecture and design when Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s East Side structure is slated to be finished in late 2023.

With the events and seminars of AES Europe Spring 2022, the Audio Engineering Society has once again made significant contributions to our knowledge of audio technology.

Test recording sample file for different reverberation/room options. Courtesy of AES.

“An earworm is a song or melody that keeps repeating in one’s mind.” Merriam-Webster

Earworms can be found in many of the pieces and songs you enjoy listening to: all you have to do is find the right hook to catch them. Once you’ve caught an earworm, it will linger in your mind for a while. Maybe for a day. Maybe two days. Perhaps even longer.

The downside is, like catchy advertising jingles, earworms can’t be banished from your head that easily. These critters are entertaining at first but hard to exterminate when you want to get rid of them. You can try drinking a calming beverage to stop the music, reading an absorbing book, or doing a headstand in hopes that the earworms will navigate toward your ears and crawl out onto the floor. (I don’t guarantee any of these will work.)

Earworms are highly contagious. If you contaminate people by sharing even one earworm, it can cause an infestation. For example, since the 1970s Pachelbel’s Canon has become ubiquitous. That 17th-century composer’s bass line and melody could be heard everywhere – on film soundtracks, CDs, the radio, television; at shopping malls, weddings, and other social occasions – performed by musicians ranging from string and brass instrumentalists to bagpipe and organ players. With all that aural reinforcement, the lovely and catchy Canon became an earworm: it was nearly impossible to avoid, or forget. Most earworms live for only a few hours; the Canon survived for many years and is still echoing in some people’s minds. (If you want to risk exposure, there’s an excellent video of the piece performed on period instruments by Voices of Music here.)

Fortunately, earworms are memorable because they’re usually born from music you like. Here are several examples of catchy themes, pieces of pieces, and complete songs that have invaded my head from time to time. Almost all of the selections are well-known and have a melodic “hook,” making them ideal candidates for worm-hood.

The Catch of the Day

Michael Nyman/The Piano/“The Heart Asks Pleasure First” (Soundtrack) Nyman, a minimalist composer, wrote an attractive score for Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano. Reviewers said the movie had a whole universe of feeling; The Washington Post described it as an “evocative, powerful, extraordinarily beautiful film.” The same words could be used to characterize the music. The main theme, “The Heart Asks Pleasure First,” is evocative, powerful, catchy – and, yes, extraordinarily beautiful.

“The Heart Asks Pleasure First”

Note: The theme doesn’t have a decisive ending in this selection. It runs without a pause into the first part of “The Promise,” another track from the film.

Spinoff:

The Piano Concerto (Argo CD) Try listening to Nyman’s concert arrangement of themes from The Piano. The Concerto starts with a faster, stronger pulse than the soundtrack, and is written in a more familiar minimalist style.

John Corigliano/The Red Violin/“Anna’s Theme”/Joshua Bell, violin (Soundtrack) The Red Violin (1998) traces the history of an antique violin from its creation in 17th-century Cremona, Italy where a legendary violin maker mixes his dead wife Anna’s blood into the varnish of a new violin to keep her memory alive, to an auction house in modern-day Montreal. It’s moody and expressive music…a perfect setting for the story of what happens to the violin over a span of four centuries.

Spinoff:

The Red Violin: Suite for Violin and Orchestra/Kam Ning, violin (Video)

Like Michael Nyman, Corigliano composed concert pieces based on his film score, including a suite for violin (of course!) and orchestra.

Nino Rota/La Strada/“Gelsomina’s Theme” (Soundtrack)

In The New York Times article following the neo-realist film’s 1956 New York premiere, A. H. Weiler wrote: “[Fellini’s] story of an itinerant strong man [Zampano, played by Anthony Quinn] and the simpleminded girl who is his foil [Gelsomina, played by Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina]…is a modern picaresque parable. Like life itself, it is seemingly aimless, disjointed on occasion and full of truth and poetry. Like the principals, it wanders along a sad and sometimes comic path while accentuating man’s loneliness and need for love…Signor Fellini’s theme offers neither a happy ending so dear to the hearts of escapists nor a clear-cut and shiningly hopeful plot. Suffice it to say that his study of his principals is honest and unadorned, strikingly realistic and yet genuinely tender and compassionate…His vignettes fill his movie with beauty, sadness, humor and understanding…‘La Strada’ [‘The Road’] needs no fuller explanations. It speaks forcefully, poetically and often movingly in a universal language….” reflected in the haunting background score by Nino Rota.

One of the best things about Rota’s score is Gelsomina’s poignant theme. Here it is, taken directly from the soundtrack, accompanied by terrific stills from the film.

Spinoff:

Fellini Jazz/“La Strada”/Enrico Pieranunzi Quintet (CamJazz CD) It might not stick quite as well as the original, but it’s an enjoyable interpretation of the theme performed by an excellent jazz quintet.

Sir Edward Elgar/Enigma Variations/“Nimrod”/Detroit Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin, cond. (Video) Elgar’s Enigma Variations is a famous orchestral work of 14 variations on an original theme composed between 1898 and 1899. Each variation is a portrait of one of 14 members of Elgar’s family and circle of friends. The ninth variation “Nimrod,” a tribute to Elgar’s publisher and close friend, is the best-known variation and a promising earworm reinforced by a lyrical melody that’s repeated several times while building toward the satisfying conclusion.

The video below is especially recommended because the piece is conducted by Leonard Slatkin, a major proponent of Elgar’s music. If you’re going to get an earworm, you might as well contract it from one of its best interpreters.

Sergei Rachmaninoff/Symphony No. 2/Adagio/Budapest Festival Orchestra/Iván Fischer, cond. (Channel SACD) Some of the same observations about “Nimrod” apply here: lyrical music that stays in your mind, helped by repetition and small variations of the melody. The entire symphony (completed in 1907) contains some of the most beautiful themes Rachmaninoff ever wrote, but the main theme from the adagio is the composition’s most famous one. Fischer conducts a performance that has a nice ebb and flow, and Channel’s SACD sound is, as usual, superb.

Jean Sibelius/Symphony No. 5/Allegro molto/New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein, cond. (Columbia LP/CD) In 1915, on his 50th birthday, Sibelius – who wrote the famous patriotic piece Finlandia – conducted a new symphony, his Fifth. It later became one of the two symphonies that are best-liked by listeners (the other is the Second). There’s a short section in the second movement that’s based on an actual incident: Sibelius’ observation of swans flying over his country home. He was so moved by the flight he depicted it in his music. “We have this buzzing and whirling to start the second movement, then comes a very grand, very majestic theme derived from catching sight of the swans and their majesty in the sky, followed by chaos…then silence…and an amazing ending to the symphony.” [David Hurwitz, Executive Editor, ClassicsToday.com.] The swan theme consists of a rising and descending melody only several notes long, joined by a countermelody a few bars later…brief, but dramatic and something I always look forward to hearing.

Note: In Bernstein’s 1961 recording, the whirling starts at 23:11 followed by the flight of the swans theme followed by its countermelody from 24:20 – 26:00. Click on “show more” to get there directly.

Maurice Ravel/Quartet in F/Assez vif – très rythmé/Cleveland Quartet (Telarc CD) The Ravel string quartet (1903) is another extraordinary piece. Part of its fame is due to the unusual, plucky second movement where the musicians start by playing pizzicato and end with a brief, equally plucky reprise of the first section. It’s music with a special quality that stays in your mind.

“I Want to Know What Love Is”/ Foreigner (Various recordings)

“Unchained Melody”/The Righteous Brothers (Various recordings)

These two tunes seem to belong together, even if they were written many years apart. “I Want to Know What Love Is” (1984) is listed as one of Rolling Stone magazine’s greatest songs of all time. “Unchained Melody” (1955) is also on the list, was nominated in 1956 for an Oscar (best original song, from the film Unchained), was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and used in the film Ghost. If you’re familiar with these songs they’ve probably already infected you at some point. And if you haven’t heard them before, what are you waiting for? Find those hooks and reel those tunes in.

Foreigner: “I Want to Know What Love Is” (Music video)

The Righteous Brothers: “Unchained Melody” (Audio)

Spinoffs:

“Unchained Melody”/Susan Boyle (Video) Yes, that Susan Boyle of America’s Got Talent fame and her voice is now polished, her demeanor a bit too cautious, but altogether fine!

“Unchained Melody”/Elvis Presley Various audio/video recordings of varying quality.

The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out

Even though earworms might become annoying as they repeat themselves endlessly in your head, they can still provide an enjoyable experience because they’re likely to be derived from pieces of music you remember with pleasure.

After listening to so many selections over and over while writing this article, that’s all I can offer for the moment. I have to go now. I have some headstands to do.

Header image: Leonard Bernstein in 1955. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Al Ravenna.

Most people’s knowledge of Madagascar comes from nature documentaries or Disney’s series of loopy animated movies. But Copper readers may also be intrigued by the music of Madagascar, which is every bit as unique as the country’s natural wonders.

Madagascar is located 250 miles off the southeastern coast of mainland Africa in the Indian Ocean. It’s the world’s fourth largest island – 1,000 miles long by 360 miles wide, with an area nearly the size of California, Oregon and Washington combined.

If you’ve seen any of the above-mentioned nature shows you know that Madagascar boasts astonishing biodiversity. Over 90 percent of its plant and animal life is endemic, found nowhere else on the planet. For that reason, it is sometimes referred to as the “eighth continent.”

The island was one of the last places on Earth to be settled by humans (around 250 A.D.). For centuries it’s been a major trading hub in the Indian Ocean, and during that time the country absorbed people and cultural influences from Africa, the Middle East, Indonesia, and Europe. Madagascar was a French colony from 1897 until 1960, when it gained full independence.

Over 90 percent of the country’s 28 million people belong to the Malagasy ethnic group, and there are two official languages: Malagasy and French.

A World Out of Time

As recently as 1991 there had never been a release of Malagasy music, traditional or popular, in the US. But two American guitarists with eclectic tastes – Henry Kaiser and David Lindley – had long been fascinated by the country and wanted to explore and share the music.

In October, 1991 the two musicians, along with a German production team and a full digital recording studio, traveled to the capital city, Antananarivo, where they spent two solid weeks recording practically every musician of note in the country.

Their original plan was to produce a single CD from these sessions, but they recorded so much wonderful music that they ended up releasing five CDs. The first release was the Grammy-nominated A World Out Of Time, Vol.1, in 1992, followed by Vol.2 in ’93 and Vol.3 in ’96, all on the Shanachie label. These CDs contain music from just the Malagasy musicians, as well as some tracks with Lindley and Kaiser joining in.

In general, Malagasy music is very melodic and rhythmically upbeat, with time signatures that will be unfamiliar to most Western ears. Vocals are often call-and-response, with exquisite harmonies.

The first tune is a dialogue between two Malagasy instruments. The young multi-instrumentalist, Rossy, is playing the valiha, which is considered Madagascar’s national instrument. It’s a tube-shaped zither with a body made of bamboo, with steel strings. The other instrument is a small flute called the sodina, played by the late Rakoto Frah, one of the greatest players of the instrument, and one of the most revered musicians in the country. So much so, that at one point his likeness appeared on a banknote.

“O isa” by Rossy & Rakoto Frah, A World Out Of Time, Vol. 2:

In 2020 Henry Kaiser posted an hour plus of video footage recorded during the sessions for A World Out Of Time. It’s a rare chance to see these unusual instruments in action, as well as many great Malagasy musicians, some of whom have passed away in the intervening decades.

Madagascar 1991 – A World Out of Time:

An Amazing Guitarist You’ve Probably Never Heard of

The first musician you see in the documentary is the amazing guitarist, D’Gary. He’s one of the most innovative and exciting guitarists in the world, but many guitar fans have never heard of him. In recent years he’s performed as part of a trio called Toko Telo. This clip from 2019 features an extended solo guitar piece.

I feel lucky to have caught D’Gary live when he joined the International Guitar Night tour in 2007. The group performed at a small club in Charlottesville, Virginia. I was sitting close enough to clearly see D’Gary’s hands as he played, but it was still baffling because his fingers barely seemed to move while creating a beautiful rippling stream of notes.

Toko Telo featuring D’Gary:

Formed in the mid-1990s, Tarika is built around the core of sisters Hanitra Rasoanaivo and Tina Norosao Raharimalala. It’s one of the very few Malagasy bands to have achieved significant popularity outside the country. In this clip, you can see one of the band members playing a valiha.

“Try Kivy” by Tarika:

For decades, the best and best-known accordion player in Madagascar was Regis Gizavo, who sadly passed away in 2017 at the age of 58. At the time of his death he was a member of the Malagasy trio Toko Telo. He left us with a few excellent solo albums, as well as one called Stories, which also featured guitarist Louis Mhlanga and percussionist David Mirandon.

“Eka Lahy” by Regis Gizavo:

There’s lots of high-energy dance music in Madagascar, and two of the most popular styles are salegy in the North, and tsapiky in the South. An excellent introduction to the tsapiky style is a collection called Tulear Never Sleeps. One of the pioneering bands playing the salegy style is Jaojoby.

“Mangala vaiavy” by Jaojoby:

Singer-songwriter Razia Said simply goes by Razia. Her 2010 album Zebu Nation puts a contemporary spin on traditional Malagasy music with taste and soul. It’s a really good sounding recording, too.

“Mifohaza” by Razia – Zebu Nation:

I first discovered the entrancing music of Madagascar over 25 years ago and it’s still one of my favorite genres of world music. I’ve never traveled to the country, but it’s on my bucket list. If you like the music in these clips, I’ve put together a Spotify playlist with another dozen tracks.

Link to Spotify playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4mRkxK1PpRWWXZ9qUxC2rg?si=0cc2c2209d024d93

Have harmonica, will rock. That could have been Paul Butterfield’s slogan. Blues is at the root of rock and roll, but Butterfield’s commitment to the two genres benefited both equally.

The Chicago native, born in 1942, was in the right city for the blues. He started on classical flute, studying with a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But the blues harmonica fascinated him. He once said of it, “It’s such a personal instrument. It’s really like a horn from the heart.” Horn from the Heart is the title of a 2017 documentary about this man, whose life has previously not been well documented.

As a young man he slid himself into the Chicago blues scene, along with songwriter Nick Gravenites, listening to and jamming with Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, who seem to have welcomed the enthusiastic teen into their fold. Butterfield tried college, at his parents’ insistence, but music had a stronger pull. He dropped out and focused on finding gigs. In 1963 he got his chance: he could play four nights a week at a blues club called Big John’s, but they wouldn’t take a solo act. So, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band was born.

Both the band and its audience were interracial, a rarity at the time. Elektra Records noticed the group’s energy and appeal to young listeners and offered a deal on the condition that Butterfield add guitarist Mike Bloomfield to his lineup, making original member Elvin Bishop the rhythm guitar player. Butterfield’s bassist Jerome Arnold and drummer Sam Lay used to work with Howlin’ Wolf.

Their debut Elektra album, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, came out in 1965. It was not an easy birth. The label’s founder and house producer, Paul Rothchild, was repeatedly disappointed in the band’s sessions. (You can hear some of the rejected tracks on a CD called The Original Lost Elektra Sessions.) Eventually, with Bloomfield promoted to lead guitar and organist Mark Naftalin added to the group, they found their magic. “Born in Chicago” is the album’s signature track, but there’s more to explore here. On a song Butterfield wrote with Bishop, “Our Love Is Drifting,” the aching counterpoint between Butterfield’s vocal and Bloomfield’s guitar illustrates the deep understanding of the blues these guys had.

Lay developed health problems and had to leave the band, so for the next album they found a new drummer, Billy Davenport. He had more experience in jazz than blues, translating into a more diffuse drum sound that focuses on cymbal-brush. Another change was in Bishop’s role: he now got to play lead guitar on some songs.

What really matters, though, is the ensemble as a whole. You can hear in their cover of Muddy Waters’ “Two Trains Running” the tightness and energy of their performance. There’s also an edge of psychedelia from the distortion employed in Paul Rothchild’s sound production. The mixed-genre influence helped their second album, East-West (1966), sell much better than their first. It’s practically a training manual in how to play blues rock.

The band kept developing. Bloomfield left, making Bishop the permanent lead guitarist. Going for an R&B sound, the 1967 album The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw includes a horn section. Saxophonists David Sanborn and Gene Dinwiddie played backup and solos on 1968’s In My Own Dream, and there were two more personnel changes in the band: Bugsy Maugh played bass (and sang several of his own songs for the album) and jazzman Philip Wilson played drums.

But the record couldn’t find its audience. The mixing of genres was now more than the fickle public could take. Blues rock had been taken over by the British Invasion and players like Eric Clapton and John Mayall, making Butterfield’s band sound too gritty. Too Black. That was the audience’s loss, of course, since the band was in peak form, even without Bloomfield’s hot guitar licks. Here’s Maugh doing lead vocals on his “Get Yourself Together,” from In My Own Dream.

After playing a set at Woodstock (which, unfortunately, didn’t make it into the movie, although you can dig up most of the tracks on various CD retrospectives), the band settled in to make their fifth album, Keep on Moving, in 1969. At this point, Butterfield himself was the only remaining original member. He stayed true to the trajectory of the previous couple of albums, allowing the jazz and R&B influences to flourish despite the dwindling market for those sounds. Dinwiddie’s role expanded to include keyboard, guitars, and some songwriting; Buzz Feiten shares guitar duties as well as covering organ.

Things were winding down for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Their last hurrah was Sometimes I Just Feel Like Smilin’, a heavily soul-flavored album, from 1971. “Trainman” is a Dinwiddie original.

It took just over a year for Butterfield to build a new band, which he called Paul Butterfield’s Better Days. They made two albums, both in 1973. While R&B was still in the mix, the jazz influence had subsided, replaced by a roots-music focus that celebrated a wide range of blues subgenres.

There’s also a touch of country, as on “Done a Lot of Wrong Things” from the Better Days album. That sound would have been hard to imagine in the Butterfield Blues Band years, but Butterfield takes to it naturally, helped by a team of multi-instrumentalists and singers that includes Geoff Muldaur, Amos Garrett, and Ronnie Barron.

When Better Days proved to be short-lived, Butterfield turned his attention to a solo career, putting out albums every few years.

His first solo effort, Put It in Your Ear (1976), employs a wide range of styles. Some of the songs, like the Bobby Charles number “Here I Go Again,” use country and soft jazz elements in their arrangements. On the other hand, there’s the uptempo cover of Henry Glover’s “Watch ʼEm Tell a Lie,” which shows off Butterfield’s rhythm skills on the harmonica as well as his gift for vibrant solos. The weakest aspect of this record is the overproduction of the drum sound (four different players are listed), which ends up taking over in an unforgiving, almost robotic way.

After North South in 1981, Butterfield’s final album was The Legendary Paul Butterfield Rides Again. It was released in 1986, less than a year before his death from a drug overdose in 1987 at only 44 years old. His voice is weak – besides his drug problems, he had been suffering for several years from intestinal inflammation that required multiple surgeries – but the old Paul Butterfield spirit is still there.

By welcoming him posthumously into both the Blues Hall of Fame (2006) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2016), America has appropriately acknowledged the importance of that musical spirit.

Header image courtesy of Wikipedia/Rtsanderson.

When one thinks of women in the big band era, it’s normal to picture a female singer backed up by an all-male band. That’s one reason Toshiko Akiyoshi is so unusual: she is a pianist and composer-arranger, not a singer, but she had a career in big band jazz. Add to that her Asian heritage, and she’s quite a rare bird.

She was born in 1929 in Manchuria, China, to Japanese parents who brought her back to their homeland after World War II. She’d started playing piano when she was six, but her family couldn’t afford to own an instrument after the War, so she took a job playing her own made-up version of “jazz” at a dance hall when she was a teen. Then a family friend introduced her to Teddy Wilson’s records, and her whole musical world changed.

On a tour to Japan, pianist Oscar Peterson heard her play; he convinced Verve Records founder Norman Granz to record her, and she used that recording to get a scholarship at Berklee College of Music. After years of gigging in New York with whatever colleagues needed her (and meeting her husband, saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin), the couple moved to Los Angeles and realized their musical dream, the formation of a big band. The Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew Tabackin made its debut in 1972, lasting until 2003, when Akiyoshi disbanded it to work on her solo and small-group playing.

It was past the big band era’s heyday, but the orchestra found an eager audience. Akiyoshi helped to bring the “old-fashioned” big band genre into a new period, partly by using Japanese musical ideas in her compositions, giving her orchestra and solo work a distinctive sound. She has won many critics’ and readers’ polls, including nearly 30 from Downbeat magazine alone, in the categories of big band music, arranging, and composition. In 2004 Japan honored her with the Order of the Rising Sun, and in 2007 the National Endowment for the Arts named her an NEA Jazz Master.

Akiyoshi has made over 75 albums. At age 92, she is still playing and recording. Enjoy these eight great tracks by Toshiko Akiyoshi.

1. Track: “No Moon at All”
   Album: Toshiko, Her Trio, Her Quartet
   Label: Storyville
   Year: 1956

From very early in Akiyoshi’s career, this album finds her in a trio with bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Roy Haynes on some tracks, while on others she forms a quartet with alto saxophonist Boots Mussulli, bassist Wyatt Reuther, and drummer Edmund Thigpen. These were experienced pros – Reuther had played with Dave Brubeck, Mussulli with Stan Kenton, and Haynes with Charlie Parker, just to name a few – yet the young Akiyoshi holds her own, guiding the sounds of both ensembles.

The track list ranges wildly, from J. J. Johnson’s “Kelo” to Rodgers and Hart’s “Thou Swell.” Somewhere in the stylistic middle ground is “No Moon at All” (played with the trio). It doesn’t take long for Akiyoshi’s confident, percussive technique to spin out into flourishes of virtuosity.

2. Track: “Lover Come Back to Me”
   Album: Miwaku No Jazz
   Label: Victor Japan
   Year: 1963

The album’s title means “fascinating jazz” in Japanese. At this point, Akiyoshi was still sticking with the standards, played with top-notch colleagues in small groups. During the 1960s she was married to alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano (in fact, this album uses her married name), who plays on several of her records in this period. Otherwise, the septet is all Japanese musicians.

Trumpeter Akira Fukuhara is a particular standout on “Lover Come Back to Me,” with Akiyoshi defining the overall sound, as usual. Her chordal melodizing and syncopated, dissonant accompaniment inspire the hard-bop explorations of Fukuhara and Mariano.

3. Track: “It’s No Secret What God Can Do”
   Album: The Country and Western Sound of Jazz Pianos
   Label: Dauntless
   Year: 1963

At first glance, it looks like a shallow gimmick, but the melding of country standards into the language of jazz is an operation taken very seriously, and executed successfully, on this duo album by Akiyoshi and fellow jazz pianist Steve Kuhn. Supported by an outstanding rhythm trio, the two ease one genre seamlessly into the other. It’s only by recognizing the famous melodies that you remember that they originate in Nashville, not New York or New Orleans.

“It’s No Secret What God Can Do” was first recorded by Jim Reeves in 1950, resurfacing in later versions by Elvis Presley and Mahalia Jackson. Under Kuhn and Akiyoshi’s fingers, one could believe it was written with jazz in mind.

4. Track: “Tales of a Courtesan (Oirantan)”
   Album: Tales of a Courtesan (Oirantan)
   Label: Victor
   Year: 1976

Tales of a Courtesan is the third album made by Akiyoshi’s big band run with her second husband, Lew Tabackin. This period of her career marked a major change: she was now composing most of the music she played.

Among this band’s many strong elements are Akiyoshi’s complex sense of orchestration, taking advantage of a tutti sound, featuring many outstanding soloists at times, and setting long passages for chamber groups within the larger band. “Tales of a Courtesan” is a fine example, particularly for its interplay between Tabackin’s flute and Akiyoshi’s piano.

5. Track: “After Mr. Teng”
   Album: Farewell
   Label: Victor/Ascent
   Year: 1980

By 1980, the Akiyoshi/Tabackin big band had a worldwide reputation for its innovation in the genre. While a contributing factor was Akiyoshi’s increasing use of Asian melodic and rhythmic concepts in her original works, she was equally comfortable with the vocabulary of all the big band greats who had come before her, giving the ensemble unheard-of range. Farewell received a Grammy nomination.

Akiyoshi’s composition “After Mr. Teng” finds her in classic bebop mode, channeling Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, and (in her band arrangement) Charles Mingus.

6. Track: “Autumn Sea”
   Album: Four Seasons
   Label: Nippon Crown
   Year: 1990

Over the decades, Akiyoshi has made nine albums with a group called the Toshiko Akiyoshi Trio, but the personnel is different each time. In this case, she’s joined by George Mraz on bass and Lewis Nash on drums.

All of the tunes fit the title’s theme, relating to one season or another. It’s an esoteric mix of songs, from standards like “Spring Is Here” and “Summertime” to the Christmas favorite “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and (most surprisingly) Mel Brooks’ big number from The Producers, “Springtime for Hitler”! Only one of the tracks, “Autumn Sea,” is by the pianist.

7. Track: “Five Spot After Dark”
   Album: New York Sketchbook
   Label: Ninety-One
   Year: 2004

Kenny Washington (drums) and Peter Washington (bass) form Akiyoshi’s trio this time for an album of tunes inspired by or evoking the Big Apple. The playing is spare, urbane, off-hand and angular in a way that brings to mind the shuffle of a lone wolf through the dark streets of a crowded city.

There are works by Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, even Billy Joel. “Five Spot After Dark,” by hard-bop tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, opens the album, which you can hear in its entirety here:

8. Track: “Sophisticated Lady”
   Album: Vintage
   Label: T-toc
   Year: 2008

When Akiyoshi and Tabackin started their life together, their goal was to form a big band, which they did with long-lasting success. But in recent years, with Akiyoshi focused on solo work, their collaboration has been appropriately small-scale. Vintage is a tribute album to the music of Duke Ellington (Akiyoshi credits Ellington’s use of African sounds for the courage to use Japanese ideas in her own works).

This lovely and intricate duo arrangement of “Sophisticated Lady,” for piano and tenor saxophone without rhythm section, lets Akiyoshi demonstrate her gift for creating many-voiced polyphony – or the illusion of it – in her improvisations.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Brian McMillen.

Charlie Parker said, “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn.” Well, Bird nailed it in describing the tight thunder that emanates from the long horns these monks play at the Johkang temple in Lhasa, Tibet. I took this shot during my week-long visit and these boys were most certainly living it!

In the mid-seventies, Al Di Meola was a young, hotshot jazz fusion guitarist with Chick Corea and Return to Forever. But he’d also developed a deep understanding of Latin music, and had a special love for flamenco guitar. During a European tour with RTF, Di Meola heard of a legendary Spanish flamenco guitarist, Paco De Lucia. Determined to hear his music, he visited a local record shop during the Spanish leg of the tour and bought all the Paco De Lucia albums in stock. And just about wore the LPs out listening to them. As he was getting ready to record 1977’s Elegant Gypsy, Di Meola informed an A&R contact at Columbia Records that he wanted to do a duet with De Lucia on the album. The label reached out to De Lucia, and despite speaking no English, he came to Electric Lady Studios in New York where he and Di Meola worked out the Flamenco duo “Mediterranean Sundance.” And the experience was a blast for both of them.

Paco De Lucia was a classic flamenco guitarist and incorporated elements of jazz and classical in his playing. He and Di Meola worked very well together on “Mediterranean Sundance,” which became a surprise hit, charting in both Spain and Germany. Al Di Meola expressed his desire to work more with De Lucia, and Al’s promoter Barrie Marshall began working out the details. Which included a possible guitar trio with De Lucia and Leo Kottke; Di Meola questioned the choice of Kottke, and Marshall eventually came back with John McLaughlin as a suggestion. McLaughlin early on had become smitten with flamenco music, and often traveled great distances to hear flamenco players perform. But his career took a very different path, having been built working with Miles Davis during the Bitches Brew period and his own Mahavishnu Orchestra and the Indian-inspired Shakti.

In an instance of complete happenstance, John McLaughlin had his own “Paco De Lucia” moment. While driving through Paris, he heard a De Lucia tune on the radio, and became determined to work and record with him. And as it turned out, Paco De Lucia was also in Paris. The two played together, and their chemistry was undeniable, but they both felt they needed a third guitarist. After an early tryst with Larry Coryell didn’t quite gel, they eventually teamed up with Al Di Meola, and in 1980 after months of preparation, departed on a two-month tour of Europe and the United States. The final two dates were in San Francisco, and Di Meola contracted Tim Pinch of Pinch Recording to do remote live recordings of the two shows on Friday and Saturday, March 5 and 6.

Friday Night in San Francisco

Those recordings generated the now-legendary Friday Night in San Francisco album. Which was released on August 10, 1981, after Al Di Meola badgered Columbia Records to the point where they caved and released it. The album had surprising cross-cultural appeal, going platinum and selling millions of copies. It has gone on to become an audiophile perennial favorite. In 2017 it was reissued by Impex Records as a 180-gram, 33 rpm LP, then again in 2020 as 180-gram, 45-rpm, 2-LP limited-edition numbered sets. Those Impex reissues were massively successful, and received many industry accolades for their overall excellence, but especially for their impressive sound quality.

Later in 2020, Abey Fonn of Impex Records was contacted by John Jackson, then head of Sony/Legacy, to gauge her interest in a Saturday Night in San Francisco project. Which mystified Abey; she knew that there was a second night in San Francisco — you could even see YouTube videos of parts of the Saturday show. But there was no album; did tapes even exist for the Saturday night show? John responded that yes, the tapes existed, and Al Di Meola had them in his studio all these years. Al and his manager Gary Casson approached Sony/Legacy because there was such a wealth of unheard music on the tapes — it wouldn’t just be a rehashing of alternate takes from the Friday night show. Because Al had paid for the original recordings, he owned the tapes, but because he was under contract to Sony, he had to offer them first right of refusal. Sony/Legacy wasn’t feeling it, apparently, so John Jackson offered the project to Impex Records — and Abey Fonn jumped at the chance!

Impex Records put together a YouTube video that details the entire process from start to finish. It’s really great to see and hear insightful comments from Al Di Meola, Abey Fonn, Chuck Granata, Roy Hendrickson and most everyone else who helped make this astonishing release possible. It’s definitely an informative and entertaining watch.

Saturday Night in San Francisco

When Abey Fonn assembled the team to handle the Saturday Night in San Francisco reissue, she and Bob Bantz (her partner and owner of Elusive Disc) served as executive producers; Al Di Meola was the producer, and Charles “Chuck” Granata served as co-producer. Chuck also wrote the liner notes in the excellent and informative booklet that accompanies the LP, SACD, and CD (the LP booklet wins hands-down here, strictly on size alone!). Al wanted to use his personal engineer, the well-respected Katsuhiko “Katsu” Naito, to edit the tapes, and a transfer from the original 16-track master tapes was ordered. Here’s where the production team hit the first snag: the initial transfer was deemed unacceptable. The tapes seemed to be particularly lacking in ambience when compared to those for Friday Night in San Francisco. Abey Fonn didn’t believe that the essence of the live performance present on the master tapes had been captured by the first transfer.

The original master tapes showed signs of water damage and minor mold spore growth.

The original multitrack master tapes from Al Di Meola’s studio were in somewhat fragile condition; they showed signs of water damage, and some of the reels had some slight mold-spore growth. Obviously, their long-term storage conditions had not been optimal. There were definite concerns that even after cleaning and baking the tapes, some oxide shedding might still occur. And it was brought to the attention of the team that one of the tape machines used in the original recording had gotten progressively slower as the Saturday night recording process went along. This caused some harmonic shifts in the music; it was clear to everyone involved in the transfer process that they’d probably only have one clean playback of the original multitrack tapes to create a new multitrack master. It was decided at this point to bring in Ulrike Schwarz to provide expert assistance in overseeing the transfer process. Ulrike suggested to Abey that their best option was to use Skywalker Sound in Lucas Valley, California. Skywalker’s expertise in tape restoration is legendary, so the tapes were sent there post-haste. They’d be cleaned and baked prior to beginning the transfer process, which would take place on a Studer A800 open-reel recorder. Ulrike had most of her equipment shipped to Skywalker Sound in advance, where everything else necessary to achieve the transfer would be waiting on site.

The master tapes were cleaned and baked in the ovens at Skywalker Sound prior to the transfer process.

Of course, this all began during the emergence of the pandemic, so much of the oversight of the transfer process might have needed to be done remotely. And Skywalker had a rigid COVID policy in place, which strictly limited the number of visitors to the facility. However, with Ulrike’s excellent longstanding working relationship with the studio, she was able to personally attend, working with Skywalker’s Dann Thompson while she supervised the transfer. After the tapes had been cleaned and baked, the process hit another snag: the master tapes had no calibration tones. Without those tones, it would be difficult to achieve correct head alignment on the Studer recorder. Ulrike’s team contacted Tim Pinch (who made the original recordings); he told them that a 3M recorder had been used in his mobile truck, which was very common back in the day. Armed with that information, they reached out to a source in LA who provided a number of different alignment tapes to assist in getting the Studer set up. On the third alignment attempt, they hit pay dirt, and the transfers were finally underway.

The master tapes for the Saturday Night concerts had not been stored under optimal conditions.

The 16-track tapes were successfully transferred using the now perfectly-aligned Studer A800. The Studer is a very forgiving machine, and handles tapes gently with great consistency of speed. For Ulrike, it had become increasingly obvious that the poor condition of the original tapes would only allow a single pass through the A800. She maximized this by transferring the 16-track masters to 32-bit/384 kHz ultra-high resolution digital, which would offer an exact replica of the original master tapes. It would also allow for easy correction of the tape speed fluctuation caused by the faulty 3M tape machine used on the original location recordings in San Francisco. The new 32-bit/384 kHz multi-tracks would also facilitate the production of surround-sound mixes for SACDs, if so desired. Impex Records ultimately put plans for a surround mix on hold, so the new tapes would only yield LPs, stereo hybrid SACDs, and CDs.

Roy Hendrickson, Katsu, and Bernie Grundman Take the Helm

The new multitrack reels were then shipped from Skywalker to Roy Hendrickson’s Spin Recording Studios in Long Island City to begin the editing process. In choosing a new engineer to perform the editing and mixing, Abey wanted to enlist someone Al Di Meola would be confident working with and who would be a good team member. Impex’s attorney, Andrea Yankovsky, recommended Roy for the job; they’d both worked together at Power Station back in the Nineties, and she was positive he was perfect for the job. When Roy began the editing process with the new tapes, Katsu Naito was brought in as a consultant. Al really wanted to be involved, but was on tour at that point and couldn’t be present. Al had worked closely alongside Katsu to edit the first transfer (that was ultimately discarded), and he trusted Katsu implicitly. Katsu’s invaluable knowledge of the edits on that first transfer was instrumental in helping Roy’s editing achieve the level of exactitude Al expected. I spoke at length about the sessions with co-producer Chuck Granata; he’s local to Al in New Jersey, and was present in the studio for much of the editing and mixing. Chuck told me that he didn’t take a very heavy-handed approach to the process, but it was good to have an impartial voice present in the control room to insist that they “remove the occasional audience cough.” We have the technology, we can make it better, right?

The new 32-bit/384 kHz multi-tracks were used for editing and tape speed fluctuation correction. Before the final mix process commenced, Roy listened to Friday Night in San Francisco multiple times to create a baseline for his mixing approach for the new record. He realized very quickly that he knew many of the personalities at the studios who were involved in its original production. He didn’t hesitate to reach out to them to get valuable information regarding the pertinent technical details and equipment they were using at the time. Roy had soon acquired all the necessary vintage analog processing and effects equipment needed, and his all-analog mix was made using an analog console. Which would ensure that Saturday Night in San Francisco was every bit the sonic triumph that its predecessor had been! Roy’s final mix was reduced to a 2-track, half-inch stereo analog tape on heavy-duty precision reels; those were ultimately sent to Bernie Grundman for final mastering.

In my conversations with Chuck Granata, he shared a wealth of information about original recordist Tim Pinch, who learned his craft working for Wally Heider in Los Angeles. Pinch made the recordings in his custom-built remote truck, which had been a fruit delivery truck in a previous life! He even hired the same guy who built Wally Heider’s custom consoles to outfit his mobile truck’s interior. While the Pinch Recordings truck was rudimentary compared to those of the bigger studios, it produced exceptionally good-sounding tapes. Tim Pinch made his bread and butter by recording lots of live-for-television events, like the Golden Globes, the People’s Choice Awards, the American Music Awards, and the Super Bowl halftime show, and eventually got the contract to record the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio series.

An interior shot of Tim Pinch’s remote recording truck.

Chuck described Tim’s microphone placement for the sessions, and remember — these were 16-track tapes used to record only three performers on stage! Tim placed mike stands that held two mikes each for each player; one mike near the guitar’s soundhole, and one near the guitar’s fretboard. The acoustic guitars were amplified (necessary because of the size of the hall), so he also recorded a direct feed from each amplifier going into the soundboard. He then placed several mikes facing the audience to catch close-up crowd sounds, and several mikes toward the rear of the hall to help reinforce the sense of ambience in the recording. That easily accounted for all 16 channels, and Roy Hendrickson did a masterful job of mixing all those channels into a cohesive document of the live event. The recording captured not only the magnificent playing of the trio, but also the ambient cues of the venue that give this recording such an ethereal and immersive feel. Chuck told me that despite only being a guitar trio recording, the sound on the tapes was so immersive and mesmerizing in the studio that he had no problems envisioning it as a surround recording.

When Roy’s final remixed half-inch master tape was presented to Abey Fonn, everyone at Impex had a listen, and they all knew that they now had the Saturday Night in San Francisco they’d been hoping for. The tapes were shipped to Bernie Grundman Mastering for final preparation for LP and SACD production (Bernie also handled the final mastering on Impex’s Friday Night in San Francisco reissues). Abey and her QC specialist, Bob Donnelly, arrived to oversee the proceedings and to have a listen with Bernie. Everyone was thrilled with the results, and test pressings were then listened to on multiple audio systems before giving the go-ahead. Thumbs-up was the consensus; RTI’s presses started cranking out the LPs, while SACD and CD production was sent to Sonopress in Germany.

The Final Products

My LP arrived in mid-June. I have a lot of experience with audiophile reissues of every sort, and it’s not a stretch to say that Impex LPs are among the ne plus ultra of the reissue game. That proclamation extends not only to the incredible sound of Impex LPs, but to all of the associated packaging and jacket production as well. Having an extensive background in commercial art and print production gives me a much greater appreciation for the fabulous job that Robert Sliger did with the jacket and packaging for Saturday Night in San Francisco. This job was obviously a labor of love for him, and it completely shows through in the meticulous level of detail in the finished product.

Robert Sliger’s jacket and booklet design is the icing on an already beautiful package.

From the heavy card stock, tip-on style gatefold jackets and the use of metallic inks in the print process, every aspect is of highest quality throughout. The LP was perfectly flat, and had exceptionally glossy, pristine surfaces that showed no scuffs or marks of any kind. The attention to detail even extended to the album’s label, which not only incorporated the newly-designed artwork, but also included the classic chain of Columbia logos encircling the label’s perimeter. Giving the LP a new but also very vintage feel!

Production of the SACDs encountered slight delays, and a finished disc didn’t arrive by my deadline. But no worries — Abey Fonn saw to it that Gus Skinas sent the DSD files that were created for the SACDs from Bernie Grundman’s final master. And I have no doubt based on my experience with previous Impex SACDs that the packaging for those discs will be just as impressive as for the LPs — just a wee bit smaller in scale!

System Setup

The system I ended up choosing for this task was based around the new KLH Model 5 loudspeakers. The Model 5s supplied vintage authenticity to the proceedings and sound superb, even though they’re a more modern twist on Henry Kloss’ original vision. Amplification was provided by my PrimaLuna EVO 300 tube integrated amplifier, which features a quad of EL34 output tubes. I generally always choose triode output when listening to acoustic sources, and with both the LP and digital files for this project, that proved to be the correct choice.

The Pro-Ject Classic EVO with its Hana SL cartridge was the perfect match for this excellent album.

My analog front end employs a Pro-Ject Classic EVO turntable that’s fitted with a Hana SL low-output MC cartridge. The analog signal is fed into a Musical Surroundings Phonomena II+ phono preamplifier that’s powered by its own linear power supply. Digital playback features the Euphony Audio Summus/Endpoint server, which streams via i2S to Gustard’s flagship X26 Pro DAC. It’s paired with Gustard’s C18 Constant Temperature 10MHz Master Clock; the digital stack offers a level of musically seductive sound that gives analog a real run for the money!

Listening Results

I’d been listening to the Saturday Night in San Francisco LP for a week or so. When I finally got access to the DSD files, my critical listening was done by alternating between analog and digital sources. To get a good sense of how they compared sonically. I always rip the DSD files from an SACD to my digital music server, then play them through my Euphony/Gustard digital front end with an i2S connection. It’s much more transparent and revealing than the internal DAC of my standalone SACD player. Getting the DSD files from Impex was perfect for me; I simply loaded them onto my server and we were off and running!

I’m a huge fan of analog playback; in my opinion, great analog — warts and all — usually wipes the floor with great digital. That said, I’ve been over the moon with my digital front end now that the master clock is in place. The master clock adds a level of refinement to digital playback that the DAC alone can’t match, with improved musicality, more impressive dynamics, and a more well-defined soundstage and stereo image. My recent experiences have shown me that exceptional digital can come awfully close to the analog grail.

The Gustard X26 Pro DAC and C18 Master Clock placed my digital front end on equal footing with the analog setup.

So I was surprised when the DSD files sounded different when compared to the LP. Chuck Granata asked if I’d had a chance to take a listen to the LP and the digital files, and I told him that I had, and definitely gave the nod to the LP versus DSD. But when I really started listening critically, the sound I was hearing from the digital source didn’t match what I was hearing from the analog source. Then it hit me: Gustard employs an odd pin configuration in their implementation of i2S that reverses the output channels. I had neglected that while making the connections to the PrimaLuna tube amp. It only took a moment to get the sound perfectly synchronized between the sources, and everything quickly snapped into focus. From that point on, I found it difficult to find significant differences between the sound of the two formats!

The performance opens with a spoken introduction from the late Bill Graham; Al Di Meola insisted that it be included on the reissue. Di Meola saw many shows at Graham’s Fillmore East as a young man, and those experiences totally shaped his vision as a musician. He developed a lasting friendship with Bill Graham, and always had the greatest respect for him. Al Di Meola has always maintained that the two nights in San Francisco were very special, easily transcending the other dates on the tour. The simpatico between the trio was at its pinnacle; the three men had taken their playing to the next level on those two nights.

John McLaughlin takes the evening’s first solo turn on Saturday night.

Di Meola really appreciated that the San Francisco audiences were so vocally supportive and receptive at the shows. The audience irrepressibly screams and cheers, and through Tim Pinch’s superb recording and Roy Hendrickson’s immersive mix, that audience participation gives you a really great impression of the acoustics of the Warfield Theatre. In my room, the soundstage spreads far behind and beyond the sides of the KLH Model 5s, and even extends to the left and right of my listening position, which is about 12 feet triangulated from the face of the speakers. It’s pretty astonishing!

Al Di Meola takes the second solo turn on Saturday night.

Side One’s music begins with a trio track, the Al Di Meola composition “Splendido Sundance.” The track features some incredible interplay between the three musicians, and sets the stage for the solo performances that immediately follow. John McLaughlin’s “One Word” isn’t classically flamenco, but his playing is rhythmic and propulsive; the crowd loved it, and he’s in the center of the soundstage. Al Di Meola’s on the right; his “Trilogy Suite” alternates between intricate finger picking and fiery massed chords. At what appears to be the end of his piece, the crowd roars with approval, and then he comes back for even more! Paco De Lucia’s “Monasterio de Sal” features intricate and also delicate finger picking, and is more pastoral in feel than the first two offerings; he’s located on the left of the soundstage. As with the other solo performances, the audience loudly expressed their appreciation. During the solo performances, you get more of a taste of each players’ individual style, but during the trio performances, they all play with a bit more reckless abandon.

Paco De Lucia took the final solo turn on Saturday night.

Side Two of the LP consists of entirely trio performances, and opens with Paco De Lucia’s “El Pañuelo,” which begins with extended (and very percussive!) finger-tapping on the guitar surfaces by all three players. This transitions into a much more fiery and boldly expressive flamenco tune with plenty of intricate finger picking from all three musicians. That’s followed by John McLaughlin’s sprawling “Meeting of the Spirits,” which is more idiomatically flamenco than his solo turn, and includes ridiculously rapid-fire soloing from each member of the trio. The audience roars with enthusiasm throughout the trio performances. Al Di Meola mentioned in the liner notes that it was truly refreshing for the San Francisco audience to so actively participate — the Los Angeles audiences were far less enthusiastic, essentially saying to the performers, “Yeah? So what else have you got?”

The SACD disc includes an exclusive bonus track, Paco De Lucia’s solo turn on his own “Soniquete.” His performance here is fiery and filled with bravado; it’s a fitting conclusion to this album that was a labor of love for Al Di Meola. The album is dedicated to the late Paco De Lucia, and Al Di Meola wanted his contributions highlighted, especially with the inclusion of the extra track.

Conclusion

Saturday Night in San Francisco is an astonishing album, and even more so that it’s only now seeing the light of day after 40-plus years! Every member of the Impex team gets nothing but praise for their efforts here. Especially Roy Hendrickson, for his phenomenal job on a final mix that really immerses the listener within the live event; this is about as “you-are-there” as it gets for a stereo recording! The LP surfaces were whisper-quiet during playback, with only a few ticks along the way that tended to get polished out with repeat playings. Groove noise was virtually nonexistent; this LP definitely resides in the upper echelon of the analog experience. Hats off to Bob Donnelly for his quality control efforts, to Bernie Grundman for the perfection of his final master, and to everyone at RTI for producing such an amazing LP.

While my usual preference almost always leans toward the analog side, the outstanding DSD presentation of this album makes it impossible for me to make a firm choice. Both the LP and DSD files are remarkable documents of this live event; they’re undoubtedly among the best of the best! Constant A/B’ing between the LP and DSD files revealed no discernible differences, other than the very slight hissing of the analog phono stage during playback. The backgrounds of the DSD file were completely dead silent, which is remarkable for a 40-plus year-old live recording. Saturday Night in San Francisco from Impex Records comes very highly recommended — if you’re a fan of the original album, this one is an indispensable companion to that excellent recording and a must-have. Don’t hesitate, it’s sure to sell out very quickly!

Impex Records: (1) HQ-180 33-rpm LP (catalog #IMP6045), MSRP $39.99; SACD hybrid (catalog #IMP8324), MSRP $29.99.

Available from Impex Records: Saturday Night in San Francisco, Friday Night in San Francisco, and Saturday Night in San Francisco is also available from Elusive Disc.

All images courtesy of the author, Impex Records, Abey Fonn, Chuck Granata, and Ulrike Schwarz.