Copper

Welcome to Copper #54! Beannachtai Na Feile Padraig Oraibh! ---which is allegedly, "St. Patrick's Day Blessing Upon You!" in Gaelic. My middle name's Moore, and I am of Irish heritage, but I can't... Read more...

Spotify Files for IPO; Tower Records Founder Dies

Back in Copper #36, we looked at the financial state of Spotify. The short story was that the number of users had grown tremendously over the preceding year, and that trend has continued: Spotify reports that as of December, 2017, the service had 159 million users. Elsewhere, they list 71 million paid users and 92 million unpaid—which adds up to 163 million, but who’s counting? The revenue has also grown, to $5B in 2017, up 39% from 2016. At the same time, however, losses also grew, to $1.5B. Our previous piece mentioned the... Read more...

Unusual Madrigals

“Madrigal” is one of those words that showed up in European music under vague circumstances, then stuck around long enough to change its meaning a few times. Most of us think of a madrigal as an a cappella vocal work in Italian or English from the late 16th or early 17th century. Here are a few recordings that show what else it can be. Take, for example, the Madrigali et symfonie, Op. 2, by Biagio Marini (1594-1663), an accomplished Italian composer who worked in the musical capitals of Italy and was a colleague of... Read more...

That Whose Name May Not Be Spoken

In every corner of life there are guilty secrets, ancient truths that are never discussed, arcane knowledge that must be kept hidden, heresies that must never be spoken. And every now and then someone decides that the time has come to bring one of these things back out in the open; that the world has surely grown wiser and sufficiently mature to be able to re-consider such matters in an informed and dispassionate manner. But in the end they are always beaten back, bruised and battered, to lick their wounds... Read more...

Be Steadwell

Every time she opens her mouth to sing, Washington, DC-based singer/songwriter Be Steadwell exudes calm and strength. As devoted to political activism as she is to music, she has a growing fanbase that looks to her for leadership and courage, not to mention a way to put into words all the ridiculous things that love can do to a human life and heart. While her background is in the deep-rooted America genres of jazz and folk, Steadwell is very much a musician of this moment in history. She records everything at... Read more...

Sandwiches of You

A couple issues back, discussing the NAMM convention, I mentioned Kevin Godley and Lol Creme in the context of their invention: The Gizmo. I thought I might write a bit about them and their musical adventure. They came to attention as members of 10cc – which, if you know the derivation of that band’s name, will clue you into something about them and their records. They left the band in order to make the epic, the awesomely huge, 3-record set called Consequences. Consequences is a cross between a radio play, a 10cc record (minus... Read more...

Dickens

“You’re going to see that wee, fat conceited bastard?” said the owner. “Why?” On one of my many trips to London to visit a hi-fi show and some of my suppliers, I decided to see some theater in the West End. London theater in the year 2000 was relatively inexpensive, and if you went to a matinee performance you could find great seats at a reasonable cost. Before leaving New York, I heard a review of a one-man show about Charles Dickens. As a child, I read a fair amount... Read more...

We Don't Need No Education...We Don't Need No Tone Controls...

Well, you will soon see that I disagree with that opening title but before I get into the next audio controversy let me wrap up the 3-part audio gear history columns. After reading so many replies I first have to thank you for your interest in this exercise. Secondly, The lists that some of you provided were amazing and actually started to erode some of the plaque around my cerebral cortex to the point where I started to remember even more stuff I owned, like a Klyne 7A preamp and... Read more...

Cables: XLR Interconnect Design

In the previous article in this series, we discussed the design of an RCA interconnect, and how it’s important to have a good coaxial cable design in place before designing an XLR cable. Here, I lead you through the process that went into designing the Belden ICONOCLAST, but these are basic variables that every cable designer must work with. It may be worth repeating from the RCA article that distortions can’t be totally eliminated, so every cable is a compromise of some sort. XLR Design Brief 1) Conductors Both the... Read more...

Violin + Orchestra, Part 1

Our story begins with Beethoven. (What else is new?) His Violin Concerto (1806) especially, because it’s the poster child for Modern Concertos in so many ways. First, he wrote it... Read more...

Rock This Town: Rockabilly, Part 2

During the 1960’s rockabilly was mainly heard on the nostalgia tours. Wanda Jackson, the ‘First Lady of Rockabilly’ had a hit in 1960 with ‘Let’s Have a Party’ a remake of an earlier Elvis hit, but eventually had more success with her country songs in the 60’s and settled there. That decade was tough on cats. Charlie Feathers, who’d had a string of hits in the 50’s, didn’t record an album during the 60’s, next releasing in 1974 when artists like Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe were bringing the genre... Read more...

Speakers Are Exhausting

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” For engineers, Newton’s Third Law of Motion is both blessing and curse. In audio, the law is primarily of concern in transducers— elements in which there is physical motion. Of transducers, that “equal and opposite reaction” is most critical in loudspeakers. Aside from ionic units or the occasional bending-wave driver, all loudspeaker drivers move back and forth to produce the pressure wave we hear as sound. The bigger the driver, the more evident this will be, with large woofers exhibiting... Read more...

This... Is Not That

There’s a term that both guides and haunts any human involved in marketing or selling not just audio, but…well, anything, really: differentiation. How is what I do/make/sell different from what everyone else does/makes/sells? When human beings make something—whether it’s a blog entry, a skyscraper, a car, or a bit of hi-fi kit—choices are made. Choices must be made in order to create something new, something unique, something different. Even if choices are not consciously made, they will be made unconsciously—thus revealing the thoughts and priorities of the designer. In product design, the things... Read more...

Thicker, Stronger....

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