Copper


Box Sets: Threat or Menace?

Issue 14TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

I hate it when my most cherished assumptions take a beating. I’ve never been a fan of boxes, so imagine my shock and horror this month when Gramophone featured a gushing tribute...

Stan White: An Overlooked Visionary/Part 2

Issue 13VINTAGE WHINE

A fundamental principle of scientific enquiry was stated most famously by Carl Sagan: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” And no, he wasn’t talking about the O.J. Simpson...

Points Of Pickup

Issue 13FEATURED

The point of contact between the cartridge’s generator system and the actual moving vinyl record is of course the stylus, mounted on to the cantilever. The stylus has to cope...

Diving into Opera, and Surfacing with Joy (part...

Issue 14MY TURN

Continued from Part I The History of Opera Although the score to what is reputed to be the first opera, Jacopo Peri’s Dafne (1598), has been lost, the oldest frequently performed opera, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607),...

Issue 14

Issue 14Opening Salvo

As we draw nearer to the time of the World Series, we have several series featured in Copper #14---two concluding, two beginning. Paul McGowan begins a new column, Back to Basics, in this issue....

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Diving into Opera, and Surfacing with Joy (Part I)

Issue 13MY TURN

Perhaps I am one of those increasingly rare birds who never had to learn to love opera. When I was all of 11, my father brought home a deluxe, faux...

Jerry Garcia

Issue 13MUSIC TO MY EARS

If you were born on August 9, 1995, you’re turning 21 today. You have earned the right to go out and get fractured with all the same friends you’ve been...

London Calling

Issue 14FEATURED

Ending this series with a description of the UK hi-fi scene circa 2016 will bore you to tears, so apologies in advance: globalization has seen to a great leveling, and...

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Issue 13FEATURED

I freely admit that I am a nerd. Aside from music and audio, I omnivorously absorb architecture, antiquarian books, cars, and all manner of mechanical devices. When traveling alone, I...

Flutes

Issue 13TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

It’s not that complicated. Lauren Bacall said it best, in To Have and Have Not: “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together . . ....

The Mystery Of The Making

Issue 13MUSIC AUDIO AND OTHER ILLNESSES

I never think about how mysterious the process of contemporary record making is, or was, to the people who buy those records. Which, when you think about it, is really...

Letting Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story

Issue 13THE AUDIO CYNIC

If the internet is good for nothing else, it’s great at destroying a good story by providing factual evidence to the contrary. The flip side is that by widely and...

More About Tinnitus

Issue 11INCOMING LETTERS

Pleased to read the article regarding tinnitus. Tinnitus is a problem that confronts many people with or without hearing loss. There is no one cause for tinnitus; it can be...

Up the Ladder

Issue 12INCOMING LETTERS

I am responding to the recent article on DACs and the quick brush-off of ladder DACs. (Richard Murison’s “My Kingdom for a DAC”, Richard didn’t brush off ladder DACs so...

Conversion Conversation

Issue 13QUIBBLES AND BITS

Today’s DACs, with a few very rare (and expensive) exceptions, all use a process called Sigma Delta Modulation (SDM, sometimes also written DSM) to generate their output signal.  A simplistic...

Son Of 10 More Forgotten Artists

Issue 11FEATURED

Again with the self-indulgence: Of late, I’ve been listening to weird stuff like Tiny Tim, only to find 1) that his recordings were amazing, even in mono, and 2) that...

Death Of The Brand

Issue 11Sucategory_FEATURED

The term “brand” is thrown around pretty indiscriminately these days. Newbies in the workforce are urged to “build their brand” (which I would imagine is mystifying advice when one is...

Jaco

Issue 11MUSIC TO MY EARS

When I started out playing bass, like all novices I was pretty lousy. Luckily, you always played in the back behind loud guitar players, best friends who talked you into...

Capital Audio Fest

Issue 11MY TURN

The Capital Audiofest was held the weekend of July 8-10 at the Hilton Washington DC/Rockville, in Rockville, Maryland. Know for its friendly, informal atmosphere and DIY roots, this year the...

Andrew Norman: Pinball Wizard

Issue 11TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

As I write this, I am sitting in a grade-school art teacher’s classroom in Poughkeepsie, New York. It’s deserted except for me and my laptop, but in classrooms all around...

Jensen: The Man, the Company, Conclusion

Issue 11VINTAGE WHINE

In Parts 1 and 2 we discussed Peter Jensen’s journey from his birthplace in Denmark to California, his involvement in the creation of the moving-coil loudspeaker, and his role as...

My Kingdom for a DAC

Issue 11QUIBBLES AND BITS

One of the nice things about digital audio is that it’s so simple to understand. We ‘sample’ (measure) the analog waveform many tens of thousands of times a second and...

Encountering The Kutandara Tribe

Issue 11BEHIND THE GLASS

It’s hard to not stare when you meet a new tribe. You know what I mean: you see a group of people, different from the norm but tightly-knit, and you...

It's No Contest

Issue 11THE AUDIO CYNIC

The long-running television show American Idol was often accused of single-handedly destroying American popular music. In its fifteen seasons AI (no, not “artificial intelligence”, although that might seem apropos) yielded...

John Hartford

Issue 12MUSIC TO MY EARS

One day about twenty-five years from now,When we’ve all grown old from a-wondering how,Oh we’ll all sit down at the city dump,And talk about the Goodle Days.Well you’ll pass the...

Stan White: Visionary? Or…?

Issue 12VINTAGE WHINE

This column is different from previous installments of Vintage Whine, in two ways: 1. Previous subjects were pretty well known—for anyone familiar with the history of the American audio industry,...

The New Old Way

Issue 11MUSIC AUDIO AND OTHER ILLNESSES

We can all remember those moments when everything in our systems comes together --- when everything just WORKS. The last time I recall it happening with real clarity was when...

Fully Armed

Issue 12FEATURED

Once we have established a firm base for our turntable, and have it revolving flutter- and wow-free, we need to add an arm and cartridge to decode all those tiny,...

What Is a Song?

AND OTHER ILLNESSESAUDIOIssue 12MUSIC

Warning: more Beatles content. Of course, they’re many people’s favorite band (including, obviously, mine), so it’s not a surprise, but there happen to be a number of Beatle-related events around...

The Boganyi Piano

Issue 12FEATURED

Born into a musical family in 1974, Gergely Boganyi was raised to be a concert pianist, and began amassing awards at an early age. At 19, he won Chopin and...

The Shock of the Old

Issue 12TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

What’s Old? In classical music, everything and nothing. Steve Reich is 80. Bach is dead; so are Cage and Satie, Ives and Varèse, Morton (Feldman) and Milton (Babbitt). So what?...

Is It Worth It To You?

Issue 12THE AUDIO CYNIC

During election season, we hear a lot of talk about “values”. We are not (thank goodness!) going to pursue the subject of personal values, the much-abused term that is at...

Cocktail Party

Issue 12QUIBBLES AND BITS

You will all know the old chestnut where, if you focus clearly, it is often possible to pick out one individual conversation from among the hubbub of a noisy cocktail...

Opening Salvo

Issue 11Opening Salvo

Welcome to Copper #11! Wherever you are, we hope it’s not as hot and dry as it is here in literally-on-fire Colorado. Here in mid-July, most folks are approaching some...

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The ACK Attack and Un-common Knowledge

Issue 12MY TURN

In English-speaking circles, the term “common knowledge” refers to a thing that everyone knows, or at least, should have known when searching for the cause of some wretched decision. As...