Copper

Bill Conrad and Lew Johnson were government economists who happened to be dedicated audiophiles—dedicated enough to build their own gear. In 1977 the pair introduced a vacuum tube preamplifier whose... Read more...

Issue 41

Welcome to Copper #41! The title isn't to announce a James Taylor retrospective---sorry to crush your hopes--- but is just what I see in today's weather reports. The Pacific Northwest, where I'm... Read more...

LP Playback: Is It Really Reference-Quality?

Is it truly superior if it has not one, but two iterations of eq; an extra gain stage; a signal-to-noise ratio that is definitely not so superior; inner-groove distortion; variable performance; and it is especially prone to errors in set-up? The reason I ask is that – despite the issues above and many more below – many LP lovers present the sound from their LPs as the ultimate in reference quality playback. But is it? Please note – this article is NOT about vinyl not being worthwhile or anything comparable. But hey... Read more...

Show on Show on Show

The title is of course an allusion to “In the Bleak Midwinter”. Make of that what you will; it just came to mind, unbidden, while thinking yet again about audio shows. This is a subject I’ve written about perhaps too often, starting in our very first issue of Copper with “I Am So Over CES“. A year later another CES piece, “Leaving Las Vegas” ran in Copper #25. In Copper #8 I wondered, “How Many Shows Are Too Many?”—and that’s a question we’re going to revisit today. “Shows are good for high-end audio.” “Shows are a waste of money and time.”... Read more...

Anohni

British singer-songwriter Antony Hegarty now uses a “spirit name,” Anohni. She also now prefers female pronouns, although she has always considered her gender to be fluid. As she told the Guardian, “I don’t feel emphatically female. It’s more subtle than that.” Subtle is a good word for her music, too. And strange, but in a most intriguing way. Her first professional group, Antony and the Johnsons, had a long run that started with the 1995 EP Behold the Lamb of God. The instantly distinguishing feature is Anohni’s voice, a tenor-contralto with a fast... Read more...

Always Be Closing

Bang & Olufsen, Part 2

Continuing from Part 1 , we’ll look at more legacy Bang & Olufsen products in the city museum of Struer, Denmark, B&O’s home for nearly a century. In the last issue, we... Read more...

Right on the Edge of Disaster

Here’s a simple question: which is more fun to drive down a winding country road at 30 miles an hour? A new Bentley or a 1969 Jaguar? Most car fans would pick the Jaguar every time. After all, you can hear it, feel the road, and most of all, it might blow up at any time. Every downshift is an exercise in hope over good judgment. It’s possible to buy an amp that’s powered with dilithium crystals, that has three hundred extra watts to spare, with a power cord that... Read more...

The Beauty of Song
Part 1

The magic of classical song springs from the fact that it requires a singer and accompanist to construct an entire emotional universe in a very short amount of time. You cannot hold onto a song, as you can sit as you ponder details in a painting, sculpture, or other visual creation. Nor, unless the performance has been recorded, can you replay it other than in your mind. Once the notes are sounded, and the words enunciated, only a song’s impact remains. Art song demands that artists paint an emotional canvas... Read more...

Welcome to the Smoke on the Water Jungle Sweet Paranoid War-Pig Child o' Mine

Imagine John Cleese with a red dot on his forehead, wearing a lungi and sitting on stage, playing Indian classical music on an alto saxophone. Carnatic musician Kadri Goplanath looks so much like the comedic British actor (at least, I think so), that I half expect Terry Gilliam or Michael Palin to walk on stage behind him as his mridangam player, and the concert to end hilariously with a trifling flesh wound. I first saw Mr. Gopalnath at a saxophone double bill in my home town of Bangalore, India. The local German cultural center, Max Mueller Bhavan,... Read more...

The Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco

Art

“Hello, this is Robert Rauschenberg’s personal secretary. Mr. Rauschenberg wants to know if you would like to swap art for a pair of speakers?” In 1981 I opened a factory at number 22 Bond St. in Manhattan. It was called Isobarik Corporation and was a subsidiary of Linn Products, in Glasgow, Scotland. Ivor Tiefenbrun, the owner and I grew up together in Glasgow and we celebrated all of youth’s virtues together. (i.e. we drank and screwed as much as we could). In 1975 after spending four years in Israel, I... Read more...

What Is a Symphony?

Most of you who do not make a habit of listening to classical music will have heard of a Symphony, and know that it is some sort of portentous orchestral piece listened to by highbrow types wearing appreciative frowns. But I suspect that a much smaller proportion have some clear idea of what a Symphony actually is, and why it is at all important. If you are interested to learn a little more, this post is for you. But be forewarned – I am not a trained musicologist, so if... Read more...

Meetings With Remarkable Men, Part 2

I wasn’t much of a Grateful Dead fan at first. A neighbor said I should come to his house to hear Workingman’s Dead, and I thought it was OK. The next year, 1971, when Grateful Dead came out, I liked that quite a bit more (I particularly dug the rhythm guitar’s sound and approach). The Dead avoided Philly, it was said, over some problem with the Electric Factory, which promoted all the shows. Whatever the truth of it, the band booked into our local hockey rink, the Spectrum (“home” of the Philadelphia Flyers),... Read more...

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