Issue 84

Welcome to Copper #84!

Being the picayune sort, it annoys me when people celebrate the birthday of one long dead, and say, "this is Mozart's 263rd birthday." That may even be proper usage of the term, but unless you can actually sing "Happy Birthday" to someone---meaning that they're alive---it seems to me that "commemorating the anniversary of a birth" is more like it, rather than "---th birthday".

Again: it may well just be me, and that may be perfectly acceptable in common usage.

Along the same lines, I hesitate to say, "May 6th is my parents' anniversary," when they're both dead. Yes, it is the anniversary of their wedding, 78 years ago---but they were only married for 46 years, until my dad died in 1987.

"Only"? That's a damned long time. Anyway: I'm obsessing again....

We have a very full issue this time around, with some pieces that are a little different from our usual contributions.

Prof. Larry Schenbeck will be taking a sabbatical for a spell. I'm grateful for Larry's good humor and incredible knowledge of music---we expect he'll be back around the fall. Meanwhile, in this issue Larry brings us a group of performances of Prokofiev piano concertos---and thanks for that, Larry.

Dan Schwartz tells us about the landmark album Noir et Blanc; Richard Murison  looks into HD Vinyl---and it's not at all what I thought; Jay Jay French tells us about one that got away ; Roy Hall observes cultural differences while traveling the world; Anne E. Johnson’s Off the Charts brings us some unusual cuts from Tori Amos; Woody Woodward hilariously reviews those "best 100" lists; Anne’s Something Old/Something New introduces us to some beautiful organum from Notre Dame; and I wonder if there's a right size to audio shows, in The Audio Cynic; and try to untangle the history of Empire in Vintage Whine.

I'm really pleased to have an interesting, detailed Make It Yourself  article from Danish reader Sebastian Schlager on his experiments with horns. Part 2 will be in Copper #85.

The Copper Interview brings us Part 1 of John Seetoo chatting with versatile producer/engineer Jack Joseph Puig.

Rudy Radelic's feature on Axpona concludes in this issue---and thanks to Rudy for his hard work.

Longtime audio industry veteran Michael Stuart Baskin is, like many of us, of a certain age---and has written his memoir, 363 Days in Vietnam: A Memoir of Howitzers, Hook-Ups, & Screw-Ups From My Tour of Duty 1968 to 1969---phew! I'm pleased to be running excerpts over the next few issues. Don't worry---it's more like a gentler MASH than Apocalypse Now. I hope you enjoy it.

Copper #84 wraps up with the mysteries of botany from Charles Rodrigues, and a Parting Shot from---my morning commute?!?

Christian James Hand is tied up in live sessions---we wish him all the best, and hope he'll return soon.

Meanwhile: I'm off to Munich!

Cheers, Leebs.

The primary reason I began writing these articles (and a similar blog on Audiogon, back in another lifetime) is that there are few cohesive sources of information about the history of the American audio industry. There are scattered pieces here and there, and from those historical and contemporary sources I try to assemble a coherent story for these columns. In general, the audio biz has done a poor job of documenting itself;  having known a number of oldtimers in the biz, I’ve gotten the sense that they felt that the history of their business wasn’t important enough to write about. It was just a business. I find that sad.

I don’t know if that can be attributed to some type of inferiority complex, or just being so caught up in day to day affairs that the big picture becomes lost. Given that the hi-fi industry really boomed post-war alongside more glamorous engineering fields like the aerospace and automotive industries, I suspect it’s a bit of both.

It’s sometimes a challenge to even find information on the founders of a brand, not to mention tracking the changes in business entities—that’s certainly been the case while looking into the history of Empire—initially known as Audio Empire.

When I became interested in audio in the late ’60s and early ’70s, there was not the proliferation of high-end products that we see today. Most products were what we’d think of as “mid-fi” these days, meaning that their aspirations were primarily just to provide home entertainment—and I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. Home entertainment as an industry is fiercely competitive and many companies don’t survive.

Back then, the number of glamorous, high-buck halo audio products that aspired to the state of the art were few and far between on the US market. In speakers, there were the JBL Paragon, the ElectroVoice Patrician, the Bozak Concert Grand, various Altecs, the Klipschorn, the KLH 9, and in a smaller size, the AR 3a (things changed with the appearance of the Infinity Servo-Statik around 1968-70, but that’s a story for another day). Amps and tuners—McIntosh, Marantz, some Fisher, and HH Scott (in my mind, all had passed their peak by then, but I’m a tough audience). Turntables—in changers, the Dual 1219/1229; in manual tables, the Thorens TD125— and the oddball, rarely-seen Empire 598 in all its golden glory.

So—where did Empire come from? As far as I’ve been able to determine, the brand Audio Empire first came on the scene in 1959. It was the hi-fi brand of a precision machine shop/manufacturer called Dyna-Empire, which is still around, while (spoiler alert!) the Empire brand is not. –Well, the brand is still around—just not as an audio brand. And for whatever it’s worth, I’ve been in some impressive machine shops, but look at this list of production machines at Dyna-Empire—truly amazing.

But I digress.

An “Industry People” column in the September, 1959 Audio magazine is the first mention I’ve found of the company; it also mentions Herb Horowitz, who would lead the company for many years:

“Herb Horowitz, 0ccasional contributor to these pages, has been appointed director of Audio Empire, high fidelity product arm of Dyna-Empire, Inc., Garden City, N.Y. Before joining Dyna-Empire, Mr. Horowitz spent many years as chief engineer of Electro-Sonic Laboratories and chief of audio products for CBS/Columbia, during which time he was responsible for a number of outstanding advances in the design of high fidelity components. Duties will include marketing and production as well as engineering supervision.”

“Occasional contributor to these pages”? The previous year, Horowitz had written “Toward an Optimum Stereo Cartridge” (Audio, October, 1958) while still chief engineer at ESL (as Electro-Sonic Laboratories was commonly called). The article described the design of ESL’s then-new stereo moving coil cartridge.

The earliest Audio Empire ads I could find appeared in magazines with a cover date of October, 1959, featuring the Empire 98 “Stereo/Balance Transcription Arm” and the Empire 88 “Stereo/Balance Cartridge”. The two were clearly designed to go together, and would set the stage for the complete turntable packages which would become the company’s best-known products. As you can see—assuming you can read the 4-point body text in the image below— the pitch was on balanced output from both sides of the stereo (45/45) groove. This was at the beginning of the stereo LP era, and so all many of criteria were presented in ads as being “breakthrough!”, vital, unique, yadda yadda.

Having said that— the language may be a little breathless, but the points presented are legit. In order to present a believable stereo imaging, both channels must be at the same output level, and separation between the two channels should be as high as possible: thus, the awkward “Stereo/Balance” label. The 98 arm included a feature that was carried through on all subsequent Empire arms: dynamic balance, with stylus pressure applied by a spring. It’s interesting to note the 98’s resemblance to the tonearm made by ESL, Horowitz’ previous employer. Conversely, the ESL cartridge Horowitz described in his article in Audio was a very complex moving coil cartridge, but the new Empire 88 cartridge was of (in the words of the ad) “the much-acclaimed moving magnet principle.” I’m guessing the moving magnet 88 was better-suited to large scale production.

The first year of the company’s existence appears to have been devoted to just that arm and cartridge. I’ve been unable to confirm or discard a bizarre mention in the December, 1959 issue of  HiFi Review (precursor to Stereo Review): “Underwater music for swimming (is there a Mr. Handel in the pool?) is a possible application for Hartley’s new waterproof loudspeakers, originally developed in England to cope with London’s fog. The speakers were demonstrated in a goldfish bowl at the recent New York Hi-Fi Show. Fish also featured prominently in the Audio Empire exhibit, where the conversation of guppies was overheard by an underwater microphone.”

>cough<

Sure. As one does. Let’s take a brief moment to analyze this: the Hartley demo (which I believe actually happened) had some purpose for being. Why would a company making a tonearm and phono cartridges have any kind of display involving fish? I suspect this was just a goof on the part of some editorial staffer who had friends at Audio Empire. Nothin’ to see here….

In 1960, the company came out with their first turntable package called the Empire Troubador, a name that would be used for Empire turntables for the next quarter century. The model 208 turntable featured an individually-balanced platter and a “lapped mainshaft [which] rotates in micro-honed bearing well. Tolerance is less than .0001″.” That impressive spec would be a part of all of the brand’s turntables, and would still be impressive today. Also characteristic was a massive Pabst hysteresis-synchronous motor, also used by several other upper-end turntable brands.

The 208 had an unsuspended chassis, and is thought by some vintage audio fans to be the best of all the Empire tables. One such fan is Ralph Karsten of amplifier maker Atma-Sphere, who offered a tweaked 208 a few years back.

Empire was back in Audio‘s “Industry Notes” in the November, 1961 issue: “Horowitz Builds Empire. In a move obviously calculated to increase consumer recognition Audio Empire has shortened their name to Empire. At the same time in recognition of the outstanding services performed by Herb Horowitz in gaining consumer acceptance of the Empire line, Mr. Horowitz has been elevated to the post of President.” The emphasis and gushy language was in the original, and is a bit different from the neutral tone adopted in trade announcements these days.

That same issue of Audio carried a review of the “Empire ‘Troubador’ Model 398 Record-playing system”. The company’s nomenclature gets a little confusing here: the 398 package included the 208 table, an upgraded model 980 arm, and a base for $165; the new 108 cartridge was optional, and was priced at $35. Let’s consider that $200 package for a second: that equates to almost $1,700 these days, a price-point similar to a lot of good turntables these days, though not the massive sculptures that meet or exceed the cost—and sometimes weight!— of an S-class.

Reviews were positive, in the non-specific way that was typical of turntable reviews of the pre-Linn Sondek era—meaning, the sound quality was never mentioned, though specs were cited. Audio‘s  conclusion: “…it just reaffirms something we all know; higher quality means higher costs. The Model 398 is an excellent buy for those who want the quality.” Similarly, High Fidelity‘s February, 1962 review said, “…the parts of the ‘Troubador’—taken separately—stand up as first rate audio components. Taken together, they form one of the finest and handsomest record players available.”

The confusing nomenclature I mentioned? Well, after both those reviews appeared, the 1962 Radio Shack catalog featured the Audio Empire 298 package, consisting of 208 turntable, the older 98 arm, and base. Optional cartridge was the 88. Both the company name and the package were old. What gives? As you can imagine, it’s tough to sort out such mysteries, 57 years later. I try to NOT invent things….

That High Fidelity review mentioned that the company name was now Empire Scientific. That coincided with an address change, and my understanding is that the Horowitz family purchased the audio division from Dyna-Empire. Again: it’s tough to get accurate info and confirm one’s conclusions 57 years later, but I’m working on it. We’ll continue the story of Empire, including their shift into speakers, in the next issue of Copper.

Second-guessing is at the heart of online forum behavior, and I wouldn’t want to rob anyone of the joy that comes from  being an expert on a subject of which you know absolutely nothing.

One subject that is discussed to death on forums and anti-social media is that of audio shows: what was good, what was bad, how it was too small, or—in a recent novel turn of viewpoints—how it was too big. Yup. Attendees upset because they got too much for their money.

Wow. I’m sorry: I paid for a Jetta and was given an S-class. How dare they??

When it comes to the audio world, few jobs are more thankless (I know, it sounds oxymoronic. It’s not.) than that of show organizer. I’ve witnessed this as well as experienced this, as an attendee, an exhibitor, and as a show organizer. With the New York show in 2012, I heard from Teamsters, hotel staff (at the über-snooty Waldorf Astoria, mind you), exhibitors, attendees…is there anyone I’ve left out? I fully expected to walk down to the curb on Park Avenue and have passing cabbies yell, “You suck!!” at me.

Sheesh.

I get it: a show is a high pressure environment, with money, gear, and reputations at stake. Exhibitors compete for attention, doing what they can to get a few column-inches or a couple million pixels of exposure. Since that’s the case, wouldn’t you think that a small show would offer exhibitors a better chance at getting attention from media and attendees?

That NY show was the inaugural effort in a very tough market indeed, and as you’d expect, getting space at the Waldorf was far from cheap. The upshot of that: only 40 exhibit rooms. Given the hassles and expenses associated with navigating midtown Manhattan, some attendees were not happy, expecting more. Oddly, most exhibitors—once we got past the nightmares of a threatened union shutdown, access and set-up—were thrilled with the results.

Why was that?

Because attendees didn’t feel compelled to rush from room to room to room in order to snatch sonic snippets of hundreds of rooms, and there was usually some breathing room in those 40 rooms, the exhibitors could actually spend time talking to attendees who were seriously interested in their products. Relationships were developed; sales were made.

I’ve heard positive comments from exhibitors at a number of smaller shows, such as the California Audio Show, the Capital Audiofest, and the new show recently held in Tampa. It’s often said that there are “fewer tire-kickers and brochure collectors.”

Huh.

Online comments will often mention the relative size of such shows, but they will often also focus on the relaxed atmospheres and collegial spirit. That sounds good to me, and I’ve enjoyed those shows.—But yes, there will always be complaints from those who expect more more MORE.

It was a shock, therefore, to see complaints on Facebook that the recent Axpona show was too big. Now—unless one is troubled by some relentless internal drive, an obsessive-compulsive need to see every single exhibitor (and perhaps touch each doorknob three times, no more, no less)— what’s the problem? Pick what you want to see, and just stop. That’s probably un-American, but whatever.

At Axpona there was not just an incredible variety of exhibitors in a terrific venue, there was honest-to-God worthwhile entertainment, in the form of Shelby Lynne, and others.

I’m sorry if that offends you. I’m sorry if that’s just too much. Maybe they can shoot for lowered expectations and less-ambitious goals in the future.

A sidenote: this is the floorplan of the 1964 New York High fidelity Show, a show intended for the general public in the days when regular folk bought audio gear. There are almost 200 rooms—more than at any recent US show (though if you counted booth vendors, Axpona would likely top that number). Just a little historical perspective.

France.

When my kids were small, we rented a house in Provence, France for a couple of weeks. It was a lovely Old Provencal style house, which was once a mill, thus the name, “Moulin de Ribas.” It was perfect for our needs with a big kitchen, lots of rooms, a lovely garden with a large outdoor table under the trees and a stream that ran through the grounds. Unfortunately the water was rather overgrown with weeds and unsuitable for swimming. Provence in August is hot – very hot. As the house did not have air conditioning, not having access to a pool was a pain.

There was a solution. Nearby was a municipal pool, which we visited daily. One day while exiting the water, my big toe caught on a broken tile on the side of the pool. It was a deep cut and started to bleed profusely. I limped to the front desk and was given first aid. Then the ‘pompiers’, fire fighters and medical responders were called. They came quickly and drove me to the hospital where the wound was stitched and dressed. It was also x-rayed (just in case). I was told to return a few days later to have the stiches removed. As I was leaving the hospital, I saw a cash desk; expecting to pay, I asked how much I owed them. They looked at me in astonishment and explained (as if to an idiot) that the desk was there to give you cash in case you needed a ride home or other basic essentials.

A week later, healed, I returned to the hospital. My kids were with me and, as normal, were acting like animals. They were noisy, climbing everywhere and making a real nuisance of themselves. Sitting opposite me was a mother with 2 children. The girl was about 7 and the boy, 10. What caught my attention was the fact that both of them were not only well dressed and polished clean, but that they sat quietly next to their mother while she waited. The contrast between them and my 2 brats was startling.

I remarked to my wife that I never understood how the French always seem to have well-behaved children. No matter what we tried, our kids were monsters. At one point the mother said something to the kids, stood up and walked out of the room. The boy, on checking his mother had left, balled up his fist and whacked his sister so hard, she screamed and went flying across the floor. I smiled and felt reassured. On the other hand, my kids, stunned by what they had just witnessed, quietly joined us and sat silently until we left.

China.

On a recent trip to China, David, my friend and business associate, and I drove north from Shenzhen, then west across the Pearl River to visit a factory in Daliang, near Foshan in Guangdong province. It was a brutally hot day and the traffic was worse than normal making the 60-mile trip endlessly long. We finally arrived at the factory and on entering the compound we saw a large tree with lots of shade under it. David parked the car and just as we were about to leave the car the guard rushed over to us and started yelling. David looked bewildered and said to me, “I have no idea what he is talking about. He’s yelling in Cantonese, and I only speak Mandarin.” I remarked that it must be something about the parking space. The guard walked away and immediately returned holding a large mango in his hands. Speaking a wordless common language he pointed up to the tree, which was bursting with huge mangoes each weighing about 3-4 pounds.

We understood.

England.

My friend Ivor, from Linn Products in Glasgow, Scotland, invited us to his oldest son’s wedding in London. We happened to be vacationing in France, so we hopped on a plane to attend what turned out to be quite a lavish affair. It was held in a function hall fairly close to Piccadilly Circus. Natan, the groom, was marrying a London girl, so the crowd was half Scottish and half English. At one point during the meal, I approached the top table set on a dais overlooking the guests. As I was talking to Ivor, I surveyed the room. On the left, the English guests were sitting quietly at their tables neatly eating with knives and forks.

On the right, the Scots were incredibly raucous. Some were arguing among themselves, one group was singing Jewish liturgical music to Scottish melodies. Others were dancing. Most were drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Overwhelmed by the contrast between these two groups of British Jews who live less than 400 miles apart, I immediately returned to the Scottish side—and glass in hand, joined in the singing.

On April 15, 2019, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was severely damaged in a fire. As it happens, that church has a special place in music history. Construction on Notre Dame started in 1163. It took almost 200 years to complete, but it’s in those early decades, around the year 1200, that the cathedral starts to matter musically.

In this column, I usually discuss a few recent recordings of a particular repertoire, but this time there’s only one that I’d call recent. So I’ll fill in with a few important earlier releases.

We’re talking about Notre Dame organum (accent on the first syllable). The term “organum” meant a Gregorian chant decorated with other notes sung against it in counterpoint. In the Middle Ages, both composers and monks/nuns experimented with making chant more interesting to listen to and sing (oops, I mean more glorious for God to hear, of course!). The innovations in organum by composers at Notre Dame not only established how to turn a simple chant into a big, rich piece of music; they also served as the seeds for basic techniques of writing polyphony that you can still hear in the likes of Bach and Beethoven.

The earliest Notre Dame composer whose name we know was Léonin (Leoninus in Latin). He’s credited with inventing a new way of decorating chants in a specific pattern. For Léonin, each phrase of the chant proceeds like this:

1. A few words are sung in unison, like a traditional plainchant.
2. One syllable is held for a long time by most of the monks. A soloist sings ornaments against the held note. This part is always in triple time (which they called “perfections”).
3. For a few seconds, the held voice moves to different notes, but not quite as fast as the solo voice.
4. The chant phrase is finished in unison.

Léonin’s music was written down using a new kind of notation that could capture rhythm – as long as it was in triple time. Léonin’s book then taught Pérotin, an even more brilliant organum composer in the next generation of Notre Dame.

Using the same structure described above, Pérotin upped the ante. He made items 2 and 3 longer, plus added one or two extra voices in the counterpoint. “Big deal,” right? Right! Pérotin was creating the first sustained three- and four-voice polyphony in history.

Now that you know what you’re listening to, let’s get to some recordings.

The gold standard is Perotin (Harmoni Mundi, 1989) by the Hilliard Ensemble, led by Paul Hillier. They did everything right: Pythagorean tuning (which makes their perfect fifths and fourths ring true), an acoustic space that takes advantage of the pure tuning, and a strong sense of the triple rhythm that still manages to be lilting rather than robotic.

Here’s Hilliard singing Pérotin’s famed “Viderunt omnes,” an organum built on a two-voiced Léonin original, with two more voices added:

Paul Hilliard was part of a movement in the 1980s to fix a wide range of misconceptions about early music as it had been recorded in the 1950s and 60s. Of course those earlier pioneers got some stuff wrong — there was very little scholarship to draw on. It’s incredible that they bothered with this weird old music at all. People like Alfred Deller are heroes to me. They forged the way for early music performance practice.

Here’s the Deller Consort, originally recorded in 1966, on a re-release from Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, singing Perotin’s “Alleluia Nativitas.” You’ll notice many stylistic differences from that Hilliard recording. In terms of vocal production, the vibrato is the most jarring from our vantage point. But the interpretation of the rhythm is also a big issue (as it is for most early-music attempts from that period). There’s a halting, self-conscious sound to it, as if they’re afraid they might break the music if they barrel through.

Given their name, it only seems right to include Ensemble Organum in this discussion. Under the leadership of Marcel Pérès, in the ʼ80s and ʼ90s this French group was one of the most intense hunters of medieval authenticity, with an emphasis on spiritual authenticity. Their concerts were full worship services. Pérès’ musical choices served the expression of his faith, never mind what scholarly eyebrows he raised.

Here is Ensemble Organum in 1985, singing Léonin’s Mass for Christmas Day on Ecole Notre-Dame: Messe du Jour de Noël (Harmonia Mundi — are you seeing a pattern with this label?). But, typical of Pérès, it’s the entire Mass, not just the parts Léonin set as organum. You can hear some polyphony starting at around 37:20.

Pérès barely acknowledges the long and short beats that make up triple meter in most renditions. For him, the “perfections” seem to be more about which notes to stress than which have more value. Still, his interpretations are always compelling, in a mantric sort of way.

Another group with a long history of singing the Notre Dame repertoire is Ensemble Gilles Binchois, directed by Dominique Vellard. Their first try was in 1986, Ecole de Notre Dame; in 1993 they released more from this repertoire on the similarly titled Ecole de Notre Dame de Paris.

This is the same “Viderunt omnes” by Perotin that the Hilliard Ensemble sings above. Vellard’s performance is slower, with softer edges. You might say it’s more personal and prayerful, but I miss Hilliard’s focus on the acoustical properties (which Perotin is thought to have understood).

Since the mid-1990s, there have been a handful of other discs devoted to Notre Dame organum. Orlando Consort, Tonus Peregrinus, and Diabolus in Musica, among others, have produced recordings worth checking out. All of them owe a debt to the earlier groups I’ve mentioned.

The only new release in the past year – one wonders if all the media attention will soon inspire more – is Pérotin: The Scottish Source, by a group called Iuchair. It is on their own indie label, Yoker Music. As the title implies, Iuchair made a new edition based on a manuscript at St. Andrew’s Priory in Scotland.

Their interpretation is fascinating – wild and rousing, almost raunchy, more like something you’d expect to hear outside than in a cathedral. I applaud them on their daring, and for trying to move the historical conversation forward.

In case you’re concerned, all the medieval music written at Notre Dame is housed in the Bibliotèque nationale and other manuscript repositories, so it was safe during the fire.

It was all the way back in the 1980’s that consumer digital audio suddenly took root in the form of the CD, and before you knew what had hit you the good old vinyl LP was being consigned to the junk pile of history – what my father-in-law used to call a GROBA (Gleaming Relic Of A Bygone Age), except that he was generally referring to his cars. But vinyl has steadfastly refused to go gentle into that good night. Here we are in 2019, and not only has the LP failed to crawl away and die, it is exhibiting an incredibly strong renaissance.

But this resurgence has not been entirely painless. The process itself is as old as the hills, and hasn’t changed significantly since the Eisenhower administration (ignoring inherently limited niche processes such as Direct Metal Mastering). You would have thought we’d have done better than that, wouldn’t you?

Günter Loibl certainly thinks so. Günter is CEO of Rebeat, an Austrian company from Tulln, near Vienna, active in various aspects of the music business. His latest venture is called HD Vinyl, an initiative that seeks to bring the process of producing and manufacturing vinyl LPs kicking and screaming into the 21^st Century. I had an interesting chat with him, and he took me through the process he is busy developing. I found it quite fascinating.

The existing process for producing vinyl discs, unchanged for more than 60 years, seems almost Dickensian. It has a kind of Steampunk quality to it. There are variations, but essentially the process goes like this. First, a master is cut in a soft acetate lacquer coating on an Aluminum platter. The cut is made using a cutting stylus with a sharp edge to it – the point being that it has a significantly different shape than the stylus used for playback (if the playback stylus was the same shape, it too would cut the vinyl!). This lacquer disc is then plated with a thin coat of Silver. I say “thin”, but bear in mind that the thickness of this layer is substantially greater than the amount of groove modulation that would make an audible difference to the sound quality. This is the first of a number of “lossy” steps that impose themselves between the freshly-cut surface of the master lacquer and the finished vinyl LP on your turntable.

The next step has Nickel electroplated onto the silvered lacquer mold. When removed, this Nickel casting is referred to as a stamper, and is then coated with a thin layer of Chromium to help protect it. For a typical LP release, multiple stampers will be produced from the master lacquer. Back in the mass-production days of yore, these first-generation stampers would be referred to as a “Father” stampers, and only used to make multiple second-generation copies called “Mother” stampers, which would be the ones actually used to stamp LPs.

Finally, the stamper is used to press hot molten vinyl into the LPs that you ultimately buy and play. However, molten vinyl itself is an aggressive substance, and every individual pressing eats away a little bit at the surface of the stamper, which means that every LP stamped is of slightly poorer quality than the one before it. After a while, the stamper will have degraded sufficiently to audibly affect the sound quality of the LPs being produced. It will be up to the manager of the pressing plant to decide when that point has been reached, but as a rule of thumb as few as 500 pressings might be a reasonable limit for an audiophile LP, and perhaps 1,500 for a regular commercial release.

In summary, while this was impressive technology for the 1950’s, it is pretty clumsy by today’s standards; and quite frankly, it beggars the imagination that it is able to produce a product which engenders such a passionate, committed, and quality-conscious following. Günter Loibl thinks it is high time we came up with something better. And who would want to disagree with that?

Günter sees two primary areas in which a modern process could substantially improve upon its traditional counterpart. The first would be to reduce the number of lossy processes between cutting the lacquer and stamping the LP. And the second would be to increase the number of LPs that can be produced from a single stamper without losing quality.

One key aspect of Günter’s approach is to manufacture the stamper directly, using a stamper material that will not degrade at the rate Nickel stampers do. His choice is a ceramic material. Using a ceramic stamper, he has tentatively established that he can stamp out upward of 10,000 LPs without any measurable degradation in quality, which is a major improvement.

The second leg in the chain is to introduce the grooves directly onto the stamper itself, so that there are no lossy intermediate stages. The problem with this approach is, since this is a stamper, it is not grooves that you need but the “negative” of a groove – a ridge. You need a spiral of ridges on the stamper, so that it produces a spiral of grooves in the vinyl LPs that are stamped from it.

But you can’t write ridges onto the surface of a ceramic stamper. The best you can hope to do is start with a flat ceramic surface, and machine away everything except the ridges you want to leave behind. And this is what Günter is working on. He is developing a laser-based process that machines away the ceramic, leaving just the desired ridges behind. So just what kind of a task has he set himself? Well, if you take the best performance specs that vinyl playback has to offer – let’s simplify things and say a dynamic range of 65dB – it turns out that pickup cartridges must be responding to groove modulations down in the nanometer range. That basically means right down at the molecular level. Quite extraordinary, when you stop to think about it. This is the challenge Günter has set for himself.

While lasers can indeed be used to machine away bits of material, it is not done smoothly like a knife cutting through butter. For reasons we don’t need to go into here, laser micromachining is done using intense bursts of laser energy called pulses. In other words, material is machined away in discrete chunks. So it is important to understand what sort of finish you need from your micromachined surface, in order to develop a suitable laser machining process. Günter has examined LPs at extreme magnification, and even at the highest magnifications the surface texture of the vinyl is extremely smooth – no doubt this is at least one reason why LPs are able to sound as good as they do. So a laser machining process is needed that can generate such a smooth surface.

Günter has opted for an “ultrafast” laser for this job, and as an ex laser jock myself I do concur. This type of laser emits pulses of such infinitesimal duration that they defy description. The pulse durations are of the order of femtoseconds. By way of illustration, it takes light about 300 femtoseconds to traverse the diameter of a single human hair! Ultrafast lasers represent the absolute cutting edge (pun not intended!) of laser technology. The physics underlying such lasers is quite extraordinary, and making them is very challenging. Until very recently, they were only ever used as probe tools in even more exotic scientific experiments.

So, not only does Günter need a laser beam of the most exotic variety, but he needs to mount it in a system that can position the laser beam with nanometer accuracy, across a ceramic plate about 12” in diameter. Problems like that keep laboratories full of Intel engineers awake at nights! It is fair to say that getting an ultrafast laser working smoothly, and integrating it into its opto-mechanical platform, are going to be the thorniest problems Günter will face in developing his new technology. Once those are up and running, the rest should be much smoother sailing.

But almost as big as developing a micromachining system whose capabilities will impress NASA, is the requirement for software that will work out what the finished groove needs to look like, and provide the ‘cutting pattern’ for the laser. In effect, this is the shiny new tool that the Mastering Engineer will use. In a traditional LP cutting setup, the Mastering Engineer sits hunched intently over the cutting lathe with a selection of switches, sliders, and dials at his fingertips. In real time he is adjusting the groove spacing, the recording volume, and various other parameters, because there is no other way of doing it. He will have no idea how well – or how badly – it has all worked out until it is done. With Günter’s new technology all of this is performed at a computer workstation, before the cutting laser is even fired up, and with a lot more precision and flexibility.

Günter’s mastering software will allow the groove spacing and recording volume to be determined using algorithms, so that the result is as fully optimized as can be achieved. No grooves need be too close together so that you hear pre-echo, nor excessively far apart that the available playing time is compromised. You can optimize the settings for maximum playing time, or for maximum audio quality, or anywhere in between. You can even home in on individual regions of the LP and manually edit a part of the signal which has perhaps over-modulated slightly. And once the groove design is complete, the software can even simulate the effect of a stylus tracing its way through the finished groove, and generate the resultant music signal. Only when the mastering engineer is happy with the result does the process move on to machining the stamper. And, of course, the Mastering Engineer doesn’t actually have to be in the same building, or even on the same continent for that matter.

I wish Günter Loibl and his HD Vinyl project the very best in their endeavors. If his technology works out the way he expects it to, we will have a new LP manufacturing process which gets the quality of the stamper much closer to that of the original cutting lathe than has ever been possible up to now – even closer than Direct Metal Mastering, which has demonstrated excellent results – and will be capable of producing an almost limitless run of LPs from a single stamper without any degradation in quality.

Of course the process will have its share of skeptics, non-believers, and plain old haters. Some – after all, this is Audio we are talking about – are already lining up. LP manufacture may be a house of flaws built upon flaws, on flawed foundations, and yet it somehow works. And when it all comes together properly it works quite staggeringly well. So maybe those flaws aren’t all bad after all, and maybe by eliminating some of them we will somehow end up throwing bits of the baby out with the bathwater. Not a good visual, I know! But however it works out, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, although I for one am delighted just to see the effort being made.

Günter tells me he is hoping to be able to produce the first actual playable LPs using the HD Vinyl system later this year. This will almost certainly not be a commercial release, but rather a demonstration of capability. He tells me that there has been great interest from within the industry, so if the technology delivers, he won’t be short of customers. If I ever get hold of a playable sample, I will be sure to report on it in Copper.

Most of what the average person knows about the Vietnam War is gleaned from movies, TV dramas and documentaries like the one Ken Burns’ produced in 2018. Almost every one of those (even the documentary to an extent) revolves around the infantry: their horrific combat, courageous heroes and historic battles.

What everybody doesn’t know is that for every infantryman, there were between 6-7 soldiers working to support the infantry in a myriad of ways. Put another way, less than 20% of the guys in Vietnam were in the infantry. The +80% of us that weren’t ‘grunts’ have ALL kinds of stories to tell even if they’re not ‘war’ stories, per se.

Since getting back from Vietnam, I’ve occasionally shared my experiences (orally) with interested friends and acquaintances. Subsequently, a number of them asked why more vets aren’t willing to talk about their experiences in Vietnam.

Over the years I’ve given that question some thought and here’s what I think . . .

It’s possible the vet feels like his stories might not live up to the heroic expectations his audience might have. If a soldier was a mechanic or cook or electrician or had one of the scores of non-combat jobs, he might not think he had a story worth telling ’cause it was just a ‘job’ – a job that wouldn’t be very much different (except for the heat, humidity, bugs, snakes, exposure to disease and various, constant threats of death) in any other place.

He may have done regrettable stuff – participated in or witnessed atrocities. Or the guy may have been unheroic in a life-threatening situation. Unless you were there, there’s no possibility you could understand the reasons for the decision(s) guys in those situations made and there’s no way to predict who’s going to hold someone in contempt over what they did or didn’t do.

Maybe the vet killed in self-defense but hasn’t come to grips with the moral or emotional consequences. Even if a person killed out of self-preservation, beliefs might condition him to feel guilt. And what would the reactions of others be if you told them?

What if the vet suffers from PTSD? A vet probably isn’t going to share much if he’s haunted by nightmares.

What if the vet had participated in some kind of retribution against one of our guys?! Or what if he had fathered or ‘might have fathered’ a child while there? Or something else? Only that vet knows – the ghost of regret wears a thousand faces.

All Vietnam vets as well and their peers grew up hearing about WWII from their parents, TV shows, TV documentaries and the movies. We all knew only too well how heroically our side had answered the call and subsequently won. The Vietnam vet’s story could never favorably compare to the justifiable heroics of WWII.

Even though we may have won every battle in Vietnam, ultimately, the war was lost. For a vet to tell his story, he has to tell it in spite of the military failure even if it wasn’t our failure.

Let’s not forget how unpopular the war was or how little fanfare accompanied the vets’ return after serving. Some of us even had to endure criticism for our participation!

Last but not least, a vet may not be all that verbal – he may not know how to tell his story – he may not be a good storyteller or writer.

It could be a combination of some or all of the above.

I wasn’t dissuaded.

When I considered writing my recollections of Vietnam, I didn’t know where it would lead – 50 years had past before I got inspired to record those experiences. How many stories did I have/how many could I remember? How well could I tell them? And, of course, would anybody care?

Regardless, I launched into it and like a line of dominoes, one story after the other seemed to fall from my memory onto the page.

I’ve tried to keep the prose real without being vulgar. Some events involve themes that include sex, drugs and gore. It gets very personal, somewhat controversial and, at times, there’s no way to avoid how gruesome it was.

Some (friends) would suggest simply omitting potentially offensive events. I haven’t done that. It would reduce my story to a histrionic, year-long sleepover in Vietnam. Censoring those parts would make the story not worth telling.

This is what I experienced – it’s complete and it’s true. Nothing is added, nothing is invented.

My story may seem unusual, but there were tens of thousands of non-infantry, Vietnam vets who confronted similar situations, challenges, screw-ups and disasters. Every G.I. having boots on the ground in Vietnam during the war would have stories like these. When added to the existing narrative, I believe these stories help to complete the picture of what happened during those tragic times.

July 13, 1968: DAY 1

. . . I landed in Vietnam. No, it wasn’t a Friday.
My immediate impression was, ‘I’m going to have to get used to this heat’ which, luckily, I eventually did.
At the ‘In Country’ orientation I couldn’t not be distracted by these 2-foot long lizards darting in and out of holes on the side of a bull-dozed dirt berm 30 feet from where I was seated . . . over and over again. They’d scurry out of one and into another – it seemed surreal and totally appropriate.
Then somebody passed out duty assignments and loaded most of us on a Chinook helicopter – the first of dozens of chopper flights – the only way to get anywhere in Vietnam.
I don’t think I was issued my M16 – everyone’s constant companion – until I got to my artillery battery in Chu Lai. We didn’t visit the mess hall, take a shower or sleep without having our M16 nearby. I didn’t keep a round in the chamber, but the 20-round clip was always inserted and always full.
The dress code in the field was somewhat relaxed – shirts were optional. Mustaches were okay but had to be neatly trimmed. All buttons and insignia’s were embroidered with black thread – shiny objects on one’s shirt were visible from long range by snipers. All the clothing issued to us was OLIVE DRAB GREEN – the socks, undershirts, handkerchiefs and boxer shorts.

I was 10,000 miles from home, surrounded by an invisible enemy sworn to kill me if he got the chance and total stranger-comrades whose implicit priorities were to stay away from danger and keep themselves safe above all else. It wasn’t ‘every man for himself’, but it felt like it to this new arrival.

I was disoriented and anxious. If there had been a cause worth fighting for, it might have been different, but there wasn’t. The thought of spending the next 364 days in this primitive, dangerous country was overwhelming – like being in a tunnel without a flashlight.

Day 21

My first military mission was to accompany Sergeant Bob on a ‘search and capture’. Our battalion commander (a Lieutenant Colonel) wasn’t happy with the folding, wood-framed cot Uncle Sam had provided. He directed us to find and procure an inner spring mattress and steel frame so that he could sleep better. Sergeant Bob knew just where to look.
At daybreak (or maybe after breakfast) we set out for the Naval base a couple miles away.
The base was somewhat shocking – it felt like we weren’t in Vietnam anymore. The buildings looked like they had been flown over from the States! They were so much better built than the crude, sandbag-covered bunkers and wood-frame hootches us Army guys had. There were even sidewalks and some landscaping. It was a different world.
We entered one of the buildings and there was a Navy bed, waiting in the entry for us – it had a six-inch thick mattress on a steel frame with crisscrossed steel wire support.
After some obligatory small talk, Sergeant Bob disappeared, presumably to work out the deal. Visions of TV’s Ernie Bilko bartering for a case of beer flashed through my mind.
When he returned, we quickly loaded the bed on our ¾-ton utility vehicle and we were off. Mission accomplished.
I didn’t get to see the Lt. Colonel’s reaction, but he must have been pleased – it was quite the upgrade.
Now, I don’t know what naval rank a G.I. needed to qualify for this luxurious bedding in a combat zone, but I’m pretty sure a seaman didn’t have to be a Lt. Colonel and DIDN’T have to trade a case of Jameson. For the sake of comparison you should know that ‘Lt. Colonel’ is two ranks below General.
So all you mothers out there take note: don’t let your sons grow up to join the Army – the Navy has the best beds.

Day 34

According to Commanding General, Westmoreland, to ultimately win THE WAR, we G.I.’s first needed to win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people. So the commanding officer of the 3^rd of the 16^th Artillery thought he would do his part by providing material support for an orphanage in Quang Ngai. Naturally, he delegated the actual work to Sergeant Bob who organized a convoy to hand deliver medical supplies and some toys.

Sergeant Bob had a job for me, too: gunner on the lead jeep.

I don’t remember thinking I had any choice in the matter and besides, it sounded kind of adventurous. Famous last thoughts.

Quang Ngai was maybe 40 miles south of LZ Cherry Hill. The route was infamous Highway 1, which was routinely mined overnight by Charlie. What us worry?

Our jeep was equipped with an M60 machine gun mounted in the jeep’s middle, behind the front seats. The convoy consisted of only 3 or 4 vehicles.

It was a beautiful, sunny day. Highway 1 had more potholes than any road I’d ever been on and we took it slow – 25 MPH or less. I wore my helmet and flak jacket and kept one hand on the M60 to keep it from flopping around.

Up to that point I had never fired a machine gun on ‘full automatic’ and was itching to fire the M60. I negotiated with Sergeant Bob to test the gun. At some point when we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, he motioned to stop and pointed in the direction I should fire. It worked just fine.

Quang Ngai was more than a village but not quite a city. The orphanage had two stories, some big trees and lots of kids. My job was to mind the vehicle while most of the other guys delivered the goods.

Once the mission was accomplished we were off towards Cherry Hill. At some point I remember the driver getting impatient with the pace and speeding up.

Almost immediately, the cotter-pin holding the M60 on the mount gave out while I was holding the gun with both hands. In the blink of an eye, me and it were airborne. Both of us landed on the gravel road hard. I remember thinking I’m going to get run over, but the driver of the deuce and half (truck) behind us saw everything and stopped in time.

One hand and forearm and one knee were scraped and my brand-new birthday watch had a smashed crystal, but I was fine. Sergeant Bob and the driver instantly ran to my aid and were extremely apologetic. I was shaken but slightly embarrassed by all the fuss.

The driver took it slower and I cradled the M60 like Schwarzenegger in Terminator for the remainder of the trip.

[We’ll have another installment from Michael’s book, 363 Days in Vietnam, in the next issue of Copper. You can see the book on Amazon, here.—Ed.]