Issue 155

Elegant simplicity: the legendary Fi X amplifier, designed by the late Don Garber. It delivers three watts per channel via a pair of 2A3 tubes. This is one of Garber’s earliest amp designs. Before making audio components, he had a store named Fi on Watts Street in Brooklyn, New York. Photographed by Howard Kneller at Stereo Buyers/High-End Audio Auctions, Brooklyn, NY.

The Fi logo, a work of art in itself.

Ed Sullivan strikes a Silvio Dante pose while listening to some great music in 1959. Courtesy of reader Ron Ginsberg.

Inner sleeve from the Ed Sullivan album. Dig that mono vs. stereo diagram! Courtesy of Ron Ginsberg.

Green Spot Orange-Ade ad, 1960s. We could not find the complete ad on the internet, so this tantalizing glimpse of that ultra-fab console will have to do.

Howard Kneller’s audio and art photography can be found on Instagram (@howardkneller, @howardkneller.photog) and Facebook (@howardkneller).

I recently watched the Ben Affleck and George Clooney film adaption of J.R. Moehringer’s memoir The Tender Bar. It’s a coming-of-age story during the 1970s and 1980 about young J.R., whose uncle steps in for the boy’s absentee dad. Uncle Charlie is the cool uncle with a sweet car who slips his nephew a few bucks, teaches him how to handle booze and butts, and to be respectful towards ladies. He imparts essential life lessons and truths while also passing on cultural artifacts. Charlie is a voracious reader who opens up his makeshift library, kindling J.R.’s intellectual spark into a full-blown love for reading and writing. We should all have an Uncle Charlie or try to be one.

As an only child and married man with no children, I once strove to be the cool uncle to at least one of my wife’s nieces and nephews. Alexandra lives closest, and my first project was to visit a beautiful summer-morning farmer’s market overlooking the Hudson River. I wanted to show her how real food is produced. We started at the pickle vendor to buy sauerkraut for her hot dog lunch later on that day. Just thinking aloud, I asked, “Alex, do you know what’s amazing about sauerkraut? It makes itself. My grandfather packed cabbage into old wine barrels, added salt, left it to ferment, and that was it.” She mustered the smile of a polite Catholic school girl. “We did the same with cucumbers to make pickles like these.” I expected a follow-up question about the difference between a half-sour and full-sour pickle, but it never came.

We continued to my favorite organic vegetable stand, where I posed her with a red-leaf lettuce bigger than her preteen head! That was fun. She laughed, and I felt like I won her back after the pickle-stand debacle. We also passed the fish stall displaying an Atlantic halibut. The fish lady offered Alex a chance to examine the beauty. Upon closer inspection, Alex came face to face with a giant flounder with both its eyes staring up at her. She froze in place. I explained that it wasn’t born that way. Halibut start off looking like any other fish, but, with maturity, the eyes migrate to the same side of their heads so they can see their world better. I don’t know if Alex had ever seen a goldfish up close, let alone a unique side-swimmer from the bottom of the sea.

Alex had enough reality for one day, and I didn’t get a chance to conclude my circle-of-life thesis as we bought hot dogs from the meat guy. The whole point of the outing was to learn that food doesn’t just magically appear on her plate, but Alex had run off to buy muffins with my wife. She would not know how my family butchered a pig after the first frost, or how we used everything the animal had to offer: skin, snout, scraps, and innards: After we rendered the fat and hung the hams, we ground what was left over, added blood and buckwheat, and stuffed it into the intestines – kishka was just one of several sausages we made. A hot dog is also a type of sausage, but it’s too complicated to make at home.

Maybe it was TMI (too much information, as the kids say), but by her age, I had experienced those grim yet joyous days when neighbors helped process each other’s pigs for the year ahead. I’m sure I cried even more than when my grandmother twisted the neck of one of our chickens I’d fed since they were chicks. Despite what most people have read on free-range egg cartons about vegetarian diets, chickens are formidable omnivores. They ate all our table scraps in addition to worms, mice, insects, and whatever they found roaming the farm. People who live off the land understand that an empty stall or coop is much more frightening than meatpacking. Ironically, chicken nuggets and hot dogs don’t seem to scare children the slightest bit – and they should be terrified of those solidified meat slurries.

I could go on and on about fermented and cultured foods like yogurt, cheeses, pickles, and sourdough bread, but few young people care about that stuff. I’m still fascinated by how stale bread was turned into dumplings, soup, and gruel when times were tough and the larder empty. It’s terms like “gruel” that get me into trouble. My old-world bits of knowledge come with a measure of unpleasantness and discomfort. I think it’s because my family lived through two World Wars fought in their backyard. There was never a shortage of depressing stories, which were a reminder to appreciate life when it was good and food was plentiful. If I couldn’t find a way to appeal to children through their stomachs, how could I be trusted to dispense my culture, especially in today’s sensitive environment with all its triggers, spoiler alerts, and content warnings?

Having spent much of my youth hanging around in the rougher sections of New York City during the 1970s and 1980s, I appreciate avant-garde, edgy, and alternative material. But, I have a sense that current standards demand I wait until my nieces and nephews are at least thirty years old for an Andy Warhol movie marathon. Warhol would be my transition to Lou Reed, Patti Smith, the New York Dolls, and other Downtown types like those documented by Warhol Factory photographer Leee Black Childers in his book Drag Queens, Rent Boys, Pick Pockets, Junkies, Rockstars and Punks. Now, that’s my kind of history book! I can already hear the parental chorus as if it’s in my room: “you have to collaborate with the child and explore what interests them, not the other way around!” Yes, I know, but I’m too old to appreciate 60-second TikTok dance videos, Instagram pix, and the latest phone apps. Thank goodness I discovered that my nephew was learning to play drums and had a complete kit in the basement.

He liked the band Slipknot. I’m not a fan but was excited to share a tangential interest in heavy metal music, and so I bought him a few pairs of signature Joey Jordison (1975 – 2021) drumsticks by Vic Firth as encouragement. Eventually, I would get him back to metal’s roots with Black Sabbath. When Slipknot came to town, I offered to take him. The kid had never been to a live show without his mother! Madison Square Garden was my second home by the time I was his age – he didn’t even have to fight a bigger guy to keep his assigned seat. I would ensconce him in a corporate suite and do my best to shield him from drugs, alcohol, and other scary things – this was Slipknot, after all. They wear horror-film masks and dress in prison jumpsuits.

We called for permission. Out of fear for her Cookie Puss’s safety during the twenty-minute train ride to the Garden, my sister-in-law would not allow him to attend the concert. Yes, you read correctly: his pet name is Cookie Puss (also Lil’ Puss or just plain Cookie), because when he was a toddler, his face would be covered with cookie crumbs and everyone thought it was so cute. The name also coincides with the beloved Carvel ice cream cake with frozen crunchy bits mixed inside, so it works on several levels. I could have assured his mom that the least-dangerous part of a Slipknot experience was the trip to the venue.

After a few years, my niece, Alex, finally recovered from the halibut incident and expressed interest in the Beatles. I was thrilled to get her to our house and play some of their later albums: Revolver (1966) in mono, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), Magical Mystery Tour (1967), and Abbey Road (1969). Maybe, I could slip in some Rolling Stones or the Who. She might as well dig through my collection for cover art that caught her eye. That’s how I discovered new records. Because she’s an intelligent, responsible teenager, Alex could play the records herself – I didn’t even have to be home. The record-listening party never materialized. I wasn’t surprised. By the time I warmed up the amp and cleaned the records, she could have previewed the entirety of Revolver on her phone in a matter of minutes. I regret that we didn’t share the experience. What would she feel and think when hearing the sadness of “Eleanor Rigby” or the death theme of “She Said She Said” for the first time? It bothers me more that she might skip around or fast-forward through the depths of an album like Revolver. Would she even make it to the psychedelic “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the best track on the whole record? I hate to think she missed that song. There could have been interesting discussions about LSD and Transcendental Meditation as mind-expanding mechanisms, as well as the influences of Ravi Shankar and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

My wife reminded me, families don’t share music like that anymore. She came from a household with three generations who played everything from Benny Goodman to Blondie, B-52’s, Beatles, and Beastie Boys. When mom and dad wanted to listen to “Saturday With Sinatra” on the radio, the entire family listened. The same happened with the sole television in most households. The last thing I wanted to watch was The Lawrence Welk Show, but I had no choice. It was long before anyone of us had personal listening and viewing devices. Now, every middle-schooler seems to be running around with iPhones and wireless headphones, accompanied by parents on their own smartphones and headphones – everyone alone in their entertainment vacuum with so many missed opportunities to create bonds and memories.

I was lucky to have several influencers who shared their music with me throughout my life. It began in the summer of 1974 with a neighbor boy who blasted Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band every day for three months. A coach brought along his 8-track tapes of the Isley Brothers. An uncle played classical records through his Klipschorns. My Spanish tutor added Cuban jazz to our sessions, and my best friend’s father taught me everything about classic rock. Sure, my school friends introduced me to contemporary entertainment, but those adults made the most lasting and significant contributions. Without outside intervention, I might still be listening to The Brady Bunch records or singing along with the Lennon Sisters on Lawrence Welk show reruns.

The mighty Klipschorn loudspeakers.

Contrary to all the evidence, I’m really not one of those middle-aged men who complain about young people all the time, but our personal entertainment devices have destroyed attention spans, limited our patience, and isolated us. I am guilty of that myself, but I’m not as impressionable as the targeted youth market. Commerce-driven algorithms have replaced cool aunts and uncles, and for a large swath of the younger generations, disposable Instagram and TikTok “creators” have displaced songwriters, musicians, and artists. If nothing else, Peter Jackson’s documentary The Beatles: Get Back has taught us that it takes much more than good looks and trends to create meaningful content and a permanent impact on civilization.

Although it’s easy to become discouraged with the pop culture, I’m always reassured when people discover and rediscover the Beatles more than fifty years after disbanding. Their albums are still selling, and kids are buying turntables to play retro vinyl discs found in basements and closets. My wife and I are encouraging all our nieces and nephews to watch The Beatles: Get Back, not to make them into fans but to show that fully realized art is often complex, sometimes unrewarded, and usually arduous. A kid needs a cool aunt or uncle to point out that life can be the same. I still haven’t given up hope that Alex and I will listen to my albums some day. When she’s ready, I will be there for her.

Header image: Ben Affleck as Uncle Charlie (L) with Tye Sheridan (R) in The Tender Bar. Photo courtesy of Claire Folger/© 2021 Amazon Content Services LLC.

In our previous episodes, we had a good look at the final generation of Neumann disk mastering systems: the VMS-80 for cutting lacquer master disks, and the VMS-82, intended for the DMM (direct metal mastering) process.

As we saw, Neumann had decided to depart from the tried and tested lathe design they had been using, quite successfully might I add, for no less than 50 years! Today, I will don my audio-archaeologist’s glasses and investigate what prompted the change.

Neumann introduced their first lathe in 1931. It had a very heavy design, reminiscent of proper machine tools rather than audio equipment. It was obviously inspired by Scully and Western Electric lathes of the time and to a lesser extent, Universal lathes, which were also built like machine tools.

Scully had already been around since the days predating the invention of electrical recording. Their machines were always massive and, as noted, inspired by the machine tool industry. Most other lathe manufacturers at the time (RCA, Fairchild, Presto, and others,) designed their machines to look more like the professional turntables of their era, in the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, most of these manufacturers were actually also making the transcription turntables used in broadcasting facilities, and their lathes were often based on their existing turntable models, with additional mechanical parts bolted on top.

Scully, Western Electric, Universal and Neumann saw no such need to conform to audio fashions and designed machines that might look out of place in an audio facility to the untrained eye. This proved to be a wise decision.

While Western Electric and Universal did not continue making lathes for very long (Universal entirely left the picture and Western Electric turned their focus on cutter heads and their associated electronics), Scully and Neumann were the most successful manufacturers of disk mastering systems in history. Their heavy-duty designs were extremely durable, and were easily upgraded and modified as needed to keep up with an evolving market, from mono to stereo, from not-so-loud to loudness wars insanity, from purely manual operation to a high degree of automation.

All the technical innovations of the VMS-80 and VMS-82 could have been implemented on the older mechanical design. The new drive motor, the new groove pitch system, the new platter, the new advancements in the microscopes, the new suspension units, even the DMM process, could all have been done without needing a new mechanical platform. So, why did Neumann decide to abandon their highly successful, proven, tried and tested machine base in 1980, in favor of a completely new design and incur the R&D costs that this move entailed?

I should begin by confiding that while the mechanical designs of the Neumann lathes worked quite well and enjoyed great success in the market, they would make any seasoned machine tool designer cringe, posing almost as an offense to the long-established traditions and good engineering practices in machine tool design. Some of these almost unthinkable design features were for good reasons, such as the use of cast aluminum for the lathe bed, which was fine for use in a record-cutting device, but would be unsuitable for use as a bed material for a metalworking lathe.

Other design aspects, such as directly bolting a steel dovetail slide onto an aluminum bed, and adding what amounts to the equivalent of the wheelie bars on an American dragster to the dovetail slide to compensate for the unbalanced mass of the suspension box and cutter head, were betraying a rather poor understanding of machine tools and the lack of experience Neumann had in this field. I shall go into further details about this when we look at the earlier Neumann lathes. Their designs still worked very well, but certainly had their weak spots, which all current owners are having to deal with, especially as these machines are not getting any younger.

Although Neumann did keep their original lathe design the same from 1931 to 1980, an interesting observation is that at some point in the 1960s, the patterns for the castings changed. Not much, but it is evident that there is an earlier and a later Neumann lathe bed casting, the later one (as used in the VMS-66 and VMS-70) being a little more squared up compared to the earlier version. I assume that this was the point when the original pattern eventually wore out too much to be used any further for producing more castings in the foundry, so a new pattern was made, possibly by a different pattern maker. It would not be possible to just use one of the cast aluminum beds as the pattern, due to shrinkage allowances in casting. Especially with aluminum, which exhibits significant thermal expansion, the pattern used for casting needs to be bigger than the final product, to allow for shrinkage of the casting as it cools down. To maintain identical dimensions, so all the other parts would still bolt on to the bed at exactly the same place as in the older castings, a new pattern would have to be made. The slight differences in shape between the old and new patterns would not affect the ability to bolt on all the usual parts, but was probably cheaper to make that way and perhaps a bit easier to set up for machining the raw casting.

My assumption is that by the 1980s, their “MK II” lathe bed pattern had also worn out and needed to be replaced. They had a choice between making another version of the same old pattern, or entirely redesigning the machine. There would be some cost incurred either way. One reason to opt for the higher cost of a total redesign would be if they believed that the new design would be much cheaper to manufacture.

This was certainly the case with the new lathe bed design for the VMS-80 (which was carried over with no changes to the VMS-82). Its flat-slab approach was easier to manufacture and easier to assemble into a complete machine. This was also in line with developments in the machine tool industry at the time. During the first half of the 20th century, metalworking lathes were designed with almost as much attention to form as to function.

They had beautifully curved, ornamental lathe beds that drew attention to themselves and looked aesthetically pleasing. Most of the higher-end manufacturers had their own signature machine bed design, which was instantly recognizable from a distance. One could easily tell apart a Monarch from a Schaublin, a Lorch from a Pultra, a South Bend from a Rivett, a Stark from a Mikron, a Bridgeport from a Deckel, and so on. These were all manual machines and even their handles, levers and handwheels were often distinctively shaped by each manufacturer.

Then came automation and more simple, utilitarian machine tool designs. These were cheaper to manufacture and still got the job done, more or less. Eventually, CNC (computer numerical control) machines took over, enclosing the entire machine in a box with a door for operator access. It is no longer as easy to tell apart the various white boxes on the shop floor, as there are no ornamental designs, nothing I would even consider remotely aesthetically appealing. Which is why it has become common for the manufacturers to adorn the front of their box with a massive sticker of their logo. This is the main feature that helps you tell them apart. It never got to that point with disk recording lathes, but if you follow along with glass mastering machines for CD/DVD, and other optical disc format manufacturing, you will see a very similar development.

The only question for Neumann was whether the market would accept such a departure from what had, by then, become almost an industry standard, with an instantly recognizable shape. Would losing that be a disadvantage?

Inscription on the L.J. Scully LS-76 disk mastering lathe at Andrew Hamilton Mastering. Courtesy of Andrew Hamilton.

This question, fortunately for Neumann, had already been answered a few years earlier, when Lawrence Jeremiah Scully (from which the newly-formed LJ Scully company initials and logo are derived, since the long-established Scully company, also a manufacturer of tape recorders, had been sold to Dictaphone) introduced his own new approach to departing from a long-established and instantly recognizable design tradition, in 1976, with the LJ Scully LS-76, known simply as “The Lathe.”

Scully had also kept on using the same traditional lathe design for at least 50 years, but had been steadily losing ground to Neumann, whose products were seen as more “modern,” offering a higher degree of automation than the older Scully models. So, for Scully, modernizing their design at that point in time was probably good marketing. The redesign, however, was probably more of a legal necessity, following the acquisition of the Scully brand, along with all its designs. Their lathe certainly turned heads and was well received, but not as well-timed.

Larry Scully passed away shortly after its introduction and the company folded. Very few Scully LS-76 lathes were ever made and as these things go, much fewer survive to this day. It appears that there are only three of them in actual use, two in the USA (at Andrew Hamilton Mastering in Cincinnati, Ohio) and one in Europe (at THD Vinyl Mastering, run by Tor H. Degerstrøm). There is one more that is currently in pieces, awaiting restoration, but we shall leave that one for a future article.

Header image: a beautifully restored L.J. Scully LS-76 disk mastering lathe at Andrew Hamilton Mastering, Cincinnati, Ohio. Courtesy of Andrew Hamilton.

With the passing of Melvin “Mel” Schilling on January 14^th, 2022, the world of high-fidelity music reproduction has lost an individual whose experience and expertise covered its entire history. Born in 1933, Mel entered the world of hi-fi in 1947, building amplifier and preamplifier kits while still in high school. Fueling his fascination for audio and its potential was a passion for music. He studied piano at the Philadelphia Musical Academy under the world-renowned Helene Diedrichs, and attended Temple University to further his musical education.

In 1952, Mel gave piano lessons to earn a living, continuing to do so until 1968 when he purchased the Lectronics retail store of City Line Center, Philadelphia. As the store was then-owned by Irving M. Fried, later of IMF loudspeakers and Fried loudspeaker fame, this began Mel’s personal relationships with hi-fi’s most prominent figures. Renaming the store Music and Sound around his initials (MAS), he ensured that “music” preceded “sound,” never neglecting this priority.

Music and Sound was a pioneering retailer, operating at the highest levels of service before the start of what is now regarded as the high-end audio industry. As the first dealer in the US for Audio Research Corporation (a brand which went on to dominate high-end audio), Mel’s association with its founder William Zane Johnson helped gain critical industry recognition for the then-unknown product line. His spreading the gospel also helped establish the acceptance and credibility of ARC’s tube equipment with masses of consumers across the country.

Mel similarly helped two loudspeaker companies, Magnepan and Infinity, to establish themselves as forces in high-end audio. Through his contacts with the owners and editors of various industry publications, he brought recognition to other unknown brands by arranging reviews and evaluations of their products.

In 1975, Mel moved to Los Angeles, where he opened another retail store under the name of Music and Sound of California. Despite some of the franchises he represented on the East Coast already having established dealers in L.A., Mel’s sterling reputation and credibility within the industry led these manufacturers to risk upsetting their local distribution in order to be included in the new Music and Sound.

Music and Sound of California attracted many movie and television stars and other high-profile clientele rarely recognized by high-end retailers at the time, and Mel once again presaged a demographic now common in the high-end audio industry. Music and Sound of California continued to help establish new companies and products within the marketplace, and even acquired one company, Electro Research, whose products Mel felt to be truly exceptional. Electro Research went on to produce such legendary products as the EK-1 preamplifier and A-75 amplifier.

Throughout its 13-year history, Music and Sound helped to pioneer the high-end audio/video industry and its products, while offering clients unique and invaluable guidance on product and system evaluation, delivered with one-on-one attention. Music and Sound continually set new standards for customer service, as hundreds of customer-recommendation letters attest.

Following earlier successful introductions, Music and Sound helped to launch the US debuts of other acclaimed brands, including B&W, Linn, Nakamichi, and many others. Music and Sound introduced the concept of high-end audio and video to thousands of consumers across the country and the world, who in turn passed their newfound love, appreciation, and knowledge down to successive generations.

In 1981, after the industry began to grow rapidly and cause more “experts” to enter the marketplace as so-called high-end dealers, the type of audio salon operation Mel had helped to create began to change character. He then chose to leave retailing, to start his own manufacturing and distribution company. Through Music and Sound Imports, he imported or distributed Alphason, CJ Walker, and Electrocompaniet, ultimately manufacturing his own MAS line of cables, turntables and tonearms.

As the 1980s came to a close, Mel saw digital technology and home theater bringing big changes to his beloved industry. At MAS, he embraced these changes and quickly began developing products to address them. He developed the then-revolutionary DCC-1 Digital Control Center, the first high-end preamp to address the oncoming “media center” concept. With its multitude of features including digital inputs and video switching capabilities, the DCC-1 quickly received much consumer and critical acclaim.

With digital technology continuing to evolve, Mel brought the concept of “Camelot” to high-end A/V, founding Camelot Technology, a benchmark-type company that could be relied upon to provide state-of-the-art solutions in any technological climate. While producing a variety of groundbreaking designs in the 1990s, such as the world’s first battery-powered DAC (the Arthur’ and phono stage (the Lancelot), along with the Uther balanced DAC, Dragon line of jitter reduction devices and The Round Table DVD player, Camelot also launched an extensive line of AC power cords, HDMI and USB cables, and accessories, that to this day continue to receive the highest acclaim throughout the ultra-competitive Japanese high-end A/V market.

In the early 2000s, Mel founded Xhifi, for the design and manufacture of computer, gaming, and portable audio and loudspeaker products for the next generation of consumer electronics enthusiasts. Xhifi’s debut product, the XDC-1 Multimedia Loudspeaker System, brought true high-end audio performance to iPod, PC and gaming console users.

Mel Schilling.

Those who knew Mel on a personal level recognized in him a mentor whose decades of experience – from 78s to streaming audio and every format in-between – were a rich source of knowledge. I am certainly one of those who benefited from knowing him, and I would sit in rapt attention listening to his recollections of the “Golden Age” as could have only been recounted by one who was there. More than his willingness to share, Mel exuded warmth and wisdom that defines the Yiddish concept of a “mensch.” His passing deprives us not only of a fount of audio expertise, lore, and history, but of a precious link to our industry’s origins.

Contributions in Mel’s memory may be submitted to:
The Philadelphia Orchestra Association
One South Broad Street, 14^th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107
development@philorch.org

Photos courtesy of Howard Schilling.

CES 2022 struck me as an example of “on the other hand.” What I mean by this, is that fellow Mac Edition Radio editor Nancy Burlan and I debated whether to even attend CES, which began on January 3, 2022. On the positive side, she hadn’t been to Las Vegas in years (apart from our numerous visits going through Las Vegas Airport) so we thought it would be fun for her to experience the show. On the other hand, we had the very real and pervasive fear of catching COVID. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) assured CES attendees that everyone involved – workers, attendees, and exhibitors – all needed to show proof of vaccination, via uploading that information on the CLEAR app. We were given Abbott Laboratories COVID test kits at registration. As the show continued, we were also invited to come and get extra kits if we wanted, which came in very handy, as we will explain later.

 

Everyone we encountered at the many events and venues was wearing a mask, and had the mandatory proof of vaccination. As we walked through the hallways of the Mandalay Bay hotel toward our first press event, CES Unveiled, I told Nancy tales of CES past, where there were long lines of attendees waiting to get in, some desperate with hunger and thirst, ready to fight for a Lagavulin with spring water. But as we walked up to the entrance of the event, we found velvet ropes ready for a queue, but no lines at all. So, we walked right in, grabbed the obligatory signature cocktail (it could have been a massive international faux pas not to), and took a socially-distanced look around. The lack of a crowd definitely gave us more time to see the exhibits and talk with the vendors and a few old friends. But, it was clear from the reduced size of the venue and the number of empty booths that many exhibitors had chosen not to come this year at all, many deciding to bow out at the last minute. There were many of our colleagues from the press missing too.

In case you desire more excitement than a high-end audio system can provide, John Goodale shows off a newly-announced Battle Station gaming console from Glytch Gear. It’s “designed to comply with professional eSports tournament specifications.”

Still, there were some old standby exhibitors, along with some newer European companies and start-ups. We loved the MoonBikes electric snow bike. Not a snowmobile, not a bike, it was a lot of fun to consider what it would be like to ride it. There was a nifty autonomous farm robot, the Orio, and lots of electric motorcycles and scooters. Even Segway has entered the scooter market. The significance of what seems to be a trend towards electric motorcycles and bikes can’t be overstated. They weren’t just designed for basic transportation, but also aimed at businesses looking for an environmentally-friendly, low-cost, low-maintenance transportation device. Motocross enthusiasts might like them too.

The food and drink at CES Unveiled were great, and there was a friendly mood in the room. The major computer products company Other World Computing was there, showing off cool new accessories like super-speedy external hard drives, and a few audio companies like Jabra, Shokz (makers of bone conduction headphones), and Edifier were also exhibiting. We saw lots of visitors from other countries. Other World Computing was a perfect fit for CES, as it began life in founder Larry O’Connor’s family barn, and has grown into one of the best-known names in storage and upgrades. For us, the best part of CES isn’t the multinationals, but small businesses seeking to help a niche in need, and OWC is a prime example of that.

We attended Monday’s Media Days events, of which there were noticeably fewer than in previous years. We enjoyed the Doosan Bobcat and Indy Autonomous Race Car presentations. Bobcat showed off one of their newest products, an electric tractor! We were sitting next to a gent from the mayor’s office in San Jose, and chatted about the potential he envisioned for a quiet, non-polluting, construction vehicle for some applications, especially residential, for which this new electric Bobcat could be a vitally important tool. (The price was never mentioned.) As car geeks, we enjoyed listening to a tech discussion about fully autonomous gasoline-powered Indy cars that would be racing out at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway as part of CES. What interested us was learning that the automotive computers a), weren’t all that powerful; and b), still had lots of problems to deal with like connectivity, vibration, and build quality. Let’s face it, racing on a track, even at almost 200 miles per hour, isn’t as challenging as say, navigating a street in the Bronx. But, with students getting the opportunity to work side-by-side with industry people, this was all win-win. Or should I say “Vroom, vroom!”

Tuesday was a return to Media Days at Mandalay Bay, again with a severely truncated schedule. We attended some talks, and planned what we wanted to see at that evening’s press event, Pepcom’s Digital Experience! at the Mirage. We would have liked to talk more about audio, but for the most part, not too many folks from the audio world were exhibiting at the Media Days events, except for Victrola, Audeze, and a few others. Compare that with past shows, when the Venetian Tower used to have seven floors dedicated to audio, then five, and ultimately, CES 2020 had only one and a half floors.

We met with VisiSonics, some fine folks based out of Maryland, who were showing off their 3D spatial audio system, but that was it for the Venetian. We decided to visit the Venetian Convention and Expo Center (formerly the Sands Expo and Convention Center), which hosted a dramatically scaled-back version of Eureka Park, a showcase for startup companies, with large pavilions from a host of different countries taking center stage.

What was most striking was how easy it was to maintain social distancing this year compared to previous years. With the reduced number of exhibitors, there were lots of open spaces, and the aisles were most often free of people, so ironically, it was the nicest, most relaxed CES I have experienced.  If I was an exhibitor, shelling out my company’s hard dollars for a much smaller audience, I might not feel the same.

 

Make a note of it: Lisa Wind with the novel Steri-Write touchless pen sanitizer. Sign of the times…

One difference between the 2020 and 2022 versions of CES were the number of e-bikes or variations of them on display. Every event I attended had them. However, by Thursday, I  wasn’t feeling well, so I had to bail on visiting the e-bike demonstration track at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) which we had heard would be lots of fun. Before the conference, Nancy and I made a decision not to attend the LVCC, just to stay clear of as many of the more-crowded spaces as possible for health reasons. Instead, we concentrated on the evening press events.

Once again, many folks had pulled out of the Digital Experience!, but there were still enough companies represented to make it worthwhile. From GAF showing solar cell roofing material, to headphones manufacturer Audeze, there were plenty of vendors to meet with. The theme of the Pepcom event was “Welcome Back to the Future,” complete with an actual DeLorean tricked out and ready for time travel, and our favorite, large ice sculptures that bartenders poured drinks through. It turns out that while they were crowd favorites, to the bartenders they were a royal pain, since they required constant cleanup on the part of the bartending staff. Still, everyone seemed to like taking photos and selfies with the ice, so the sculptures continue to be one of Pepcom’s signature crowd pleasers.

One of the most important aspects of CES is the diversity of countries that participate. The Netherlands’ pavilion in Eureka Park included the company Nowatch, who were offering what they called the first “awareable” biomonitoring smartwatch. (They were also at ShowStoppers.) For Nancy, who was experiencing ShowStoppers and the Digital Experience! in Las Vegas for the first time, it was a chance to see the shows she had attended in their New York guises on the grander scale of CES, and sure enough, the grandeur of the Wynn hotel sure beat the pants off of the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York.

Hylke Muntinga, Tessa Lippmann and Michiel de Koning showing off the Nowatch smartwatch.

For audio, there were few products on exhibit. Audeze displayed its FILTER, a nifty new small, portable planar speaker for office use. At the Venetian Expo center, we came across an easy-to-miss display in the middle of the QNAP booth featuring the Munich M1T Streamer from Silent Angel, although there wasn’t a way to listen to it, as the exhibit was more of a demonstration of QNAP products, switches, NAS storage devices, and a new line of Thunderbolt 4 NAS units. They did, however, offer a new NAS designed specifically for home audio and video playback and streaming, the HS-264.

A Munich M1 network music streamer setup from Silent Angel, hidden away in the QNAP booth in the Venetian Convention & Expo Center (formerly the Sands Expo and Convention Center).

Victrola showed off their Revolution GO, a nifty battery-powered portable turntable and the step-up Premiere V1 Turntable Music System (see Don Lindich’s CES report in Issue 154). Of note is their switch to phono cartridges manufactured under their own brand.

Who says vinyl isn’t portable? Don Inmon of Victrola with the Revolution GO portable rechargeable turntable.

I think that what struck me the most about CES 2022 was the feeling of “then vs. now.” In previous years, the line just to get into the Unveiled, ShowStoppers, or Pepcom press events was hundreds of people deep. But in 2022, we just walked right in. We give a lot of credit to the CTA, and everyone else who gambled (Las Vegas pun intended) on the show going forward as planned, and those who made the effort to attend. There are stories of private jets being chartered to ferry sick employees home from the show, and we did feel reassured by the mandatory vaccination policy and the sight of so many folks wearing masks.

When I went to bed that Wednesday, I didn’t feel great, but chalked it up to my normal burning the candle at both ends approach to life. The next morning, when I drove to the airport to drop Nancy off for her flight home to Philadelphia, my throat was sore, my body was a bit achy, and I had developed a cough. I decided that it would be best for my CES experience to end that day, so I just headed back down the I-15 toward Orange County, California, where I was visiting and assisting my mom. The next morning, I tested myself using one of the Abbott-supplied test kits and had a negative response, but a second test the next day showed I was COVID-positive. So, after enduring the worst of the pandemic since March of 2020, like millions of people around the world, I finally (or perhaps inevitably) caught COVID-19. I never had a fever, no sweats or chills, no gastro adventures; just a sore throat, and felt a bit achy and very fatigued. My 92-year-old mom wasn’t feeling well either, and she also tested positive, but I was able to score her some Paxlovid, an experience that deserves an article unto itself.

We discovered that no one actually wanted to know about my test results. It turns out that the CTA had no easy reporting option, nor did Clark County, nor did Nevada or California. The reported data is only from hospitals, or test centers who are required to report results. So, what was the purpose of giving all of us test kits? Well, it was certainly useful as a diagnostic tool, especially with serial testing, but it didn’t provide any insights into how we got the virus. How did we get it? We don’t really know, but according to the folks I spoke with at several health departments, our arrival Monday night, and our first signs on Wednesday night, didn’t really take place in a long enough time frame to place the blame on CES. Before going to CES, we visited several Apple Stores on January 1, and on the 2^nd, had dinner at a Chinese seafood restaurant in Garden Grove, CA, and took a trip to Trader Joe’s and Costco. So, at least according to the experts we spoke to, that’s most likely where we were exposed (and no one was doing contact tracing). Nancy, for her part, returned home, felt fine, and had several negative test results. We were immensely grateful to have been triple-vaccinated, as well has having had the flu vaccine, all of which combined to our ability to fight off the virus to the best of our immune systems’ abilities.

World-class tech: Giles Rhys Jones, Leilah Mackie, and Jane Stephenson of what3words, a company that divides the world into three-meter squares and gives each square a name consisting of three words for subsequent geolocation.

Was CES worth attending? In some ways, yes, and on the other hand, not so much. It was disappointing to have so many colleagues and companies absent, which contributed to a general lack of momentum. And while we didn’t visit the LVCC, in an attempt to avoid at least a few of the most crowded venues, we did have a great time, and learned about some interesting new products. What we didn’t miss was attending the keynote addresses. I’ve never figured out why anyone cares about the lavish keynotes, which are usually brief overviews on one topic or another but with few useful technical details. Rarely are those talks up to the level of the Steve Jobs keynotes of the past, where the intersection of showmanship and technical gravitas combined for fun and informative times.

Trading places: Dr. Thomas Coughlin, creator of the former IDC StorageVision conferences, where you used to be able to rub elbows with the likes of Steve Wozniak and Buzz Aldrin, and learn about trends in data storage technology from the field’s top engineers, all in a relaxed setting.

Quite possibly the most important story of the show had no fancy trappings. It was just a small booth in The Netherlands Pavilion at Eureka Park. Windmills are a large part of the renewable energy landscape, but there is one huge challenge in implementing them. Offshore wind farms and floating solar power plants generate lots of electricity when it’s windy or sunny, and often overproduce power, but as of now, electrical grids have little storage capacity for their output. Ocean Grazer, a startup company in The Netherlands, has a unique approach: large-capacity, long, tubular “balloons” that are located underwater, at the base of the windmills. They fill up with water from pumps that are driven by electrical power, and when needed, the water pressure can be released to drive a turbine that generates power in times of need.

There are other everyday advancements, like the acceptance of GaN (Gallium arsenide) devices which can provide more power than other types, in a smaller, cooler-running form factor with less power loss. We thought Ocean Grazer had a genius idea that makes perfect sense: use the ocean as your battery. Pretty nifty, not unlike the practice of pumping water to higher spots, only to release it to turbines when demand is higher. The difference is that pumping water requires massive amounts of energy. The Ocean Battery concept is currently undergoing tests, so, who knows, maybe your next set of monoblocks will be powered by ocean pressure.

It was important to see that the industry continues to move forward, despite the challenges we are all experiencing in these fraught times. Let’s hope things will be better by CES 2023, in whatever iteration or shape it takes.

Nancy Burlan wearing Vuzix Shield smart glasses, which can be fitted with prescription lenses, and deliver 3-D augmented reality imaging.

In Part One (Issue 154) we looked at the history and the technology behind the remarkable Spreckels Organ, the world’s largest pipe organ in an outdoor venue. It was built in 1914 in Balboa Park, San Diego, California, and commissioned by John D. Spreckels and his brother Adolph B. Spreckels. It is still in use today, carrying on a long-time tradition of performers on the organ providing free concerts to the public. This installment continues our conversation with Gordon Stanley, who has been involved with the care, curation and recording of the Spreckels Organ the past four years. Here, we discuss what’s involved in recording the organ, what the future holds for concerts and events, and other topics.

FD: You’ve done a number of recordings. Can you mention how they’re done...what kind of microphones and how they’re arranged, what kind of recording equipment you use and so on. How do you capture the full range of sound, especially the bass? How are the pipes arranged in terms of left to right and so on? Do you get a stereo sound field?

GS: From day one, we have been focused on quality recordings. Raúl Prieto Ramírez, our civic organist, is also a bit of an audiophile and really wants the organ to shine in anything that is committed to our archives or future public consumption. I got the audiophile bug at age 11, living on Okinawa and burying myself in my dad’s music collection. We were a musical household. Most of my family played piano, and I tell everyone while I tried, in reality, I play the tape recorder.

Organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez.

Setting up mics for recording.

While we were perfecting our mic techniques and systems, we faced two other issues. What would we use to capture the recordings, and how would we monitor and play back? Let’s begin with monitoring and playback. Being an audiophile, I have a collection of systems in my house specifically for monitoring. My office has a nearfield system, tube amp, DAC, and Boston Acoustics CR7 loudspeakers, a nice, fairly flat, slightly “slow” speaker good for classical music. I have about 20 of them spread around the house, including a bunch in a 9.2.2 surround system. I have used them for over 15 years and they make a decent monitor for classical music. I assembled a line mixer, a 200 watt-per-channel SAE amp and a pair of the CR7 speakers to take out to the pavilion for on-site monitoring found them to be inadequate in level, even behind two solid doors in the green room of the pavilion. The result was a couple of blown woofers, and now I am looking for something more robust to handle the bass levels for monitoring on-site. For now, I rely on Sennheiser HD 280 Pro closed-back headphones. In addition, I use the playback system in my master bedroom, a Yamaha receiver and Boston Acoustics CR7 and CR85 I consider this a midrange- home system and use it to check mixes to see how the typical listener might experience the recordings. I also have a range of headphones including Shure in-ear monitors, Sennheiser HD 280 Pro closed-back headphones (used on site), and finally a pair of Koss ESP-950 electrostatic open back headphones. Each of these are familiar old friends and help me judge the mixes. In the end, I have two high-end systems that are the final arbiters, especially for listening to overall balance and depth, placement of instruments, delay, and so on. The first of these systems is in my mix room, modified Carver M-1.5t amps, and a pair of Dynaco Mark VI tube amps biased for Class A. These drive a pair of Dynaudio Focus 340s and a pair of REL Strata III subwoofers in a sound-treated mixing room. The preamp a Trident 78 mixing board or a modified Carver C-1 preamp in a room custom-treated by GIK Acoustics. Much of this equipment is classic, 15 – 20 years old or older. Some is updated, and all is lovingly cared for. For the final system, in the living room as a break from the mixing room, audio is fed via the Trident 78 mixer or via computer files managed by Roon, sent to a Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ wired directly to a Krell FPB 600 amp, which coasts while it provides 1,200 watts per channel of Class A goodness at 4 ohms to my speakers. As an aside, it makes a great heater in the winter and punishes me during the San Diego summers, but it’s worth it for the sound. The speakers are custom-modified Phase Linear (Bob Carver-designed) Andromeda III speakers. These are bipolar panel speakers with a subwoofer, and are flat more or less from 22 to 22,000 Hz. I have found when I get the mix right, it sounds good no matter which system , just better, more dynamic and more real as I move to the higher-end systems. Both rooms have over 100 amps of dedicated power circuits to give me top-notch sound. And next on the wish list is a plan to further clean up the power with PS Audio PowerPlants. So that was a deep breath and long story about monitoring. You might ask, what am I doing to capture and archive these marvelous recordings? I begin with the wire to get from mic to preamp and throughout the mixing room. I have settled on two brands. I use KOPUL Premier Quad 5000 Series cables for mic cables that get beat up. In my book they are just as good as Canare and Mogami and quite a bargain. In the mixing room, everything is Mogami Gold for one consistent sound. The recording chain begins with all the mics feeding into a mic splitter. The pass-through goes directly into a Millennia HV-3D/8 8-channel preamp. The balanced transformer splits go to front of house sound when needed. These pass into a group of four synchronized Tascam DA-3000 recorders, and tracks are usually laid down in double-DSD at 5.6 MHz. For the highest quality, I can play the eight tracks back into the Trident 78/16, touch up with a series of analog effects including a Dangerous Music BAX EQ, Dangerous compressor, Lexicon PCM 92 (reverb and effects processor), and Bricasti Design Model 7 reverb processor. The finished mix is then fed to a fifth Tascam DA-3000. For critical measurement, I recently acquired a Dorrough meter so I can keep a super-close eye on levels. All of this equipment is in ATA road racks so they can easily go to the pavilion or other venues for recording, and back to the mix room for playback and mixing. Recently we took the system on the road to record Raúl Prieto Ramirez and Jaebon Hwang, both organists featured in the 2021 American Guild of Organists virtual convention.

The mixing studio with GIK acoustic treatment and the effects rack (left), and the recording rack in place (lower right corner). The mixing console is a Trident-78-16. The monitor speakers are Boston Acoustics CR7 and Dynaudio Focus 340, powered by a pair of modified Carver M1.5t amps. REL Stratus III subwoofers are hidden behind the panels.

FD: So where do you go from here?

The recording system with the latest modifications, including a computer and Merging Technologies Pyramix/Horus interface that will allow up to 24 tracks of quad-DSD recording.

FD: What recordings are currently available and what’s planned for the future?

Wide angle view of the Spreckels Organ.

FD: Is there anything else you’d like to tell us that would be of interest?

President Herbert Hoover speaks at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in 1935.

Acknowledgements: Special thanks to Jean Samuels, 2019 – 2021 Society president; Dale Sorenson, curator; Mitch Beauchamp, trustee; and Robert E. Lang, photographer, who were instrumental in making this article and interview happen. Color photos courtesy of Robert E. Lang, USN (Ret.), Spreckels Organ Society, and Gordon Stanley. Black and white photo courtesy of the San Diego History Center.

Edifier

Edifier, well known for its value-priced powered compact speaker systems, had several new products on display at the Pepcom event. MP230 Portable Bluetooth Speaker The Edifier MP230 has a retro look with a wood enclosure and classic piano-style buttons. A pair of 48 mm drivers plus a passive radiator provide stereo sound. The speaker was not demonstrated at the event, so I cannot comment on the sound, but I hope to review it in the near future. Playback time is rated at 16 hours on a single charge, and in addition to Bluetooth connectivity, the speaker can also play music from its Aux input, or from sound cards and TF cards. The MP230 is available now for $129.99.

NeoBuds Pro Wireless Earphones The NeoBuds Pro wireless noise-cancelling earphones ($149.99) offer 42 dB of active noise reduction and have a bi-amped transducer, consisting of a Knowles balanced armature driver operating in conjunction with a dynamic driver. Audiophiles take note -- they claimed to be the first true wireless earbuds to receive Hi-Res Audio certification, with a frequency response to 40 kHz.

Edifier NeoBuds Pro Hi-Res Audio wireless headphones.

M100 Plus Portable Waterproof Speaker and MC500 Streaming Console The Edifier M100 Plus is a small, dust- and water-resistant speaker that’s really portable – it comes with a lanyard that makes for easy carrying. Recognizing the booming popularity of live streaming, the MC500 Streaming Console is a desktop control interface that can add mixing and sound effects for streaming audio creators. Both will be available in 2022.

Shure Aonic 40 Headphones

Iconic audio brand Shure, long known for transducers such as headphones, microphones and at one time, phono cartridges, showcased their Aonic 40 wireless headphones. Selling for $249.00, the Aonic 40 claims to deliver studio-quality sound, and offers active noise reduction and sound-tailoring adjustability through a dedicated app.

Shure Aonic 40 headphones.

The Pepcom Digital Experience! usually has more audio companies than we saw in 2022, and the diminished number of exhibitors was partly because of cancellations. Panasonic, which had a significant number of new audio products set to be introduced at CES 2022, was scheduled to exhibit but pulled out of both the show and the Pepcom event. It is also likely that the continuing departure of audio from CES played a part. What was once a robust show, where just about everyone who was anyone in high-end and mainstream audio was there, has seen a steady decline year after year as fewer and fewer audio exhibitors participate, particularly high-end and specialty audio manufacturers. The following day, the first day the show floor and the audio exhibits at The Venetian were open, would prove to be illuminating.

CES 2022 Opens – Wednesday, January 5, 2022

The show officially opened on January 5th and I started my day at a luxurious suite at the Bellagio hotel, where UK-based Starscream Communications had a team demonstrating products from their clients Cambridge Audio and headphones manufacturer Meze Audio. Renting a suite off site and inviting media and business contacts has long been a strategy employed by companies that want to be part of CES, but without paying the high fees and other costs that come with being an official exhibitor.

Cambridge Audio

The big news from Cambridge Audio was the debut of two new turntables, both based on their very successful previous Alva TT, which was introduced at CES 2019. The Alva TT offered plug-and-play high-end vinyl sound, and included a built-in phono preamp matched to its Alva MC high-output moving coil cartridge, pre-mounted and aligned on a Rega arm The turntable also offered built-in Bluetooth aptX HD. A medium-torque direct-drive mechanism spun the polyoxymethylene (POM) platter, and the turntable was very finely finished and solidly built. The new turntables bookend the original Alva TT in price, features and performance. The upgraded Alva TT V2 takes the Alva TT and adds an upgraded tonearm with removable headshell, and a switchable phono preamp.

Though the original Alva TT offered excellent performance and ease of setup and use, the inability to bypass the internal phono preamp made it less appealing to audiophiles, and the difficulty of installing a replacement cartridge was a potential roadblock to non-enthusiast owners who don’t have access to a hi-fi shop. The Alva TT V2 will be available this spring for $1,999. The Alva ST resembles the Alva TT and Alva TT V2, but has a belt drive and an aluminum rather than POM platter. An Audio-Technica AT-95E cartridge is pre-installed and the Bluetooth aptX HD and switchable phono preamp remain. The Alva ST will be available at about the same time as the Alva TT V2 for $999.

Cambridge Audio Alva ST turntable. Courtesy of Don Lindich.

Also on display was a Cambridge Audio EVO receiver connected to the Alva TT V2 turntable and EVO S bookshelf speakers ($750 per pair). The EVO receivers are compact and feature Class D integrated amplifiers, analog and digital inputs (including HDMI-ARC for use with a television) and Cambridge Audio’s streaming interface with an appealing front-panel visual display. The EVO 75 sells for $2,250 and the EVO 150 has a price of $3,000. The system is compact and delivered clean sound with a very low noise floor, along with the pleasing warmth associated with British hi-fi components.

Meze Audio

I was treated to a listen of the Meze Audio Liric planar-magnetic headphones, which incorporate an Isodynamic Hybrid Array driver in a closed-back design. This planar-magnetic driver is designed by acoustic engineering company Rinaro, and features a unique design incorporating dual “switchback” and spiral voice coils. Suffice it to say they sound wonderful, and are a perfect solution for those who love planar-magnetic sound but need a closed-back design. The Liric headphones cost $2,000.

Meze Audio Liric headphones.

What would I find on the show floor of the first CES of the pandemic? Tune in for Part Three, coming soon. Header image: ice sculpture at The Digital

Experience! and Nancy Burlan of Mac Edition Radio. Photo courtesy of Harris Fogel. Product photos courtesy of their respective manufacturers except where indicated.

Can an artist really stop the use of their songs by politicians?

As an artist and manager of the band Twisted Sister, whose music is recognized and sold around the world, I would like to bring some clarity regarding the use, and lack of control by an artist, of songs played at political rallies in the US. It is especially hard to admit that, in truth, there is nothing we can legally do (see below) to stop the use by politicians many of us really dislike.

Oh sure, you see the headlines: “so and so just threatened to sue so and so for using their hit song at political rallies.”

It makes for good theater.

It makes for good headlines and “gotcha” soundbites.

It makes the artist sound empowered.

It creates the narrative that the artist can control the situation.

Here is the truth: If the venue that the music is playing in, say, an auditorium, arena or stadium, and these venues pay yearly performance rights fees to either ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) or SESAC (originally the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers). The constant theme running through all of these organizations is that they represent the creators – meaning the writers and composers – not the performers of music.

Going back decades, these powerful organizations and their respective political lobbies convinced Congress that the recording artist benefits from record sales and live (touring) performances and they should be grateful that their music is played (for free) on radio, TV and other outlets so they don’t need to be paid! (FYI, these organizations also make money from the touring artist, as the venue where the artist performs has to pay performance licensing fees so that the artists can perform their own music!)

Meanwhile, these organizations managed to induce venues like bars, theaters, nightclubs, arenas and later on, stadiums, to pay money every time recorded music is played. This is one of the many bones of contention that exists between the performers and the rights organizations, which is the subject of another essay for another time.

So, as of this writing, venues have unfettered use (as long as they pay licensing fees) of any of the songs in the ASCAP, BMI and SESAC catalogs (currently these three organizations have about 80 million songs registered).

When you go to a sporting event or a concert hall and hear a song over the PA system, chances are that song is very well known. Did you know that by law, the artist who is singing and/or playing that song gets paid zero, zilch, nada, nothing! That is by an act of Congress! This little tidbit really confuses people and even my family members and friends, who regularly send me texts at these kinds of events when they hear our band’s songs and assume that we must be getting paid.

Madison Square Garden, New York, typical of a venue that would pay music licensing fees. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Emmanuel Milou.

Public performance use through the licensing process pays the writer and publisher, but not the artist. Not only that but no one, not the artist, writer or publisher, has any say as to who can use the music. To be clear: no one can legally stop the use of a song in any venue that pays public performance use fees when the music is used in this manner.

End of story.

But wait…what about all those threatening lawsuits to stop the use of a song played in licensed venues by someone or some organization that the artist(s) hate?

So, what can an artist do?

The first response is to have a publicist send out a threat on the artist’s behalf that the artist will take legal action.

Hopefully, this gets picked up on every imaginable media platform within hours (if not minutes!).

It’s all for show. Period.

Can this backfire against the artist?

The political landscape ain’t what it used to be compared to, say, the 1960s. Back then an artist could say they hated President Nixon or the Vietnam War and there was nearly universal acceptance of such a sentiment by their fan base. Back then, the anti-war “Fish Cheer” (look it up on YouTube if you’re not of a certain age and remember it) used by the San Francisco band Country Joe and the Fish was screamed by everyone attending their performance before the band went into their popular protest song “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die-Rag” at music festivals around America in the late ’60s.

Back then, it seemed, the fan base all hated the war, Nixon and racism.

This was the protest era where songs like “Eve of Destruction,” “The Times They Are-a Changin’,” “War,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Blowin’ In The Wind” were huge cultural hits, and the phrase “don’t trust anyone over 30” was a common bond.

These days, however, there is a good chance that no matter where you fall on the political landscape, once you stake out a position either supporting or critical of a politician, you will most likely anger 50 percent of your fan base!

That being said, when they fall under a cloud of publicity from an artist, the politician usually stops the use of the song (with rarely ever a comment) so as to not have any extra negative publicity brought to the campaign, and the artist, in turn, calculates the blowback.

If you can’t do it legally, then just scream!

I only wish, one day, an artist simply says this:

“While I can’t legally stop you from using my song, I do not support your beliefs, as they are contrary to everything I/we stand for, so stop exploiting my music for your political gain!” — minus the histrionics.

In other words, the artist should say, “we’re not gonna take it! So…STOP!

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/Karolina Grabowska, cropped to fit format.

Rock’s great guitarists have often been renaissance men; artists who allow their creative spirit to be expressed across a variety of platforms and endeavors. Jeff Beck and the late Danny Gatton made refurbishing hot rods their life’s other passion. AC/DC’s Angus Young spends time offstage in front of a canvas, painting with oil. The commitment these artists have to all that they do outside of music is as inspiring as the body of work they have assembled with their guitars. And, some might say that with real artists, every creative expression informs another. That is unquestionably the case with New York City-based guitar virtuoso Gideon King. When he isn’t fronting his band, City Blog, he can be found in his shop pursuing his love of fine woodworking and carpentry. It’s that endless quest for discovery that has made his musical journey so compelling, and the darling of so many critical eyes and ears.

He began playing guitar at age nine, and was quickly attracted to music that was sophisticated but also accessible. Artists like Bob Dylan, Steely Dan, and guitarists including John Scofield and Pat Metheny would help shape his sound, technique, and approach to music, through college and into life as an adult. There he forged a remarkable career in the business world. As his firms grew, King was afforded the freedom to more deeply pursue music, and he founded Gideon King & City Blog, a varied and virile pop-fusion outlet that would begin to explore funk, balladry, R&B, jazz, and soul. To date, the eight-piece band has released two albums, one EP and 15 singles, and they maintain a commitment to releasing a new single every two months. It’s a cadence that’s dizzying to most musicians but also reflects City Blog’s openness to experimentation and their aversion to being typecast.

Gideon King.

HuffPost has called King “a musical genius…playing some of the most complex and satisfying music you may ever hear.” This kind of attention has helped the band build a following that finds them regularly selling out New York City venues like City Winery, Joe’s Pub, and the Blue Note. It also has prompted musicians like Scofield, sax legend Donny McCaslin (David Bowie, Bobby McFerrin), renowned Bayou-soul singer-songwriter Marc Broussard, and Saturday Night Live bassist James Genus (Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea), among others to join them on stage.

The band is set to release their latest three song EP, Whatchya Gonna Do, and advance praise is already mounting. Copper had the opportunity to speak with King as he was wiring up his new guitar rig, learn more about how the band Steely Dan continues to help guide his creative process, ask about how he listens to the music he makes, and inquire as to when we might just see him perform outside the five boroughs. It was an electric exchange that is only partially captured here. It was also a reflection of the energy and intensity King brings to the music he makes, and a metaphor for how he attacks his guitar and makes such singular music.

Ray Chelstowski: You began playing guitar at the age of nine but pursued a successful career in business. When did you decide that your avocation could become your vocation?

Gideon King: I am a freak when it comes to pursuing things that I have a passion for. For example, I’m an avid, obsessed woodworker and carpenter and have a shop where I spend hours and hours. I have a lot of different things that I am passionate about and not everything that I do is great. But I am fascinated by all of these different places in the world you can go intellectually and in most every other way.

I have always had the inclination to pursue many things at once and my brother is the same way. He is a killer jazz piano player and toured with Joshua Redman. He’s also a partner at a law firm. It’s a DNA thing we share, [and] I don’t think that anything I pursue is necessarily my main thing. In fact, I think that a lot of great businesspeople could be considered artists, and a lot of artists have a strong business side to them. Don’t think that Pat Metheny doesn’t have a business side to him. He is a pioneer sonically and his playing is ridiculous. But he is a businessman too. He is very serious about what he is building. So is Coldplay and so is Sting.

RC: Steely Dan is noted as one of your earliest and most lasting influences. What is it about that band that has made their impact so important?

GK: The Steely Dan thing for me was inspirational for a few different reasons. It’s kind of like when you play pick-up basketball. You look around the court and you want to pick the best athletes. That’s what Walter Becker and Donald Fagen did with Steely Dan. They said, “we want Steve Khan, we want Larry Carlton, we want Steve Gadd, and Wayne Shorter, and Randy Brecker, etc. The thing that’s beautiful is that if you write decent songs and bring them to great musical athletes, things happen. So that’s what I try to do. I write songs with a lot of jazz influences.

Steely Dan was a reconciliation of all of the different musical influences that I grew up with. A lot of people have done “rock/jazz.” But how they did it was amazing, especially when you layer on their ridiculous lyrics that are abstract, beautiful, and poetic. This made them the real deal. Also, it was just so cool to have those kinds of extended solos appear in a rock song. Just think of that classic solo in “Kid Charlemagne.” Even today on Instagram you find all of these kids still trying to figure it out, trying to determine what’s being played over what.

RC: Are you as exacting as Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were known to be in the studio?

GK: In the beginning I wasn’t because I didn’t know how to be. Now I think we have gotten there and the process is really collaborative. We are constantly shaping the sound and there is so much technology available now to musicians to help that along. For example, the Pigments [virtual synthesizer] software amazes me with its endless capabilities. You turn Pro Tools on, load Pigments in and you can get this incredible panoply of sounds; from a mellotron to a Wurlitzer [electric piano] all the way up to this crazy sequencer stuff that you can’t quite define. Over time this has helped us become really exacting and the studio is simply the place where you can get the most perfection.

RC: The new EP has a Brand New Heavies R&B sound when compared to some of your earlier work, where the approach is more like progressive rock. Do you ever say, “on this record or song I want to sound like Mike Stern?”

GK: Yes. On a new song we are recording called “Savannah Song,” I wanted to be The Wood Brothers. On “Whatchya Gonna Do?” I wanted it to be Anderson .Paak. On “Fake it on Facebook” I wanted to be a funked-out Steely Dan. We did a song called “Splinters” which I think may the best song we’ve ever done. It’s got a “Pat Metheny” intro followed by a “Jackson Browne” vibe. Making music at times is like playing dress up as a little kid. You want to try on a bunch of different things.

RC: The kind of music that you make is something every audiophile looks to in an effort to test the limits of their set up. What kind of system do you listen to your music through most?

GK: If I listen critically, meaning when I want to get a piece of music ready for your ears, I go from like gourmet food to pizza. Meaning we will pump it through Focal speakers in the studio and then listen to it on our iPhones to see how these frequencies sound. Then I’ll listen to it in a Jeep Cherokee. The truth is that music is consumed in a very different way than it used to be, and you should make sure it’s relatable and makes sense across all of the modern modalities of transmission. Now in terms of me and what I like to listen to it’s all about headphones, in particular, Audeze. Also, some of the AKG [headphones] can be really good. But when I really want to listen and hear “through” the music, it’s Audeze headphones. In terms of speakers, it’s more about the treatment of the room. You can have incredible speakers but if they are blasting their way into bass traps then it’s like driving a Porsche down Second Avenue in New York City – you’re never going to be able to test its real capabilities.

RC: When it comes to live gigs, you tend to perform exclusively within New York City. Have you considered taking your show on the road?

GK: It’s funny. We have been thinking more and more about that because we’ve been getting more invitations to do that. But I think that it’s been the right move to pass for the last year and a half because things keep getting rerouted and re-toured. With eight people in the band, it’s like [turning around] a battleship. So, we’ve been saying no to traveling outside of Manhattan because we are worried that once we set it all up it might be cancelled. To be honest, that’s been the right call so far. When all of the smoke has cleared then we will do it for sure.

Header image: Gideon King & City Blog. Photos courtesy of Gideon King.

The Bhagwan played his sitar beautifully. I got lost in the experience of the music, the chanting of the students, and the warm, caressing sunshine.

Then the music stopped. After a time, voices stopped chanting as well, and all eyes fell upon the Bhagwan.

“I know that many of you are here because you are in pain,” he said. “You tell me about your grief – things that have happened to you or things that you have done. You complain that you cannot escape these bad memories. You carry them with you in a crippling backpack.

You must understand that your memories are not a backpack, they are not physical, they are in your head.

So, who do you hold responsible for your memories: your parents, schoolyard bullies, ignorant teachers, your sergeant in the military, rude bosses, unfaithful spouses? They can do nothing about them. Only you can do that. So, who is really responsible for your memories, other people or yourself?

Let’s say your car is not operating properly. You have a choice: you can deal with it, or you can cease to drive and forever complain about the car’s reliability. One way you continue to be mobile; the other way your life comes to a halt. So it is with memories; until you deal with them, you will remain immobile.

Last summer, a distressed student came to me. She and her husband were driving across a bridge. They were very angry with one another and their argument escalated into vicious character assaults. Another driver drifted into their lane. The husband engaged in some skillful driving to try to keep from hitting him, but there wasn’t enough room to maneuver. He was killed instantly. The wife was badly injured but survived.

In the hospital, she felt remorseful about the last words she’d spoken to her husband. She was as wounded with guilt as with her broken bones. She even wished to die herself on some days.

For months afterwards, she was incapacitated with grief and engaged in self-destructive behavior. Her friends told her that if she didn’t get a handle on this, she would soon destroy herself, so she sought me out.

We talked for a long time. I listened intently as she related with tears and lamenting her story of contrition and self-reprobation. She said she’d really loved her husband, but got so irritated when he seemed unreasonable.

When it became too difficult for her to talk about it any longer, she redirected her guilt. She threatened to sue the city, the builders of the bridge, the car’s manufacturer, the insurance companies – anyone and everyone.

When she was finished, I got us both a cup of coffee. I told her that I understood why she felt so wounded. Nowhere do people live better than in America, yet so many walk around wounded. Like her, they engage in self-destructive behavior and blame others for their pain. They demand compensation from those who have no culpability for their misery. Many are quite skillful at manipulating compassion to their advantage.

You can take this route too, I told her. You will be in harmony with many others, but out of harmony with yourself. This will surely keep you miserable.

You must understand that the substance of life is experience – good and bad. You must learn to enjoy the good and accept the bad. Most reject the bad, and so it holds power over them. But here’s the thing to remember: the bad can wound you, or make you wise. It’s your choice. Thus far, it has only wounded you, but you can choose instead to become wise.

She wondered how she should do so.

I asked her what she had learned from her last experience with her husband.

She said she’d learned never to assault the character of others.

I told her, that is a good lesson; you never know when you talk to someone whether or not it will be the last time. So always make it a positive experience. Do this in honor of your husband: Make it your mission in life to make everyone you meet feel a little better for having done so, even if only for a moment. Rather than add to their burden, be a light. Perhaps their burdens are much worse than yours.

She admitted that was possible.

Now here’s the best part: if you choose to be a light unto others, that light will reflect right back to you. By caring about others, you are looking after yourself! This is the true meaning of karma.

She imagined a world where everyone sought to make those around them happier.

Imagining doesn’t make it so; you have to act, I advised her. If you act, you will inspire others, who will in turn inspire more. This is how your life’s experience makes you wise instead of wounded. Whether you fly free, or remain trapped in the cage of your memories, remember that the choice is of your own making. You can blame others, but they cannot set you free. By accepting responsibility for your memories, you come into harmony with the universe. That’s Nirvana.”

With that, the Bhagwan held his hands in prayer and bowed his head, as if to thank some unseen force.

Several students sitting in that dusty parking lot raised their hands to ask a question.

“How can we be a light unto others?” one asked.

“A student went to a grocery store,” the Bhagwan responded. “She waited for someone to pull out so she could take their parking spot, but before she could pull in, a man in a van pulled in from the opposite lane and took the spot. She felt anger well up inside, but rather than give in to it, she simply decided she wasn’t in a hurry and took a spot farther away.

She passed a grocery boy pushing a large train of carts back to the store. ‘That looks heavy,’ she said, ‘you must be in good shape.’ The boy smiled.

There was a line-up at the deli and the man who had taken her parking spot was ahead of her. ‘You must be in a hurry,’ she asked. He looked back at her and apologized. ‘I forgot that I’d promised to provide chicken for our church picnic,’ he responded, ‘and now there are 20 kids impatiently waiting for me. I figured that annoying you was better than annoying 20.’ ‘I’m not annoyed,’ she smiled; ‘I’m in no hurry.’ He thanked her and smiled.

When she got to the counter, she said to the clerk, ‘We are keeping you very busy today.’ ‘It’s been like this all day,’ he said. ‘Today we are short-staffed and today everyone wants chicken.’

‘Well, I appreciate you working so hard to keep us fed.’ He thanked her and smiled.

As she was leaving the store, a homeless man asked her for money.

‘I will not give you money,’ the student responded, ‘but if you are hungry, I will give you food.’ She pulled a couple of chicken pieces from the box and handed them over. She grabbed some napkins out of the bag and handed them over as well.

‘I hope this helps,’ she said. The homeless man nodded his head and smiled.

In every case, the student affirmed the humanity of the people she dealt with. In every case, she inspired a smile.

You can gauge the degree to which you bring light unto others by the number of smiles you provoke. That is how a single individual can make the world a better place.”

Another student asked, “What if the person to whom you are being kind doesn’t smile and rejects your gesture of kindness?”

“That is not a reflection upon you,” the Bhagwan responded. “You need only open the door. Do not make your actions subject to anticipated reactions. Just do the right thing, whether they respond appropriately or not. A negative response will accrue to their karma, not yours.”

I sat there in pensive silence. I’d read the Biblical stories which taught the same lessons, but it had never been brought home to me like this. I was full of admiration for the teacher.

When he tired of answering questions, he turned around to look behind him. “Behold the sunset,” he said; “enjoy it while you can.”

Everyone became quiet to admire the amorphous red and yellow spectacle on the blue screen. We were transfixed.

Courtesy of Pixabay.com/kienvirak.

Previous installments in this series appeared in Issues 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149.150, 151, 152, 153 and 154 – Ed.>

Header image courtesy of Pixabay.com/rauschenberger.

Critics and reviewers, in general, are an oft-maligned bunch, and, some would say, rightfully so. The old saying, “Those who can, do, but those who can’t, teach” sometimes gets paraphrased to demean those arbiters of taste with whom we, or the subject of the criticism, disagree. Criticism of the arts, it must be remembered, merely reflects the opinion of the critic – too often it is received (or perceived) as the Gospel. I have long thought that all reviews, whether they be of artists or items, should be preceded by the disclaimer: “The following is the subjective opinion of one person and should not be taken as a reflection of objective reality.”

Rare is the critic who entertains, edifies, and doesn’t take him or herself too seriously. The late John Wasserman was such a writer. He reported on musical performances and other cultural events with a healthy dash of humorous cynicism and irreverence. For too short a career, Wasserman regaled those of us in the Bay Area with his wit and sharp opinions that were published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

John was the kind of critic who could make you laugh even while he was skewering one of your favorite artists, something that cannot be said about his successor at the paper. (I have no love for that guy.) A now out-of-print paperback compilation of many of John’s columns for the paper, entitled Praise, Vilification, and Sexual Innuendo, was lovingly produced by his sister, Abby, after his death at the age of 40 in 1979. Abby is herself a journalist, author, and interviewer, and she elicited wonderful stories from the many musicians, comics, writers, and local celebrities whose lives intersected with John’s. The introduction is preceded by laudatory quotes about him from Jay Leno, Clint Eastwood, Herb Caen, and others. The poet Michael McClure wrote a special tribute.

Praise, Vilification, and Sexual Innuendo, book cover.

John had many friends in the entertainment world. A lover of jazz, he knew Cal Tjader, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, and Toots Thielemans, all of whom had visited John and played in his living room. He even sat in on conga drums with Benny Goodman at a 60^th birthday party for San Francisco icon Herb Caen.

To be expected along the way, he picked up a few enemies. His reviews rankled Jerry Lewis, Wayne Newton, Miles Davis, Chita Rivera, and Mel Tormé, among others. Ms. Rivera wrote and chastised him for using the term “ghastly” to describe the “immensely gifted” young men (her words) with whom she was performing, and implored him to look up the definition, as she felt that it more appropriately applied to his manners. His response was to write: “Look up ‘ghastly’ in the dictionary and it all becomes clear – a simple misunderstanding. Miss Rivera obviously thinks I was referring to this definition of ghastly: ‘Ghostlike; pale; haggard.’ Not at all. Her immensely gifted young men are, in fact, rosy-cheeked and well-rested in appearance. No wonder she took offense. But, in fact, the definition I was referring to was ‘Horrible; frightful.’” Ouch!

John’s columns often dealt with cultural events far afield of musical concerts. In 1976, he wrote about a bodybuilding competition featuring, among others, a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. This was well before Arnold’s film career would take off. John predicted great things for Arnold, and described the event as follows: “What he and the rest did on Saturday night was both bizarre and breathtaking. In individual performances that lasted no more than 90 seconds, each man contrived to exhibit, to a capacity house of 2,000 or so (at no less than $10 a person), every major muscle group in their body in a sculptured relief that has about as much in common with the average man’s body as does Michelangelo’s ‘David’ with Porky Pig.”

He reviewed adult films and comedy performances with the same humor and outrageousness. In writing about a live performance by porn star Marilyn Chambers, John said after she had become famous, she “hooked up with legendary sexologist Chuck Traynor (once Linda Lovelace’s favorite lozenge) and went on to conquer new worlds.”

I will explore further the life and writing of John Wasserman in Issue 157, but I’ll leave you with my favorite column of his (I actually saved the original newspaper clipping), a review of a concert by The Osmonds at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

That review elicited a flood of hate mail, and some 50 adolescent girls picketed the Chronicle offices, wearing “I Love Donny” T-shirts and holding signs that said “I Hate John Wasserman.” As an aside, I was at that Who concert he mentioned and it was the first time I had ever thought a rock band was too loud – if I hadn’t been familiar with the songs, I would have lost my place in the aural hash that assaulted my ears.

All photos and excerpts reprinted by kind permission of Abby Wasserman. Header image photo by Sydney Goldstein.

In this series so far, we have considered a few factors to inform our buying decisions when purchasing a new pair of loudspeakers.

We have looked at the importance of sound pressure level (SPL) and how it relates to your personal desired listening volume. We also examined the significance of a loudspeaker’s sensitivity rating and how this plays a part in determining what is suitable or adequate for the size of your room.

Other installments covered amplifier power considerations, and gave some tips on how to measure the output of loudspeakers with metrics that can aid in determining how loud they will actually play before they start to distort. One newer measurement resource, M-Noise, has been developed by audio company Meyer Sound. The use of the M-Noise test signal is provided at this link: https://m-noise.org/procedure/ Additionally, we looked at considerations of frequency response, and speaker size and room interactions.

As briefly noted in our last article (Issue 154), there is a type of speaker measurement that can be surprisingly insightful in indicating how a loudspeaker will actually perform in real-world scenarios, called Spinorama – and it’s not the typical set of measurements you’d see when looking at published loudspeaker specs.

What is Spinorama? No, it’s not the deft defensive maneuver of a hockey player as they spin 360 degrees with the puck! The Spinorama we’re interested in is a set of data derived from measuring a speaker from multiple positions, with microphones measuring the speaker’s output through 360 degrees around the speaker. The measurements are done in an anechoic chamber. The resulting computer-processed Spinorama chart is based on measurements of the speaker’s frequency response at 70 different points, starting on axis, and then at each 10-degree angle around the speaker both horizontally and vertically. Reflections from the horizontal and vertical boundaries of rooms are the second-loudest sounds to reach listeners, having undergone only a single reflection. Sounds radiated at other angles travel farther and encounter several surfaces before reaching listeners and are therefore much attenuated, especially at high frequencies due to air absorption and the prevalence of high-frequency absorption in typical domestic rooms (carpet, curtains, seating and clothed listeners).

The point of this article (and an upcoming one) is to give some insight into understanding Spinorama information. It must be pointed out that Spinorama data isn’t as readily available for the majority of speakers as are the typical published loudspeaker metrics, but this situation is improving. There are many Harman products, for example, where Spinorama data may be found online. So, understanding Spinorama data can give you a better insight into how loudspeakers perform, and even indicate listeners’ loudspeaker preferences. It’s a fantastic, superbly powerful tool in making you feel more confident in your speaker buying decisions and critically, that what you end up with will provide an excellent listening experience.

Spinorama information was initially developed by Dr. Floyd Toole while at the National Research Council of Canada, then further pursued and refined at Harman International nearly thirty years ago. It has been adopted by the Consumer Technology Association (formerly the Consumer Electronics Association) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as CEA 2034-A-2015 (ANSI), “Standard Method of Measurement for In-Home Loudspeakers.”

But just what do the wiggly lines on these charts mean, and why should I care about them?

I suppose the easiest conclusion one could make from looking at these charts is to determine that each of the six measurements are most advantageous to the listener if they are relatively flat (within their frequency response capability), and secondly, do not deviate very much from each other. But that, of course, is an oversimplification, if not a useful takeaway nugget. (This simplification excludes the Directivity Index plot which we discuss more in our following article.) Let’s take a more detailed look and see what is going on with an example of the Pioneer SP-BS22-LR bookshelf speakers. In this chart there are seven plotted sets of data, the gray one of which is the Predicted In-Room Response.

Spinorama plots for Pioneer SP-BS22-LR loudspeaker. Courtesy of Audio Science Review.

The graphs show the frequency being measured along the horizontal axis, and the measured SPL along the vertical axis. Looking at our plots, at the top we have in black the On-Axis Response; lime green displays the Listening Window, red shows Early Reflections and blue indicates Sound Power. At the bottom the Sound Power Directivity Index is in blue and the Early Reflections Directivity Index is in red. So, what is the significance of each and do they relate to each other?

Starting with our all-important On-Axis (or direct sound response), we are looking for as flat a signal as possible as this represents the direct sound from the speaker. Why? Because the direct sound forms a dominant part of the speaker’s personality and sound profile, and if it is measuring at a relatively flat response, tells you the signal being fed to the speaker isn’t being altered adversely. The flatter it is, the more integrity the speaker has in faithfully reproducing the source input signal and this is what we desire to see. This is subsequently influenced by the room.

The green plot represents the Listening Window, which includes the On-Axis response but importantly also the off-axis response of the speaker plus (above) and minus (below) 10 degrees in the vertical plane and plus and minus 30 degrees in the horizontal plane. What we want to see here is something that mirrors the On-Axis Response as much as possible, as this means a more consistent sound may be heard in more listening positions within the listening area. If there are large bumps or dips in this response, they may often be the result of resonances or off-axis issues where the speaker crossovers are not necessarily integrating between drivers as seamlessly as they could.

Next is the red Early Reflections plot, which comprises of the front-firing hemisphere of the speaker along with the first bounce reflections from 180 degrees horizontally behind the speaker (rear-wall reflections) and those of the room’s first reflections. Also included are the zero to 90 degrees off-axis responses in the horizontal plane, combined with the plus and minus 20 to plus and minus 40 degrees measurements in the vertical plane. In simple terms, this curve is the combination of reflected energy at the more extreme off-axis angles that would hit the walls (keep in mind that Spinorama measurements are done in an anechoic chamber). If these are “good” reflections, i.e., not demonstrating radical peaks and troughs which are indicative of unwanted resonances and ringing (see attached image), this curve will be very similar to that of the On-Axis Response and is highly indicative of a higher- versus-lower quality speaker response behavior. Good reflections (see image of the Pioneer speaker’s response) are ones which contribute to a smooth response which is similar to the On-Axis plot and make for a more similar listening experience over a wider listening area. It’s worth contemplating that logically, this Early Reflections response cannot be exactly the same as the On-Axis response, because it has to incorporate the off-axis reflections. This is where active speakers have the potential to really shine in their electronic management of the speaker’s response.

If both the On-Axis and Early Reflections curves were theoretically to be the same, the sound might seem unnatural to some listeners, lacking some degree of natural room delay. (On a side note, a lack of reflected sound is a reason why many people report a feeling of uneasiness when spending time in an anechoic chamber. It simply doesn’t “feel” natural.) Back to our Early Reflections response. Although we don’t expect it to be the same as the On-Axis response, we do want it to be close, allowing for some frequencies dropping off – usually the treble to some extent – and this may not be as significant as seeing treble rolloff on our next metric, Sound Power.

What about the Sound Power plot represented in blue? This indicates the total sound power output from the speaker, measured as it spreads out in all directions from the speaker as heard at the listening position. That is, the output from all 360 degrees, above and below, left and right, and front and back of the speaker. The treble roll-off represented in this plot shows that there will be much less treble at the sides and rear of the speaker (assuming it’s a typical forward-firing speaker design).

So, what do we actually want to see in the Sound Power graph? As with all the plots, we hope to see a smooth transition between any plotted points, because peaks and troughs reveal things like unwanted resonances, directivity problems or poor crossover implementation.

In the second part of this Spinorama discussion we will look more at the remaining information in the graph and how it too relates to speaker performance characteristics.

Header image: detail from the cover of Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms, Third Edition, by Dr. Floyd E. Toole.

I don't usually claim this space, but made an exception in honor of one of rock's greatest: Meat Loaf (1947 – 2022). Taken at the Paramount, Huntington, New York, March 17, 2016.

During the 1970s, the UK was fertile ground for some of the most significant rock subgenres to emerge and make their marks in music recording history. Artists like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, T-Rex. Roxy Music, Yes, Genesis, and later on, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Joy Division and many others would pioneer what has since been categorized as metal, glam, prog and punk, and would go on to influence dozens of other bands in ensuing years. Their influence can still be heard in contemporary bands ranging from St. Vincent and Rival Sons to Greta Van Fleet.

Lost in the cracks and left to only garner a loyal but limited cult following was Be-Bop Deluxe. Helmed by guitarist-vocalist Bill Nelson, Be-Bop Deluxe was a vehicle for showcasing Nelson’s catchy but quirky compositions, guitar-obsessed virtuosity, melodic sensibilities, and pop-culture interests in sci-fi, movies, comic books, and fantasy, all laced with tortured Byronic romanticism and symbolist literature, and poetry from his literary heroes like Jean Cocteau.

With hummable songs that belied complex arrangements and highlighted Nelson’s fleet-fingered guitar solos, Be-Bop Deluxe trod a fine line between glam and prog, both musically as well as visually. Their stage attire was decidedly the polar opposite of the heavy makeup and glitter outfits of glam (which they flirted with and then abandoned in their earliest incarnation): wide-lapeled powder-colored suits with bell bottoms, which seemed to comedically send-up wedding bands, especially with keyboardist Andy Clark’s enormous bowties.

After five studio albums and one double-live concert release, Nelson disbanded Be-Bop Deluxe to pursue his ever-expanding interests in other types of music. He composed film soundtracks, theatrical scores, and countless solo albums ranging from ambient instrumentals to industrial electronica, with ballads and rock anthems sandwiched in between. The laundry list of his solo music and other pursuits alone is worthy of a standalone multi-part article overview. He was a pioneer of the DIY home studio producer trend, becoming an early champion of the Fostex B-16 multitrack tape recorder during the 1980s, and his incredibly prodigious music output over the past 40 years defies both easy categorization and cataloging. In addition to guest session work with friends like Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra, and David Sylvian, Nelson has dabbled in video and in guitar design, with a number of signature models from Eastwood Guitars and Campbell American Guitars.

Be-Bop Deluxe could be considered a template for the Smashing Pumpkins, where guitarist-vocalist Billy Corgan has similarly used the band as a vehicle for his own visionary guitar excursions. However, Nelson was considerably more musically generous with his bandmates, as the remastered and expanded 16-CD edition of Live! In The Air Age, released several months ago, demonstrates.

Live! In The Air Age exhibits a superbly tight Nelson-led quartet featuring underrated Maori bassist Charlie Tumahai, drummer Simon Fox, and keyboardist Andy Clark. The 16-CD collection contains minimal overdubs, according to Nelson, save for percussion on “Shine” (which he performed under the pseudonym “Cabasa El Dubova”), and a few guitar parts to fatten up the sound. Hearing the power of Be-Bop Deluxe live in concert and the sheer audacity and innovation in their music offers substantive evidence of how grossly overlooked the band was in its heyday.

From the jet plane flanging effect on its opening riff, the leadoff song, “Life In The Air Age” encapsulates Nelson’s sci-fi romanticism with contrasting lighthearted melody and harmonies and lyrics:

Life in the Air Age, it’s too dangerous to stay.
Life in the Air Age, Airships crashing every day into the bay.
Life in the Air Age, all the oceans have run dry.
Life in the Air Age, it’s grim enough to make a robot cry.

“Sister Seagull” features dynamic riffing and mock seagull cries, courtesy of a Uni-Vibe, MXR phase shifter, and what sounds like an Echoplex, Binson Echorec, or other tape delay.

The rhythmic and tempo shifts, counterpoint bass lines, atmospheric keyboards and harmony vocals are all musical elements that justify Be-Bop Deluxe’s claim to prog equivalence with 1970s peers like Yes and Genesis, and Nelson’s raunchy guitar tones have been cited as a primary influence by none other than Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols.

Nelson continues to play the song in concert in his solo performances, showing that all of his formidable guitar chops are still intact.

While instrumentals like “Shine” straddled into R&B and jazz fusion territory within Be-Bop Deluxe’s musical lexicon, fan favorite “Adventures In A Yorkshire Landscape” contains one of Nelson’s most elegantly melodic improvisational solo platforms. The interplay between bassist Tumahai and keyboardist Clark during the latter’s solo section, and then the entire band’s freewheeling trading of musical phrases, combines both the structural complexity of King Crimson with the jazzy spontaneity of the Allman Brothers Band.

Perhaps one aspect of Be-Bop Deluxe’s music that set them apart from other prog rock artists was Nelson’s song topics. While definitely quite European in his lyrical references, Nelson’s sci-fi musings and underlying cynicism were a stark contrast to the Tolkienesque imagery of Yes’ Jon Anderson, the introspection of Greg Lake, or the mythologically sexual analogies in Peter Gabriel’s Genesis songs, and closer to the forlorn, dispassionate observations found in some of David Bowie’s or David Sylvian’s works.

Early Be-Bop Deluxe songs like “Jets at Dawn” from Axe Victim contained lines like:

Jets at dawn trail across the sky
Silver birds writing words for airman’s wives.
Jets at dawn, writing in the sky
Silver planes (vapour trails),
Drawing Coca-Cola signs

Even on this early track, Nelson’s penchant for Jimmy Page-like layering of multiple guitar parts is evident. Nelson also gives the guitar a much more prominent part in Be-Bop Deluxe’s music than King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, probably the guitarist most emblematic of the prog genre, and who also has a similar control freak reputation.

“Maid in Heaven,” the single from Futurama, became a crowd pleaser in concert, and displayed Nelson’s ability to craft memorable hooks, a talent that he would often suppress in his post Be-Bop Deluxe music, to the disappointment of his fans.

“Ships In The Night,” the single from the Sunburst Finish album, was Be-Bop Deluxe’s highest-charting UK single, reaching number 23. An unusually casual T-shirted Be-Bop Deluxe (except for Clark) was featured in their music video, accompanied by Nelson’s brother, Ian, on saxophone. Ironically, “Ships In The Night” was the rare Be-Bop Deluxe song not to feature a guitar solo, which is rectified in various live renditions.

Similar to offerings from Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Yes, and Genesis, Be-Bop Deluxe’s contribution to the extended-length song suite UK prog rock catalog can be heard on their fourth LP, Modern Music. Featuring the songs “Modern Music,” “Dancing In the Moonlight (All Alone),” “Honeymoon On Mars,” “Lost In The Neon World,” and “Dance of the Uncle Sam Humanoids,” the suite revisited Nelson’s recurring sci-fi and outer space themes, front and center. Supposedly inspired by Be-Bop Deluxe’s US tour, the “Modern Music Suite” would become a live tour-de-force, with flurries of Asian-influenced pentatonic scale musical interludes that foreshadowed Nelson’s future directions.

Nelson’s fixation with the guitar and all of the sound effects at a guitarist’s disposal is something he shares with Billy Corgan, and exceeds that of his prog rock guitar peers, such as Steve Howe of Yes, or Robert Fripp. Be-Bop Deluxe’s first three album titles all reference guitars: Axe Victim (“Axe” being slang for “guitar”), Futurama (a budget-priced guitar brand popular in the UK for beginners that was a first electric guitar for George Harrison, Albert Lee and others), and Sunburst Finish (literally a color scheme developed by guitar manufacturers to emulate violins, with coloring that’s darker on the outside and lighter at the center). Even on the 1978 Be-Bop Deluxe song “Japan” from their final studio album, Drastic Plastic, Nelson references his (at the time) latest custom guitar from Yamaha.

Nelson’s affinity towards Japan, already present in his appreciation of Japanese toys, electronics, gadgets, manga and anime, would deepen with his musical collaborations on projects with the members of Yellow Magic Orchestra, and blossom personally with his subsequent 25-year marriage to Emiko (ex-wife of YMO drummer/lead singer Yukihiro Takahashi).

Nelson’s love of sci-fi and guitars happily converged with his limited-run design of the Astroluxe for Eastwood Guitars, later modified for wider commercial release as the Astroluxe Cadet.

After Be-Bop Deluxe dissolved, Simon Fox would play drums with Trevor Rabin, the Pretty Things, and most recently, with Birmingham funk group Parade. Andrew Clark became a UK studio musician, notably contributing keys to such hit records as David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes,” Tears For Fears’ The Seeds of Love album, and Peter Gabriel’s hit singles, “Don’t Give Up” and “Big Time.” Charlie Tumahai returned to New Zealand and continued to play music locally, and became an advocate for Maori cultural heritage and a counselor for young Maori criminal offenders in Auckland, before succumbing to a heart attack in 1995.

In spite of increasingly-impaired eyesight due to diabetes and macular degeneration, Nelson continues his prodigious music output and still performs live. A record release concert for his 2013 album Blip showed Nelson still exploring new sounds with an EBow, a device that magnetically simulates “bowing” of guitar strings, like the sound of bowing a viola or cello). The concert starts at 1:47 in the clip. He then shifts over to blues-oriented shredding (3:45), some guitar geekdom (4:54), and a tribute in memory of his brother Ian, featuring saxophone over a languishing jazz progression.

While Nelson is justifiably proud of his Be-Bop Deluxe music, he is quick to emphasize that it is only a small fraction of his musical catalog. However, he is admittedly very pleased with the expanded release of Live! In The Air Age and the prospects for a critical reassessment of Be-Bop Deluxe’s place in rock music history.

His full name was Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, so everyone called him NHØP. Colleagues in the jazz world called him one of the best and most versatile bass players in the business.

The Danish musician, who studied piano as a child, first picked up the double bass when he was 13. Within a couple of years, he was backing world-class visiting artists like Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon at the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen. Count Basie offered him a job in 1963, but he had to turn it down because he was only 17 and therefore too young for an American work visa.

Bill Evans brought Pedersen on the Danish leg of his tour in 1965, as did Jean-Luc Ponty, Dizzy Gillespie, and Ella Fitzgerald. One of his trickiest gigs was playing with pianist Oscar Peterson, notoriously fleet of finger. Pedersen was up for the challenge: he had some of the fastest fingers ever to pluck the strings of an upright bass, and critics compared his technique to virtuosic guitar fingerpicking.

Among his other unusual legacies are his many attempts to create a fusion of jazz and Scandinavian folk music. He often convinced fellow musicians with no background in that tradition to get creative with the material, leading to some wonderful results. Although he died at age 58, he made nearly 40 albums, most of them billed as duos with a wide range of collaborators. It’s always an adventure to hear what Pedersen came up with when inspired by the music of the moment.

Enjoy these eight great tracks by Niels Pedersen.

1. Track: “I Skovens Dybe Stille Ro”
   Album: Duo
   Label: SteepleChase
   Year: 1973

Early in his career, Pedersen made two duet albums with pianist Kenny Drew, although they also worked together a lot on other sessions and shows. Like many African American jazz artists, Drew relocated permanently to Europe in hopes of facing less racism, and he often came over to Copenhagen from his adoptive hometown of Paris. Duo includes a wide range of music, from bossa nova to swing to Pedersen’s folk fusion experiments.

This track is an example of the bassist introducing Scandinavian tradition into jazz. The title of this popular Swedish folksong, “I Skovens Dybe Stille Ro,” means “In the deep, quiet tranquility of the forest.” Pedersen plucks out the melody with plaintive lyricism.

2. Track: “Little Train”
   Album: Double Bass
   Label: SteepleChase
   Year: 1976

The label SteepleChase was founded in 1972 by a close friend of Pedersen’s, Nils Winther. It became Pedersen’s home base for nearly a decade. American artists, usually those who had gigs at the Jazzhus Montmartre, often showed up on SteepleChase recordings. In this case it’s another great bassist, Sam Jones.

The two masters are joined by a small group of gifted regulars: Philip Catherine on guitar, Billy Higgins on drums, and Albert Heath on percussion. This rare combination of sounds draws a surprising beauty from their arrangement of equally surprising repertoire, the melody “Little Train” by Brazilian classical composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. For a demonstration of Pedersen’s speed and dexterity, listen to his solo starting around 4:10.

3. Track: “Clouds”
   Album: Dancing on the Tables
   Label: SteepleChase
   Year: 1979

Unlike most of Pedersen’s releases, Dancing on the Table was not promoted as a duet, but as a solo album. It’s actually a quartet effort, with Dave Liebman on saxophones and flute, John Scofield on guitar, and Billy Hart on drums.

Pederson wrote all but one of the five tunes, the fifth being a folk song. He also utilized folk material in the title track. The album closes with the 10-minute jam called “Clouds.” It starts with an easygoing jazz fusion groove, and within a few phrases Pedersen has launched into his first solo, a two-and-a-half-minute meander through many different musical ideas. Stick around for Scofield’s intricate solo.

4. Track: “Round Midnight”
   Album: Northsea Nights
   Label: Pablo
   Year: 1980

Speaking of working with great guitarists, for Northsea Nights Pedersen teamed up with the inimitable Joe Pass. And that’s it. Just the two of them, playing live at the Northsea Jazz Festival in The Hague. Between the intimate sound of that pairing and Pass’ tendency toward the swing side, this is a very special album.

While much of the track list is show tunes, there’s a wonderful recording of Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight,” which starts at 7:18 on this video. Pass’ jewel-like sound finds facets of the tune that even Monk may have missed. And Pedersen, always able to change his approach to the needs of his surroundings, plays it slow and sultry, and also in a lower register than usual.

5. Track: “Shiny Stockings”
   Album: With Joy and Feelings
   Label: Four Leaf Clover
   Year: 1985

With Joy and Feelings is a collaboration with Danish-Swedish singer Ulla Neumann and her father, guitarist Ulrik Neumann. Father and daughter were both actors as well, which might help explain the sophisticated way they express themselves. And they clearly have a good sense of humor.

Besides the delightful bounce in their rendition of Count Basie’s “Shiny Stockings,” Ulla indulges in a chorus of reedy, wordless vocalization, an unusual sort of scat. It might seem silly in another context, but here it’s used to contrast with the sound of Pedersen’s guitar-like bass playing.

6. Track: “Here’s That Rainy Day”
   Album: Play with Us
   Label: Olufsen
   Year: 1987

Louis Hjulmand was a Danish vibraphone player and composer who had worked on several projects with Pedersen. He’s the co-star of this two-man album. The timbral interplay of the two instruments is unique and unexpected; the bass notes seem to grow organically out of the lower register of the vibes.

Besides a few tunes by Hjulmand, they landed on a track list of American jazz standards. One is “Here’s That Rainy Day” by Jimmy Van Heusen.

7. Track: “The Puzzle”
   Album: Ambience
   Label: Da Capo
   Year: 1993

With so many duet and small-group records to his name, it’s a rare pleasure to hear Pedersen with a larger ensemble. Ambience finds him backed by the Danish Radio Big Band. In fact, Pedersen played with DRBB often, but normally as their bassist, not as a soloist.

“The Puzzle” is his own composition, one he had recorded before, including once that same year on a live album with guitarist Philip Catherine. The concert with DRBB was also captured on video, a nice chance to see Pedersen at work.

8. Track: “I Cover the Waterfront”
   Album: Elegies, Mostly
   Label: Gemini
   Year: 1995

Last we have this track from Elegies, Mostly, an introspective duo album with pianist Dick Hyman. The two are a great match in technique, style, and mood.

Johnny Green wrote “I Cover the Waterfront” in 1933, and it has been recorded many times by some huge jazz names like Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra. With Pedersen and Hyman, what starts as a simple melody blossoms into an exploration of the song’s inner workings without ever becoming overblown or busy.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Björn Milcke.

Four teens at a Dublin high school, fans of the Sex Pistols and the Clash, wanted to play music themselves. In 1976, these boys – Paul Hewson, David Evans, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. – along with a few others, started playing together. By 1978, their number was down to four and they had the name U2. Soon they would dominate the airwaves as the biggest musical phenomenon from Ireland since jigs and reels.

Hewson had been nicknamed Bono Vox by fellow members of a gang called Lypton Village, who then shortened it to Bono. Between his big voice and strong personality, he quickly dominated the band. The Lypton Village kids also gave Evans his nickname, The Edge; he played lead guitar and keyboards. Somehow Clayton, on bass, and Mullen, the drummer, escaped being saddled with a special moniker.

The year 1978 was crucial to U2’s foundations. Although they’d started as a cover band, the boys quickly realized that their strength was in creating original material, so they concentrated on songwriting. They met Paul McGuinness, who became their manager, staying in that role for 25 years. He used his connections to let them record and release an EP, which landed them on the charts for the first time.

This was all happening in Ireland, but the rest of the world was about to find out about U2. A representative from Island Records heard the band in 1980 and signed them. Attached to their first album was a young producer named Steve Lillywhite, who would go on to work with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Simple Minds, and many other huge new wave bands.

U2’s members didn’t have to write much material for their debut album, Boy (1980), since they’d already been churning out songs for a few years. Boy gained surprising traction in the US, helped by the Top 40 single “I Will Follow” and a tour that showed off Bono’s charisma. An excellent introduction to the early U2 sound is the opening of Side B, “Stories for Boys”; the Edge’s jangling guitar sound and Mullen’s exuberant drumming seem to catch and magnify Bono’s energy.

A stolen briefcase of song lyrics made the second album, October (1981), more of a scramble than it should have been. The replacement contents were written on the fly, with Lillywhite once again at the producer’s desk. Although no singles fired up public interest, the song “Gloria” was the first U2 number to have a video on MTV.

October was made during a period of deep spiritual contemplation, particularly for Bono and the Edge, who mulled the conflict between their Christian beliefs and the rock star lifestyle they aspired to. That discontentment and searching found its way into their lyrics, as you can hear in “Rejoice,” which also demonstrates the impressive development of the Edge’s guitar technique.

With War (1983), U2 introduced an aspect to their music that has remained ever since: an outspoken sociopolitical voice. The most obvious example is “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” dealing with the troubles in Northern Ireland. This new opinionated songwriting only helped sales, with War briefly outselling Michael Jackson’s Thriller in the UK and performing much better than their previous releases in the US.

With the goal of experimenting with a less rock-oriented style, the band hired Brian Eno to produce their next album, The Unforgettable Fire (1984); they were interested in his ambient manipulation of sound. From this experiment came one of their biggest hits, “Pride (In the Name of Love).” Perhaps the clearest demonstration of Eno’s contribution can be heard in the multidimensional soundscape of “A Sort of Homecoming.”

Eno stuck with the band, producing a much different album in The Joshua Tree (1987), which leans more toward the rock, and even folk, side of things. As the album title suggests, the overall concept was to express the expanses, both geographical and spiritual, of America. It was a massive success, selling well globally and winning two Grammy Awards. Rattle and Hum, which followed the next year, was part studio album and part live, selling nearly as well. Rattle and Hum was produced by Jimmy Iovine, but Eno returned for the last of the band’s peak-performing albums, Achtung Baby, in 1991. That brought in another Grammy and the hit singles “One” and “Mysterious Ways.”

With an assist from Eno, the band brought in the producer known as Flood to give an electronic dance sound to Zooropa (1993). Another Grammy but no big singles this time. But the imagination at work on this album makes it worth a listen. Guest producer Robbie Adams created an interesting electronic world for “Dirty Day,” with Bono using his falsetto against a constant metallic tonic pitch.

The fascination with electronics continued through Pop (1997) and All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000). But for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004) they brought back Lillywhite, although Eno, Flood, and others still had a hand in the operation. Under Lillywhite, the flavor trended more toward classic rock and roll. Bono said in one interview that he considered it “our first rock album.” It won an astonishing nine Grammys.

Things were slowing down for the band as the members became involved with other projects. It was another four years before No Line on the Horizon was released. Partly because of that album’s commercial failure, Songs of Innocence did not come out until 2014, the longest U2 had ever waited between albums. They were trying to figure out what, if anything, they should do next. Innocence was produced primarily by Danger Mouse, with help from other industry giants like Paul Epworth, known for his work with Adele, Rhiannon, and others.

Innocence is perhaps most important historically for its unprecedented marketing campaign. Apple released the digital version for free to all iTunes users (this was before Apple Music took over from iTunes) for six weeks before the physical media became available. The experiment did not go over well: The auto-loading of the album onto millions of mobile devices was described by Chris Richards of the Washington Post as “rock and roll dystopian junk mail.”

While there are a couple of songs that hint at the preservation of innocence, the borrowing of this title from poet William Blake allowed for easy expansion into a second release. Sure enough,

Songs of Experience followed in 2017. This time the main producers were Ryan Tedder (who also worked on Innocence) and Jacknife Lee, a longtime collaborator with U2. Some of the material originated in the Innocence sessions.

The top-performing single was Bono’s love song to his wife, “You’re the Best Thing About Me,” while the single “Get Out of Your Own Way,” featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar (a year before he won the Pulitzer Prize), was performed at the 2018 Grammy Awards. The band was at its hard-hitting best for both these albums, as evidenced by the funk/punk core of “The Blackout.”

There have been no new studio albums since 2017, but U2 is still active. Most recently, you can hear a new song by them on the soundtrack of the animated movie Sing 2. Meanwhile, Bono was chosen in 2020 as a spokesperson for Irish culture in his nation’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council, which they won. It’s impossible to overstate U2’s importance as a representative of Ireland on the global cultural scene.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Remy.

Courtesy of Tom Gibbs.

In the last issue of Copper, I highlighted some of the many tunes I listen to for both pleasure and for equipment evaluation (see my article in Issue 154). But I ran out of space (and time) to touch on many of the selections that we listened to on New Year’s Day when my daughter and her family came over to celebrate the holiday. Here are a few more really great tracks that get spun on a regular basis in my listening room that I affectionately refer to as “The Dungeon.”

A couple of additional tracks from British jazz vocalist Claire Martin made the list, from her 2005 album, When Lights Are Low. Claire Martin not only records and tours, but did a long-running live show in London with her then-cabaret partner, pianist extraordinaire Richard Rodney Bennett, who sadly died a few years ago. The album is a duet that features Martin on vocals and Bennett on vocals and piano – it would be Bennett’s last recording prior to his passing, and provides a fitting coda to his life’s work. It’s also one of the most well-recorded records of this type (or any, for that matter!) in my entire library. We listened to DSD 64 .dsf files sourced from my rip of the Linn Records SACD. This is a truly outstanding recording, and offers an exceptionally realistic aural portrayal of both vocalist and piano. Bennett is a much more accomplished pianist than vocalist, but you have to give the guy his props– he was 76 years old when this record was made!

The two tracks segue into each other; the first, “Fools Fall In Love,” is a rarely-heard ballad from Irving Berlin that’s given a poignant reading from both Martin and Bennett. Claire Martin’s smoky-sweet alto is perfect for this tune, and Bennett’s artistry at the keyboard is on complete display – despite his advanced age, he was still at the peak of his powers as a pianist. As the final notes fade, it immediately transitions into Martin’s defiant and jubilant rendering of Harold Arlen’s classic, “I Got A Right to Sing the Blues.” Her rousing vocal is spot-on, and she proves here that she can belt it out with the best of them, while Bennett provides an appropriately rollicking accompaniment– this is a very entertaining pairing of songs!

Next up are a pair of tunes from jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut’s trio from the 1996 album Earth Stories. Chestnut’s artistry is among the finest to be found in the current crop of jazz pianists. Schooled from the age of seven in the traditions of the Baptist church in his hometown of Baltimore, his playing is perhaps the most soulful to be heard of any modern pianist. The recording features Chestnut’s usual piano, bass, and drums accompaniment on most of the tracks, but fleshes out a few with a horn section. The two I’ve chosen here are blues numbers, “Grandmama’s Blues” and “Blues from the East.” The two tracks are 16-bit/44.1 kHz uncompressed FLAC rips from my CD; this is a truly superb recording that is among the best sounding in my entire digital library. It’s mood music that’s perfectly appropriate for late-night listening. And it’s very musical as well as dynamic; the recording engineer really captured the acoustics of the studio environment, and you can easily place the piano, bass, and drums in the sound field. Very highly recommended!

Diana Krall has her share of detractors, but in the early days – before the record company attempted to start selling her image, rather than simply letting the music speak for itself – she created some darn great records. Her first mainstream album, 1996’s All For You, A Dedication to the Nat King Cole Trio on Impulse Records, remains in my book one of her very best. Produced by Tommy LiPuma, the album is a textbook example of great recording techniques. The track I most often listen to is “I’m Thru With Love,” and for replay, I’m using a 24-bit/96 kHz FLAC digital download from HDTracks that was uncompressed using dBpoweramp. The album is a trio date for most of the songs, including Diana Krall on piano and vocals, accompanied by a guitar and acoustic bass. The song was written by Fud Livingston, and was popularized in a version sung by Marilyn Monroe in the 1959 film Some Like It Hot. Krall offers an appropriately poignant rendering here; her piano work is superb, and her smoky, haunting vocal is absolute ear candy. I bought this album in 1996 having never heard a single track, and it’s been in constant rotation ever since.

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I have to admit, the next track flew under my radar for many years – I only first heard it at the Florida Audio Expo in 2020. Joni Mitchell’s “Urge For Going” was recorded at the same sessions as her classic album Blue, though the song predates the album by many years. Tom Rush recorded and released it as a single in 1966, and Joni’s release was as the B-side of “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio,” from the For the Roses album, which followed Blue. It first appeared on disc on the 1996 compilation Hits, and how a song this great was left off a milestone work like Blue just baffles me. I guess she thought it was too old a song then and not in character with the rest of the album. When I heard it playing in Tampa, it stopped me dead in my tracks – I couldn’t believe how great the song was, and especially the realism of the sound I was hearing in the room at FAE. How was it I’d never heard this song – maybe one of Joni Mitchell’s greatest ever – before now? I guess I was too young to be familiar with Tom Rush’s version, and had stopped buying 45s by the time For the Roses was released. The track is taken from my 16/44.1 uncompressed FLAC rip from the CD, but it sounds as magnificent over my system now as my recollection of the sound I was hearing in Florida a couple of years ago.

Ella Fitzgerald’s pared-down, small combo session that resulted in the 1961 album Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie was a startling departure from the “songbook” series of large-scale orchestral albums she’d been recording with the likes of Nelson Riddle, Buddy Bregman, and Duke Ellington. The songs feature drums, bass, guitar, and piano, and the recording is a very intimate setting, with Ella’s voice up front in the mix and very personal. I own most of the “songbook” series, and many of them are basically superb recordings, though some exhibit a trace of a slightly metallic sound, which is especially noticeable on Ella’s vocals. There’s not a trace of that here, and Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie is one of the best jazz vocal recordings from that period, or any other, for that matter. The song I chose is Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight,” and despite a gazillion various covers of Monk’s undisputed classic, Ella nails it here and totally owns it. The track was taken from a 24/192 FLAC digital download that was uncompressed using dBpoweramp.

When Neil Young started remastering and re-releasing his catalog in the mid-2000s, he also took the unexpected step of issuing live recordings that had languished in the vaults for decades, never having had an official release. Among the first was Live at Massey Hall 1971, which captures Neil playing live at Toronto’s Massey Hall in between the albums After the Gold Rush and the yet to be released Harvest. It’s a really interesting glimpse into Neil’s process back in the day, and very cool to see how his pared-down interpretations of songs with only acoustic guitar or piano accompaniment compare to the full album versions. The recording quality is really superb;  you get an excellent impression of Massey Hall’s acoustic on this album; even on my stereo-only setup, when the audience applauds, it quite nearly wraps around you in the soundstage. And Neil has a “live in your room” presence. The track I chose is “Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” from After the Gold Rush, and my library file is a 16/44.1 uncompressed FLAC taken from my CD rip of the album. The sound quality here is phenomenal, and as Neil tunes his guitar and immediately transitions into the song, the effect is spine-tingling. Highly recommended.

When conductor Richard Hickox died of an aneurysm in 2008, it left a gaping hole in British classical music performance. I have many of his recordings, but I’m particularly smitten with his uncompleted cycle of Ralph Vaughan Williams symphonies on the Chandos label; he’d yet to record the Symphonies No. 7 (Symphonia Antarctica) and No. 9 prior to his untimely death. That’s a terrible loss, as I consider all his Williams recordings to be darn-near definitive. His recording of the Symphony No. 2 (A London Symphony) is constantly in my regular rotation, and the track I chose is the second movement Lento. It’s taken from my DSD 64 .dsf rip of the SACD, and it’s without a doubt one of the most dynamic classical music recordings in my entire library. The sound quality is absolute ear candy, and the music traverses a nearly mind-boggling range of emotions, but also contains a handful of orchestral climaxes that will test the capabilities of the very best amplifiers and loudspeakers. Very highly recommended!

Sarah McLachlan had a really good run from the late 1990s through the early 2000s, and tracks from her albums Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, Surfacing, and the live album Mirrorball are in my regular rotation. The three tracks I chose are from 1997’s Surfacing, and they all sort of segue into each other, creating a really effective range of moods. “Do What You Have to Do” is a languid number that focuses on McLachlan’s beautiful soprano with her own piano accompaniment. The track is fleshed out with bass, synths, and guitars, and the effect is simply stunning. “Witness” is a synth-heavy number that has a subterranean bass line that will shake your home’s foundation, and the keyboards are magically effective as the song poppily plays along. “Angel” (yes, I know it got played to death at the time of its release!) is a strictly acoustic tune again featuring Sarah McLachlan at the piano, and her plaintive rendering of the song offers a stunning conclusion to this trio of tunes. The sound quality is off-the-charts great for 1990’s pop; my 16/44.1 uncompressed FLAC rip was taken from my CD.

Another lifetime of great classical performances came from Sir Charles Mackerras, who died in 2010 but left a long legacy of outstanding recordings, many of them on the Telarc label. One of the truly great ones is his 1987 album of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake/Sleeping Beauty Orchestral Suites, which is a magnificent recording in the grand early Telarc style, with plenty of orchestral bravado and bombast. This one came without the typical Telarc warning about digital transients (possibly overtaxing your system), but the orchestral climaxes and percussion will rock your listening room’s walls and test the moxie of your system’s capabilities. The two tracks I chose are from Sleeping Beauty, and open the disc with Introduction: The Lilac Fairy, and Adagio: Rose Adagio. Both are 16/44.1 uncompressed FLAC rips from my CD copy, but this disc is easily among the best-sounding classical music titles in my entire library – it’s one of those early Telarc 50 kHz Soundstream Digital recordings, and it’s a real shame that when SACD was still in its infancy and Telarc released a lot of those as SACDs that they didn’t do the same for this outstanding disc. Still, very highly recommended! (sorry, not YouTube video available for this title – I literally looked for an hour.)

That wraps it up for this go-around, but there’s still plenty more to come!