Vol. II No. 2

I have noticed that it is often easier to distinguish the lyrics (words) of a song in a digitalized version. I will be the first to admit that digital audio processing has its uses. It may indeed be that in the grand scheme of things - with everything considered - it is better for music to be heard for the most part only in computerized versions. The famous movie line is "You can't handle the truth!" Well, maybe this society can't handle analog music. But I'm only acknowledging this possibility, not granting it as a fact.


I read in an interview of David Byrne in the 80's the statement that "the words are a trick to get you to listen to the music." The content of the lyrics in a great piece of pop, rock, or R&B are vastly less important than the contribution the sound of enunciating and intoning them makes to the sound of the song. The meaning of what Mick Jagger sings in 'Brown Sugar' is less important than the sound of his voice as he sings it.

I am not a fan of many kinds of jazz and classical music. I was hanging out in front of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach several years ago when a dozen or so members of the orchestra came out for a break. I said loudly above their small group conversations, "No! Our work's not pretentious and unmusical!"

The Rolling Stones are apparently well aware of how poorly their work is reproduced in digital versions. They have arranged for all of their recordings to be available as current releases on vinyl. (I don't know if they insisted the production be done without digital processing.) Jack White of The White Stripes is also known for espousing all-analog production and playback. Elvis Costello released a recent album on vinyl before any digital version was released.

Vol. II No. 3

The problem with digitalized versions of recordings in analog format is they can cause you to incorrectly estimate the quality of the music and the stature of the performers.

I remember the first three albums by The Police being uniformly excellent. My siblings and I had these on cassette around 1980 or so. I bought cassette copies from a used record store in around 2002 and they did not sound as I expected. I still at that time had not recognized the fact that many analog format recordings are in fact digitalized. So my estimation of The Police has been degraded by the latter experience.

Like Violent Femmes’ 1st LP, Madonna’s 1st record came out in 1983, but because hers was on a major label and became a monster smash hit, it is more problematic to find all-analog versions.

The Goldmine Record Guide indicates there are varying versions of Madonna and that the earlier pressings have a longer version of “Burning Up.” You would certainly want this one since Burning Up is a dance song – like all the songs – and who wants a shortened dance song?

The advent of this record and Madonna’s video in Venice caused many young women to emulate her style of dress and of life – I believe they were called “Madonna Wanna-be’s.” It sort of went over men’s heads, including mine.

But at one point I had a cassette of the album in my car on a few long drives and I came to feel that all the songs on the record are great.

It is doubtful that any other record she has made is available in a non-digitalized version.

As a final mention, Ghost in the Machine by The Police is a curious item. In the right version, some tracks will make your stereo sound incredible.

Vol. II No. 4

There is an audiophile named Herbert Von Karajan who is known for promoting digital audio in the early days after its introduction.

I was listening to 93.1 FM in Miami moments ago and trying to figure out why people at that station would choose to have such a terrific playlist as they do but have no shame or compunction about playing uniformly boring, eviscerated travesties in the form of digital versions of the songs.

The answer I came up with is that they are not in a real sense listening to the songs as much as they are reminiscing about the way those songs moved them in the past.

My next thought was that it is an injustice and a disservice to young people who have never heard the original versions.

What leads Von Karajan and others like him into error is their concept of reproduction “purity” defined as playback gear that will not emphasize any pitch or tone in an unbalanced or non-linear way.

Never mind that the music is produced by a wizard who uses hundreds of controls to emphasize and de-emphasize all sorts of pitches and tones. These “purist” audiophiles want playback systems that will do as nearly as possible nothing to color the sound.

With 24 tracks of music mixed into just 2 channels there is a tremendous amount of music in an all-analog recording. If at any point you digitalize that signal, the sound from that point forward consists of a mere fraction of its original content. Therefore digital versions can make all sorts of defects in the final playback output disappear.

The producer has tweaked the sound to be optimal on his studio speakers. Your amp and speakers are different. That’s why I suggest having your own mixing board to optimize the sound in your configuration.

Vol. II No. 5

Upon re-reading Volume I, Number 3 of this blog, I would like to amend my remarks about Jimi Hendrix.

The terms I used to describe his music in the first paragraph were chosen on the fly and for the most part they are inaccurate.

One factor that should be mentioned is that all my listening to Hendrix was done on solid-state equipment, while performance amplifiers and playback gear in his era were largely tubular.

There is indeed to my mind something off-putting about Hendrix’s music but it is by no means a “Wall of Noise” or a “cacophony.”

I would welcome the opportunity to re-evaluate his music played back on a vacuum tube system.

It occurs to me very strongly as I write this that the fashion for so-called “psychedelic” music in the Sixties was doubtless attributable in large part to the improving quality of the tubular equipment and the extremely rich, hollow, ringing tone it produces. Solid state equipment naturally is much less reverberant. When we play stuff like Hendrix or the late-period Beatles on solid-state gear we are missing, I would say, an enormous part of what these artists were hearing then. This is a sad and unfortunate thing.

But the loss suffered when music from that era is digitalized is infinitely worse.

Vol. II No. 6

From my experience of audio electronics, it appears that the audio signal path goes through many resistors, transistors, diodes, and capacitors, and is at every point correlated to “chassis ground.” The signal consists of one electrical pole while the chassis constitutes the other pole.

Let’s say you had a light bulb in the component. One terminal from the bulb would connect to the signal energy and the other terminal would be wired to the chassis. I’m saying this just for illustration.

What this seems to imply is that the music being processed by the component is not confined to the signal path. Instead, the entire component is vibrating.

So let’s consider a singer singing into a microphone connected to an amplifier and then to speakers. The mic transmits an electrical replica of the sound of her voice to the amplifier. Her voice emanates more loudly from the speakers because the amplifier provides leverage and energy to the circuit including the speakers.

What I don’t like is that the sound of her voice is distributed throughout the circuitry of the amplifier, and in that way it loses clarity. All that circuitry is like, if you’ll allow the term, a tone sink.

Somehow the tradition has always maintained that audio reproduction technology is not itself a musical instrument. Consider the dull thud of a speaker cone if you flick it with your finger and the distributive over-complexity of amp circuits that makes them more suited to generating white noise than the richness of tone of, say, a fine, well-tuned acoustic piano.

For better amplification, simplify the circuitry and mount it on a massive chassis, ideally bolted to a reinforced concrete wall or floor.

Vol. II No. 7

There was a time in Smart Bar of Club Metro in Chicago when the speaker system consisted of rows of identical cone-type drivers mounted in narrow cabinets – like 8-foot-long flower boxes – on the ceiling. This system had both of the advantages I attribute to Bose 901’s and Audience-brand speakers.

I went into the club at some later time and this system had been replaced by enormous cabinets sitting on the floor of about 4’x3’x3’ dimensions. The sound was terrible. It was screechy and muddy and noisy – how to describe it? Well, I think those speakers were of the “folded horn” type – and that’s what they sounded like. Because a horn type speaker has tons of sound straining to come out of a few really small elements, which then echoes and bounces around within the massive inert horn itself, the sound is, like, ringing with its own incoherence. But unlike the ringing of a bell, the ringing of folded horns driven loudly is like a screeching quality.

I used to enjoy the many dance songs in the early- and mid-eighties which featured male vocals with British accents. At many clubs you would have thought there was a “British Empire” consisting of the popularity and appeal of dance music from the U.K.

What I have noticed – what seems to me to be the case – is that the same British-accented vocals that sound so dramatic and compelling in all-analog reproduction sound effete and ineffectual and homosexual in digitalized versions.

Somehow a vintage copy of the 2-album version of English Settlement by XTC got into my family’s collection. Those first three songs of Side 1 are terrific – like a force of nature.

Vol. II No. 8

I began experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations shortly after I went to jail for the first time in 1987. Not knowing any better at that time, I believed the “visions and voices” proceeded from God, the Holy Spirit, angels, and demons. Naturally that sort of thing has a great influence on your worldview. I had already been pushed toward religion by my reading of Franny & Zooey. With the visions and voices I gradually became completely obsessed with – I guess you’d call it a messianic complex.

Many years later, in 1999 as a matter of fact, I was reflecting upon how the onset of the visions and voices corresponded with my behavior in jail of laying around on my bunk practically all day, every day for several weeks. (It’s such a shockingly barren environment – 4 walls of cement and steel, a mattress and a sink-and-toilet fixture – that in my case at least I felt near-total despair. Hence all the laying around.) And it occurred to me that the visions and voices are very similar to dream images, so that perhaps they could be explained as waking dream images resulting from a partial-sleep condition brought on by all that laying around.

It has made a great difference in my life to know that visions and voices do not emanate from some absolute authority outside of one’s self, but rather that they are a manifestation of the semi-dormant unconscious mind.

I believe it is misunderstanding in this regard that leads some people to do terrible things. You read about them in the news sometimes: “the voices made me do it.” It would be good if these sufferers were aware that the voices do not come from a chorus of angels and demons, but rather from their own subconscious.

Vol. II No. 9

At one time I had 8 or 10 7" reels of 1/4" tape recordings of myself on guitar and vocals. Because I could find no one in the music business to listen to them, I ultimately decided, while crossing a bridge in Milwaukee, to throw them into the river. So unless someone found them and restored them, they are gone forever.

It happens that entirely without my involvement or awareness, a friend of the family gathered up all the cassettes of my music he could find and held onto them.

I asked him to loan them to me and I listened to them with headphones about 6 or 8 years ago. There was one song that stood out called Failure Is The Best Success, and I have now asked Chad and my brother Pete to choose the best material on the tapes and create a master cassette of 45 minutes with that as the title song.

I have asked them to send copies of it to anyone who requests them and I suggested they charge $10.00 per copy.

I would say that I am neither proud nor humble about this music. It is all from the mid to late 80’s. Because I didn’t like to write songs, all the lyrics and melodies are improvised. It was all recorded on home audio components with a single microphone. No noise reduction was used.

To order copies, contact Pete Lepeska at 617-983-4058.

Vol. II No. 10

I had an experience that illustrates the challenges involved with reproducing all-analog audio.

I listened to a number of LP’s, maybe 10 or 12, and only one of them sounded really good when I turned up the volume. At that time I had no explanation for this. I was left only with the observation that while none of the other LP’s sounded good, there was that one exception.

Well, the exception was Big Audio Dynamite’s 1st LP, which came out in 1985 or so. It occurred to me that this LP had probably been digitally processed. And so, in spite of all my advocacy for analog, it was the digitalized LP that had good sound.

The speakers in that listening session were experiments of mine made with a single JBL midrange driver of 5" or so mounted in 2½ ft. x 4 ft. pieces of 3/4" plywood. Why did the analog LPs sound bad?

What I believe is that because there is so much music in the grooves of the all-analog LP’s – music which, unlike the digitalized recording, is non-discontinuous – it is simply unable to vent itself through a single pair of drivers.

Consider again with me the likely experience of Herbert Von Karajan. He probably had very expensive speakers, which nevertheless had only 3 drivers per channel. His analog recordings were mix-downs of 24 tracks or more, containing input from probably dozens of microphones. All that music gets jammed up with only 3 drivers per channel. He then puts digital recordings on his system. Presto! Voila! No more traffic jam at the voice coils. The digital content is just a fraction of the all-analog. The harsh overtones, and possibly screeching and squawking as well, (if you really turn it up) have disappeared.

Vol. II No. 11

Having learned about Variable-Intensity sound-on-film recording, I went on to study the science of photography. One fact that impressed me was the so-called “resolution” capability of certain films used for aerial reconnaissance photography.

These ultra-high resolution films can resolve hundreds of thousands of lines per millimeter. Resolution capability is determined by photographing an object that has black lines alternating with white background in varying numbers of these black lines per millimeter.

In every square millimeter, such films resolve more than 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) discrete demarcations. Consider also that these demarcations differ from digital “pixels” in that both the black marks and the white background actually correspond to and portray details of the subject. Pixels, on the other hand, are interspersed with blank system noise which is not derived from the subject being photographed.

I have had the experience with some digital photographs that it pains my eyes to look at them. This was particularly severe when I used ebay to shop for long periods. I currently find that my eyes get sore when I watch broadcast (digital) TV. This never happened with analog photos nor with analog TV.

Digitalized images obviously correspond approximately or roughly with the real-world subjects they depict. But they are in fact artificial and alien distortions that pain the eyes because they force the mind to conform to something having no real and natural counterpart.

Vol. II No. 12

I was browsing through the Goldmine Record Album Price Guide when I pieced together the apparent story of Jim Croce. He has quite a few good songs more or less in the folk rock tradition.

According to the GRAPG discography, he put out an album under his own auspices – I guess this is akin to “vanity press” book publishing – in 1966. Then in 1970 a record appeared on Capital Records called Jim and Ingrid Croce. Here we may surmise he had gotten married.

In 1972 came You Don’t Mess Around With Jim which includes the hit song "Time In A Bottle". This song is really very poignant and perhaps it becomes all the more so when you learn that later editions of this LP released in 1973 are “posthumous” releases. Mr. Croce apparently died very shortly after this record came out.

I was led to wonder if upon contemplating "Time In A Bottle" he may have been led to feel that he had accomplished his masterwork, his eternal statement, indeed, his epitaph. And continuing to contemplate thus, he may have felt that he was ready to die – that he wanted to die.

I am convinced that this sort of pride in his work and powerful identification with the work could not exist in the case of digitalized recording. Croce may have occasionally listened to the record – most likely while consuming hallucinogens and alcohol – and felt transported by the power and beauty of its sound and statement. No digitalized version would move the listener so profoundly.

Vol. II No. 13

I’d like to review my sense of the situation for Herbert Von Karajan, since it is the approval of such prominent audiophiles that led to the acceptance of digital audio as high fidelity.

First, I remind the reader of my discovery that analog recordings need to be played back with speakers having a large number of drivers. Von Karajan’s speakers probably had few.

Second, consider my suggestion that analog audio playback generally needs equalization to produce the most pleasing sound quality. Von Karajan is likely among the school of audiophiles who eschew equalizers and tone controls. All-analog audio played back on a “purist” audio system with no tone controls and speakers with crossover networks and only a few drivers is likely to have unpleasant tonal defects which only become more apparent as the volume is increased.

I would like to urge Mr. Von Karajan and all other audiophiles with more or less unlimited financial resources to play all-analog recordings with the following:

• top of the line Audition-brand loudspeakers; I suggest do without the subwoofer. Such massive speakers as the Audition 16 will have no lack of bass capability. Use the equalization controls to give the most pleasing bass quality.
• a top-quality, all-analog graphic equalizer. Insert this in the pre-amp OUT, main amp IN loop.
• transfer your selections to a professional “half-track” tape recorder. This is incidentally a great way to do music for a party. But you will still want to tweak the volume and EQ to bring out the best sound from each individual song.

Vol. II No. 14

I am asking my Dad to form a non-profit organization called The Analog Audio Advocacy, Inc. of which he will be Treasurer and I will be the Director.

Persons wishing to support this project are urged to send funds payable to The Analog Audio Advocacy, Inc., 1191 Spyglass Court, Twin Lakes, WI 53181.

Mission Statement of The Analog Audio Advocacy, Inc.:

1. Win adherence to the view that with digitalized audio dominating all popular music output channels, we are living in an age in which music as it was known for countless historical ages has died.
2. Inasmuch as this degrades the quality of our lives in every aspect, campaign for the use, availability, and dissemination of all-analog recording and playback technologies. (All-analog reproduction is defined as reproduction having no digital signal processing step at any point in the sequence of processes from the source performance to the final output.)
3. Begin the process of gaining support and assistance for the development of a vastly improved, highly simplified audio recording and playback technology based on the Variable Intensity Sound-on-film process.

One immediate project I have in mind is the production of a booklet to be called “Dude, Where’s My Music?” containing the complete entries of Volume I of this blog.

Interested persons may call my Dad at 262-877-2950 or fax him at 262-877-8031. (Note: He himself claims to be perfectly content with his CD changer. But he’s nevertheless willing to support my endeavors.)

Vol. II No. 15

At the Celebrity Club in Milwaukee I liked the sound of the saxophone in the band playing there, and during a break I asked the sax player about it. I said words to the effect that “Your sax sounds mellow – not raspy and honking and sleazy.” He explained that typical saxophone mouthpieces are plastic, but he used one made of hard rubber.

This illustrates the way that with music, the quality of the sound is directly related to the suchness of the apparatus that produces it.

The reader can easily imagine where I am going with this. What does digital audio sound like? It sounds like a computer simulating music. Why? Because it is a computer simulating music.

I had at one point fallen in love with the Clash’s Combat Rock LP. I had had an all-analog copy on vinyl which I enjoyed on my component hi-fi system. Many years later I saw a copy of Combat Rock on CD at the library and, trying to be generous and open-minded toward digital audio, I brought it home.

I put it in the CD player and played it through the component system at home. My thoughts and reaction were approximately thus: “Absolutely no freaking way! There is simply nothing here! Nothing I loved about this record is reproduced here!”

A friend recently said that my preference for analog audio is “sentimental”. In trying to understand why some people stubbornly disagree with me on this issue, I theorize they have a quasi-religious reverence for the computer.

Vol. II No. 16

WBGG FM 105.9 in South Florida is now broadcasting vinyl recordings with no digital processing.

Make certain that your sound system has no digital signal processing.

Vol. II No. 17

Readers of this blog are invited to peruse my new blog, A Sporting Proposition, at www.sportingproposition.blogspot.com.

Vol. II No. 18

I have no objection to the use of digitized audio by artists when they seek effects only a digital source can provide. In the recent hit "Like A G6" it seems unlikely to me that the wet, effervescent quality of the vocal could be achieved with all-analog signal processing. This effect is the hallmark of that song, and it suits the lyrics perfectly. The vocal in "Kiss Me", another digital-era hit, similarly exploits an inherent quality of digitalized sound. As counterpoint I would refer the reader to Karen Carpenter's vocals, which are grossly vitiated in digital versions.

Vol. II No. 19

The following is from Introduction to Digital Engineering, George K. Kostopoulos Ph.D., 1975, p.174:

It is worth noting that in almost all cases of digital design, an increase in speed is accompanied by an increase in complexity and hardware.

I mention this to point out the fact that faster and ever faster digital audio processing systems will necessarily become more and more elaborate and complex. Therefore faster digital systems become more and more unlike the musical instruments - as, for example, a drum - they seek to reproduce.

Vol. II No. 20

There is a tendency to defer to professional experts to provide answer to questions in all sorts of subject areas. 

I submit that professional opinions are often not the best or most accurate ones because the professional achieves and maintains his (or her) status largely by confining his views to the consensus positions.
Charles Berlitz, the son of the language schools founder, is a prominent amateur in the area of anthropology and history.  I believe it is in his book Mysteries from Forgotten Worlds that he discusses a map purportedly formulated by some ancient civilization that depicts a continent geographically identical, apparently, to Antarctica.  However, the land mass is portrayed as having a nagivable river and as being habitable.

The implication is that the earth has no fixed axis, and also that human history may have a much longer, richer provenance than 'expert' science would have us believe.

There seems to be a dearth of information about the devastating meteorite impact in or near the British Isles in the 4th or 5th century. Recognition of the consequences of this event would invalidate the widely-held notion that the Roman Empire fell because of its decadence or what-have-you.

Because of the presumable randomness of the directionality and magnitude of meteorite impacts, the impression over the very long term of earth's motion is that it is - for want of a better word - tumbling: always recovering stability as impacts recede into its past; always being newly de-stabilized as new impacts occur.

Vol. II No. 21

A recent Volkswagen commercial emphasizes the point I make in Vol. II No. 2 that lyrics are often easier to discern in digitalized versions. They cite a passage from Elton John's "Rocket Man." I would answer by citing "Bennie and the Jets." This song is (apparently) a studio creation designed to simulate a live performance with enthusiastic crowd reaction. The song - in all-analog version only - is a richly textural, polyphonically rhythmic tour de force of musical happenstance. It reflects and captures the very essence of music in the pre-digital era. Would you prefer a mere fraction of its content so as to discern the words?

Vol. II No. 22

In grammar school most of what is taught is unquestionable; even if or when it is wrong you do not have the authority to raise doubt or to contradict it. This remains true for the most part in high school.

College and grad school studies are a whole different ball of wax. Now we are in the realm where the material is advanced enough that the instructors themselves may not understand it correctly. So that an 'authoritative' textbook, written by human instructors who may or may not have an accurate, correct, clear, and insightful grasp of the material, may be full of obscurities and errors because the authors are committed to presenting what may be no more than the appearance or semblance of the truth.

High tech equipment and systems of all kinds are presumed to validate the academic theory associated with them. A quintessential example is the atomic bomb as validation of Einstein's theories.

I would argue that the operation of an atom bomb can be better understood by reference to the natural or physical principle of 'bounce'.  The bomb works by generating a severe, super-intense compaction of matter. If the compaction is sufficient, the bounce-back is extreme. Einstein's theory did little or nothing to suggest the compaction-and-bounce methodology.

One striking example of scientific error is supposed photographic imaging of the sun. Can you really get an accurate image of the sun by blocking or filtering all but the smallest fraction of its light? The image is primarily an artifact of the technology.