Vol. IV No. 3

In recent issues of Stereophile magazine, Art Dudley states that most new vinyl releases are in fact digitally processed versions.  Therefore, caveat emptor.  Use microscope to verify any suspect vinyl's provenance.  He also quotes an industry insider who says "jaws drop" for many audiophiles who hear 15 ips magnetic tape versions for the first time.  He refers to the Tape Project, a group trying to implement a 15 ips, 1/4" magnetic tape standard for a broad consumer market.  I feel obligated to mention that my sound-on-film system will be much better still, particularly since it will use the same transducers for record and playback.

Vol. IV No. 2

Should I Stay or Should I Go? by The Clash illustrates a point I have recently realized, which is that playing back rock music at too low of a volume can ruin the quality of the sound. In reference to my remarks in III. 8 of this blog, I now feel that I may have been making the same mistake. SISOSIG sounds very inane and jejune at low volumes. But play the same song cranked on a high-powered system, to simulate how the band themselves would play it! At low volumes, a great deal of the content in a rock song is below the amplification threshold.

Vol. VI No. 1

I have been enjoying listening to Majic 102.7 FM Miami.  It's hard to express how much many of those songs mean to me.  I know no better way than to say that for all practical purposes, this is the only station I listen to for music.

102.7 recently began playing vinyl.  My only complaint at this point is that for frequent listeners, there is too much repetition of some songs and artists.  I urge other listeners to request of station management that they emphasize variety over 'rotation'.

Vol. III No. 12

Examine any mid-range speaker driver and you will see the copper voice coil, the magnet, and the accordian-like fabric "spider" element. All motion of the cone is reciprocated and opposed by the spider. This causes the droning tone of spoken male voices and the "muddiness" of the tone of the wound strings of the electric guitar. Less obviously, it detracts from the clarity of the other instruments and voices. I suggest a driver made from an elastic cone-shaped element tensioned by a wire leading from its apex. Electric guitar pickups, here functioning as output transducers, are arrayed parallel to the wire. Each has 6 magnet-and-coil units.

Vol. III No. 11

An amateur cassette recording of an unheralded, unknown female jazz singer in Chicago featured versions of "All of Me" and "Sunny Side of the Street" which, because of the joy imbued in her performance, were way, way better than versions by celebrity vocalists.  Salinger's Caulfield says "Those idiots who clap their heads off will ruin anyone if you give them the chance."  Performances removed in time and space is one reason I am into recording  technology.  I had a recording on cassette of Steely Dan's pre-professional recordings called Sun Mountain which I loved.  Another zinger from Holden Caulfield is "The movies.  Don't even talk to me about them.  They can ruin you.  I'm not kidding."

Vol. III No. 10

For persons wishing to appreciate vintage 78 rpm recordings, the goal is to match the phonograph to the period in which the record was made.  For the period before electric amplification and motor drive, select a vintage phonograph which likewise is non-electric.  For the 1930's and thereabouts, I have read that the Capehart brand was considered the finest quality (electrified) phonograph.  Do not assume that sound quality is inferior with these technologies.  On the contrary, the presence and tonal richness will be superior to modern analog systems.  A critical point is to find expert technicians who specialize in restoring the equipment to optimum acoustic performance.

Vol. III No. 9

Speaking in Tongues, the last album by Talking Heads before the digital era, is a musical tour de force.  There was some issue after the initial release which caused the record executives, apparently, to ask David Byrne to do a new vocal with some changes to the lyrics.  Reject any version with the altered lyrics:  the one I heard was digitally processed.  If you can afford Audition 16's and perhaps some other of my system recommendations in II. 13, you will hear what I guess I would call the sublime power of this LP.  You may also hear it with lesser playback gear, but this record is an example of one with such great energy that it is difficult to hear it played back well.

Vol. III No. 8

There was one time and place when I heard London Calling and it sounded awesome.  In other settings I was scratching my head.  What did they do to that record?  (My theory:  only the very first releases of the record were all-analog.  Lots of digital versions were sold, perhaps as early as 1980 or 1981.)  I also had one good experience with Sandinista! Consider the enthusiasm the Clash had to release a triple album in an economical package: "Fans! You've got to hear this!"  (Apart from digitalization, I do also wonder if vinyl doesn't suffer perhaps an enormous degradation from just a single play.)  The listener is advised to purchase cassettes recorded from vinyl; these were very common and very high quality.  

Vol. III No. 7

Better-records.com claims to offer better pressings of favorite recordings. Will some reader please refer them to I. 24 of this blog? Boston's 1st LP was a sensation. (I surmise it inspired Aja by Steely Dan. This is the gateway album for appreciating Steely  Dan.) All Side Ones of that album at radio stations are toast from so much play. Side Two now sounds superior to Side One. Also from Boston, 2 years after Boston, was The Cars' 1st LP. In the meantime, the Sex Pistols had broken into the mainstream. So you have in Boston the apotheosis of classic rock, then in The Cars a standard-bearer of the New Sound. More power to you, Better-records.com. Can you also offer cassettes and 3 and 3/4 ips tapes?

Vol. III No. 6

Digital audio engineers appropriated observations made by Harry Nyquist in 1928 on the subject of telegraph transmission. Nyquist's observations pertained to characterizing symbols only, not to characterizing continuous audio content. Digital technology developers made a wholly unjustified leap when they said, as does Advanced Digital Audio, K. Pohlmann, ed., Sams Publications, 1991, p. 33: "Although Nyquist proposed his result in terms of telegraph transmission, the result is equally valid for any kind of digital data transmission, including, of course, digital audio." Nyquist described "completely characterizing" telegraph code. Continuous audio is not completely characterized by intermittent samples.

Vol. III No. 5

R.E.M. is another act, like Madonna and Violent Femmes, which brought out its first record just before the digital era.

Murmur won't shock you, like the Femmes, or excite you, like Madonna, but you will love the smooth, rolling, moody sound and the various stumbles and miscues that tell you this is a very young group, who used very little studio time, and who really didn't give a damn about perfecting the record.

I can't resist urging the reader to listen for the unprintable refrain on side 2, which is clearly audible but not prominent in the mix.

Vol. III No. 4

I wonder at the way in which Kodak has gone so quietly into the good night of bankruptcy.

I recently received some (digital) photos on 'H-P' paper, a product of Hewlett-Packard. I'm reminded of the old Reese's commercial: 'What is your chocolate doing in my peanut butter?" What is H-P doing with Kodak's photo print market?

The H-P photos produce a strange irritation and a feeling of instability behind my eyes. Analog, film photographs never did that.

What prevents Kodak from promoting film photography as superier to digital and therefore preferable for most kinds of imaging?

This preference is not sentimental or Luddite, it is a preference for reality over illusion, clarity over distortion, substance over vacuousness.

Your intermittent, interpolated, numerically step-generated digital images are both inaccurate and irritating. Can't Kodak go to Madison Avenue to promote a product which is not?

Vol. III No. 3

The bel and decibel are the basis for audio measurement that purports to be scientific. But how scientific is a system that was created by asking listeners to determine when a given sound is twice as loud as another sound?

It is clear when you have twice as many oranges or twice as many pairs of socks. It is by no means clear when some tone is 'twice as loud' or 'half as loud' as some other tone.

One implication of this is that evaluation of 'linearity' in audio has no proper basis.

Vol. III No. 2

Readers, please take note of the 3 3/4 inches per second, 1/4 of an inch tape format on which some major label albums were released in the 60's and 70's.

Also, I heard Beyonce's "Freakum Dress" for the first time yesterday, and my comment to myself was that it sounds 'hideous' and extremely 'unmusical'. A song like this would never have gotten airplay in the 70's, when songs like "Midnight at the Oasis" were all over the charts. Note to Beyonce: Try recording in an all-analog studio. You will like what you hear.

Vol. III No. 1

An obvious problem for the audiophile is the large number of different manufacturers making system elements and components that may or may not be compatible with each other. Worse still is the matching of playback components with those used for recording and production. My variable intensity sound-on-film (VISOF) technology will consist of an entire system in which all components are optimally matched and standardized so a recording made with a given configuration will be played back on configurations that are as much as possible identical. In fact, I intend to create standardized studios with identical equipment installations where bands come in to record and where their music will be played back in virtually identical environments. These studios will be set up as refreshment bars with areas for lounging and dancing so the music can be fully and properly shared and enjoyed. Home and auto versions of the equipment, identical as much as possible while scaled to smaller size, will also be made available.