Seriously this is great. Education and entertainment as well as a great value.
Do you have a link so I can “gift” my son a subscription? Assume he is lurking for free and since he has made it past the first year at university will add it into his final exam care package his mom is going to send. The food will be gone quickly but hopefully what he learns and is exposed to here will last a bit longer.
That Ella - Cole Porter is a magical recording. I can’t tell you how many different pressings I have, but the DCC gold cds from the mid 90s beat even the best vinyl copy I have. If your cd player is good enough to take advantage of it. Played back properly, it’s like opening a portal in time and space, taking you back into the studio while it was being recorded. As I said, magical.
As a matter of the intersection between "material culture and technology" (LPs vs. 78rpms) and the content of culture, especially the arts, Ella's Songbooks LPs present us with the fascinating almost-paradox that we can assume that most of her LPs were bought by white males, and most of those males were Protestants.
But the LPs they were buying were of an African-American lady singing songs on the boundary between popular music and art songs, with many of the songs (of course, not Cole Porter's songs) having been written by the children of Jewish immigrants from Russia, the Ukraine, or Germany. And I really think that most people did not care.
Someone once asked Louis Farrakhan why he (I am not kidding) played Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto (Mendelssohn's family having converted to Christianity from Judaism), and Farrakhan cleverly replied something along the line of "after all the things Blacks have been through, don't we deserve the best music?" (That was 35 or so years ago.)
So, music never fails to provide me at least a little hope for humanity.
To clarify, Louis Farrakhan could play Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto on a real violin, in front of an orchestra. Upon re-reading, it struck me that people might think I was referring to Farrakhan's playing an LP. Nope. He could really play the violin.
I wish I'd had an opportunity to discuss with him how one should bow the beginning of the second movement. I think it can be started on an up-bow. FWIW & YMMV.
Look at it this way. A 45 rpm PROMO single from The Velvet Underground's first album, one of only 10 known to exist, just changed hands for $30,000.
OK! As between Ella Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, and that 45 rpm promo copy, which would you rather have as your only music for your enforced stay on a Desert Island?
Given that I've got a NM 2007 Japanese stereo reissue of VU and Nico with the obi and a VG+ 1978 Verve reissue (with stereo side A, mono side B), I'll take the Ella disc, please. :-)
I do cavil at the unscientific claim that a mono recording has “twice the data density” of a stereo one. There are reasons to prefer the mono masters of some recordings, but this isn’t one of them.
Hi, well, I was speaking about one particular recording, and I believe there were parallel mono and stereo analog tape setups at Capitol Studios, and I assume that the tape stock was the same for all four machines (mono and stereo, with a backup for each).
I heard the unedited backup three-channel safety tapes of "Kind of Blue" played back for me and two friends at Sony Music Mastering. IIRC, the mono and stereo tape decks used the same tape stock--why needlessly have multiple "consumables" SKUs?
I started recording in 1968, and the first commercial project of mine, on analog tape, from 1982, was last year released on a glass and gold signed numbered limited edition CD that retailed for $1200 each. So, in this particular case I might be wrong, but I have a lot of experience with analog tape. Bob Ludwig has done quite a few analog tape transfers for me.
When you record the same music onto two tape decks, and one is a two-channel stereo deck and one is a mono one-track deck, the mono music has a signal to noise advantage. None of this is about digital audio, it is all about analog tape.
Thanks for the clarification, John. I find the S/N on the stereo CD to be fine, but then I’m an old guy with high frequency hearing loss.
As I’m sure you know, Where Are You was the first Sinatra album recorded in stereo. You’ll also be aware that some Sinatra sessions were recorded in three-channel format, hence the famous photo of Old Blue Eyes at home with his three-channel playback system (and a huge bowl of cigarettes for guests).
I assume the center channel was primarily an isolated voice track, but I’ve never read any documentation on this ….
Yes, but for whatever reason, "I Cover the Waterfront" was only recorded in Mono. So, the original stereo LP had 11 tracks but the original mono LP had 12 tracks.
And as far as preferences go, I am a sucker for a holographic "Phantom Center Image," so I love great mono recordings like Ella's "Easy to Love" best when played back on a great stereo system.
BTW, my son named his daughter Ella, claiming that Ella was all he heard when he was growing up. I replied that she had to be Ella, because "David Oistrakh" would be a weird name for a baby girl.
An interesting list, and I'll have to check out some of these tracks. Curious to know what you think of using Fleetwood Mac's _Rumours_ as a reference recording, particularly Gold Dust Woman. I've often used it simply because I'm very familiar with it and there is so much happening in that track, and it's always fun to see how much of it a system will reveal. The album also is, so far as I know. beautifully recorded and mastered.
I've also heard of people using the first Rage Against the Machine album as a demo disc because it too is beautifully recorded.
Hope to see more audio / audiophile write-ups in the future... definitely an area I am interested in.
I have a nice system, and I'm very happy with it. It brings me a lot of joy, and I don't regret any step I've taken on the journey to get here.
But back in 2017, while attending CES for a former employer, I wandered up to the suites in the Venetian where the truly high-end audio companies demo their gear. I was choosing rooms almost at random when I wandered into what I want to say was the VTL Amplifiers room but may be mistaken, as it was a brand I'd not heard of before. Aside from the company rep, it was me and one other guy, who was either a dealer or a very special customer because he was engaged in a very detailed discussion of the _cables_ the system was wired with. At one point the guy whistles softly and says, "That's about $60,000 in cables."
Cables. And it is worth noting that VTL's top amp, a pair of monoblocks, go for $65k for the pair.
I take my seat behind the only other guy in the room, who is in what I imagine was the sweet spot, and the company rep plays Mozart. It was so overwhelmingly beautiful to hear that it brought tears to my eyes. The fidelity, the sound quality, the experience of being _there_ ... every audiophile cliche you've ever heard about a system vanishing and the soundstage expanding in all directions and yada yada yada was true. I've never heard anything like it.
A short time later, I wandered into another room at random, which turned out to be the YG Acoustics room. YG makes ultra-high-end speakers; I believe it was the XV being demo'd, with _four_ immense towers. Two gentlemen seated behind me were discussing it, and one of them mentioned that the XV retailed for $250,000.
A quarter of a million dollars. For speakers. I scanned the room and saw all the other gear and would not have been surprised if someone told me the system was approaching seven figures. I got up and left. I just knew that if I heard that system, it would leave me chasing something I could never capture. An analogy would be your driving a Le Mans prototype once, and then spending the rest of your days racing the Neon. All these years later, part of me wishes I'd stayed, if only to glimpse what was probably the sharpest leading edge of audio reproduction. But it was probably best that I didn't.
I just checked, and the latest XV system, the XV3, goes for something like $375k.
The funny thing about the very top-end stereo systems is that they provide a sort of super-normal experience; I've stood in front of a full-sized orchestra but what you get listening to a system like that is very different from a "reproduction", if that makes sense.
Jack, when you have time, please visit the listening room I helped design and build for the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. They just upgraded to Wilson Audio's XVX loudspeakers; I believe their MSRP is $325,000 the pair.
The thing nobody imagined when we were building the room was that, when some smart person added the Ralston Listening Room to the Campus Tour for prospective students and their parents, it became an important recruiting tool. There's a certain kind of student who would decide, "Wow, if they care this much about music, I want to be here."
I grew up relatively close to Sewanee; one of my best friends is the son of a trustee emeritus and significant donor. My friend attended the affiliated boarding school next door and earned such a distinguished disciplinary record that they told him - and his father - not to waste anyone’s time applying to Sewanee itself.
I went to grade school with the granddaughter of Harry Keywell, one of the principals of the Purple Gang. Another schoolmate's father owned Detroit's Fisher Building but how cool is commercial real estate compared to bootlegging hooch across the Detroit River?
The best test tracks are the ones you know by heart. Ideally, there's also a good amount of complexity, and the track has a good spectral balance from the bass through the mids and treble. Rumours will tell you more about a stereo than Patricia Barber ever will.
Your memory isn't lying to you on RATM. Bob Katz, a very well-respected audio engineer who also travels in audiophile circles, had the RATM debut on his list of great, clean recordings:
if there were any justice in the world, Bob Ludwig would be immortalized with a bronze statue somewhere. There are many remarkably good mastering engineers, but has anyone produced the volume of excellent recordings that he has?
If I had to pick one "Rumours" track as a test track, I'd choose "Second-Hand News." But as I said, my list is very subjective. If I had to choose one Fleetwood Mac track from all of them, it would be "Say You Love Me."
BTW, if you love "Rumours," I highly recommend Ken Caillat's "Kiss and Tell" memoir:
BTW, some years ago, I privately asked Bob Ludwig if he could choose only one album as the one he remembered most fondly or proudly for his contributions, he named The Band's "The Band."
My relationship to Bob Ludwig was so important to me, that when I decided voluntarily to leave Stereophile magazine, I asked Bob to be my interview subject for my last column:
My Dad has “Rumors” on vinyl, but there are no turntables to hook to a stereo. I presume a CD is probably the best, if it can be found. (If you buy anything from Amazon Music, you get the album in lossless, DRM-less digital format to use as you choose.)
I’ve had some delusions of upgrading my home listening environment to something in the 21st century. What is the best value in receivers for a “step-up” from the consumer-grade Best Buy stuff? (Yamaha and Denon always had a range above the Best Buy stuff; I’ve got a Yamaha which can’t even do anything digital, FFS!)
Are the electrostatic speakers from Martin Logan Acoustics any good? I’ve got a set of NHT SuperOne Xus, but they’ve both tumbled off the speaker stands, and they’re done! Otherwise, since NHT is a shadow of its former self, I’d probably go with Klipsch speakers for everything, including sub and surround.
Rumours (along with the ‘75 self-titled album and Tusk) has a lot of little differences between the original vinyl and the various remasters. Go with the vinyl - rare is the remix that improves on the original unless there were blatant mistakes on the original master.
The Rumours mix that Apple Music defaults to is one of the most egregious things I’ve ever heard. On “Second Hand News,” it sounds like Mick was replaced with a wind up toy.
As far as upgrading or replacing a system... that's a whole can of worms.
When you speak of "Receivers," 50 years ago everybody knew what that meant, but today there are various kinds.
Trying to be brief here: First of all, I assume that all you need is a stereo receiver and not a Home Theater receiver.
I'd advise against a "CD Receiver" that plays CDs, in that the transport and drawer are mechanical systems that are prone to wear and failure (even though there are exceptions to that rule).
So, you then have to decide whether you need FTA Radio (Free Through the Air/Terrestrial FM broadcast radio), or if Internet Radio is all you need.
Next, you have to decide if you want the ability to pre-amplify a phono cartridge so you can listen to LPs--although now you can get turntables with built-in phono stages.
Then you have to figure out:
Digital Audio Format Capabilities (how hi is the hi-res, and do you want to decode DSD)?
How much amplifier power?
Target price?
Here's a NAD integrated amplifier with onboard digital conversion and the possibility to add on Bluetooth, etc.
As far as loudspeakers go, what is your target price?
If I had to choose one price-performance leader that is from a small company that is an "Insider's Darling," I'd recommend checking out Philharmonic Audio's Bending Mode Radiator Monitors--they come standmounted (from $1,700/pair) or floor-standing (from $3900/pair):
I just try to figure out what the people are chanting in "B.O.B" without looking up the lyrics and if I can then the latest headphones I got from 5 Below are good enough for me.
A question for John (or anyone else with expertise):
But first, a preamble!
It will surprise no resident of the comment section that I had a *precocious* adolescence. Particularly so when it came to music. There was absolutely, strictly ZERO “popular” or Top 40 music in my life when I was a child (born in ‘89); I don’t think that my father listens to any music recorded after ~1985. I spent a year of my middle school life listening only to instrumental music - surf guitar and Tubular Bells (yes … really).
By high school, I had emerged from the nest. I vividly recall a conversation that took place on or about December 17, 2003. I recall it with such ease because I know exactly where I was on or around the date - viewing the cinematic premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. A friend’s father chaperoned a group of high school freshmen to Atlanta on opening night. Our chaperone was a pediatrician, and most of us would have been his patients, at least at some point.
The pediatrician was also a big shopper. In the days of Tuesday media releases - DVDs, CDs, books, etc. - he took the day off each week and drove to Atlanta to buy whatever was new. He asked me what I was receiving for Christmas:
Among other things, I had decided that I HAD to have a SONY SACD player plus the receiver and speakers, etc. He said: “I think that’s sort of a dead end … I just got another iPod, and it’s amazing how easy it is to have ALL of my music with me wherever I go.”
What ever happened to SACD and DVD-Audio? Do the “best” streaming services approximate that degree of fidelity? If not, what’s the point of high-end Bluetooth audio (i.e., Bang + Olufsen, etc.) other than vanity?
I've never had an SACD player, but SACDs are still around; I know Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs still releases them, and I'm pretty sure Analogue Productions and others do as well - mostly reissues of the audiophile chestnuts. I can't speak to other labels or contemporary releases though.
I don't know if the highest levels of Qoboz and Tidal offer the same fidelity as an SACD, but they can offer truly remarkable audio fidelity when listened to with something other than a bluetooth speaker or cheap earbuds.
I gave up my subscription, but at one point I was listening to Tidal through an Aurender music servicer (hardwired to my router with an ethernet cable) and a Benchmark external DAC and it sounded wonderful (can't compare to an SACD, as I've never owned a player.) The sound quality is also quite nice played through Audirvana (third party digital music playback software) loaded on my MacBook Pro with an Earmen Sparrow USB DAC and Etymotic in-ear monitors.
Yes, I am a bit of an audio nerd. And I'm sure others with more experience with SACDs and streaming services can speak to this with greater authority than I.
aside from benign swipes at you i think the top level streaming or download sites can achieve the high fidelity most are after but the question is still "how high does the quality have to be for you to notice on the hardware you own"
I grew up as a fish out of water in a small, remote town: ~1,200 residents; minimum 70 mile drive (each way) to buy anything (books; groceries beyond white bread, American cheese, etc). My parents had dial-up internet (the only option available) until 2010 or so.
I spent over an hour this evening educating myself about Maison Bonnet’s offering of real tortoiseshell glasses, as worn by a variety of 20th century luminaries (Onassis, most French politicians, I.M. Pei, etc.)
Now I OBVIOUSLY need a pair 😂 … apparently it’s a five figure proposition!
AFAIK, tortoiseshell is an endangered and regulated material, and so the legal way is to prove that the tortoiseshell was harvested pre-ban, which obviously drives up the price.
I have a fancy antique violin bow where the so-called "frog," the block that anchors the bow hair at the bottom end of the bow, is of real ivory. I have been warned that if I take the bow out of the country, it might be confiscated coming or going.
I recently started wearing glasses on occasion so I bought an aluminum model of the frames Malcolm X wore. They were surprisingly affordable although Lenscrafters initially didn't want to make lenses for 60 year old frames.
Despite my last name... my upbringing was so cloistered, parochial, and Irish that, as a precocious reader of the newspapers (age 6 or 7), I had somehow convinced myself that United States Black Nationalist leader Malcolm X was, in reality, "Pope Malcolm the Tenth."
Hey--John the XXIII, Malcolm X. They were both religious leaders with Roman Numerals instead of Last Names.
Sherman, oh the horror, only white bread and American cheese. How did your parents ever expect you to develope sophisticated taste, by making you live in a community without a Whole Wallet Grocery Store that has 874 kinds of cheese and 158 types of bread. It is almost abuse to grow up in a community where you could go out at night safely or your mom could tell you on Saturday morning dinner will be at 5 and she did not expect to see you again until dinner. Oh the horror of all that adolescent freedom. 😁😁😁
Food is not particularly important to either of my parents; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been willing to live where we did when I was a child.
The town is very different now. There is a high-end steakhouse, a local outpost of an Italian joint in Miami, two competing artisanal olive oil boutiques, etc. My parents view all of that with bemusement; most locals resent it.
We lived on 10 wooded and steep acres that abutted a busy, four-lane highway. I did not play outside very often.
There is one situated on a prominent site on what amounts to the Champs-Élysées for North Georgia hillbillies willing to drive 2/3 of the way to Atlanta to engage in retail commerce (i.e., a four lane road with a mall and every themed chain restaurant imaginable). As a child, I would sometimes ask to go; the answer was always “no,” presumably because both of my parents hated Olive Garden.
You can get high-resolution audio via certain streaming services (Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz) in the same quality as what SACD and DVD-Audio offered. I think it's a waste of bandwidth going beyond lossless into high-res audio. Our ears are not microphones or lab equipment, and can't pick up on this extra resolution over lossless and CD-quality audio.
The real benefit to SACD and DVD-A was multi-channel music, and the lack of adoption of those formats set the adoption of multi-channel music back about 15 years. Major tech companies (Apple, Samsung, Sony) and Dolby are pushing for multi-channel music again, to mixed results. I believe multi-channel music can be better - the Atmos mix of Pet Sounds done by Giles Martin is easily my favorite stereo mix of that album - but there are tons of crummy mixes a la the early days of stereo, and there's no quality control on what defines a proper Atmos system. A $100 soundbar, or your phone speakers, can be advertised as Atmos-capable along with a five-figure home theater setup. This is all before we open the can of worms that is trying to virtualize surround sound in headphones and earbuds for Atmos.
High-end Bluetooth audio exists because the marketing team insists on it. AirPlay and Chromecast generally supersede Bluetooth in these applications.
I stream jazz when in the house and in the car listen to our crazy local radio which plays “The Greatest Hits of the 20th Century” or as they say “Everything From Glenn Miller to Steve Milller”. The music selection is so weird I can’t help but listen.
SACD lived on as DSD recordings. It's a different way of encoding audio than PCM which is the standard of basically all digital audio. It's probably not perceptually any better than PCM but it sure takes up way more space so it's got to better, right? DVD-Audio was higher sample rate and bit depth PCM. It lives on in the "hi-res" tiers of Qobuz, Tidal Etc. Again it's questionable if anyone can hear the difference between 192khz 24 bit and plain old redbook 44.1khz 16 bit. I personally don't really hear a difference but I like listening to the relays click in my Schiit DAC whenever it switches bitrates so that's fun.
Not that I ever had a stereo setup worth a damn, but Steely Dan has long been my standard for evaluation.
It's only in the last couple of years that I really came to appreciate "If You Can Read My Mind," a fantastic recording and a really beautiful piece of songwriting.
I need to get my dad's old Pioneer HPMs fixed and find an appropriate vintage amp to run them through.
I heard a gossip story that during his coked-out days in Los Angeles. Lightfoot was so out of it that a family of raccoons had taken up residence in his kitchen cabinets.
And this was a house is one of those legendary "House in the Clouds" areas.
Perhaps Lightfoot could not hold onto a Housekeeper.
More of a question about when things go wrong. My usual way of making things sound good enough is running things through a schitt dac to a reasonable amp to older Boston Acoustic CR speakers size dependant on space. I am happy enough with the results but I am sure there is room for improvement.
One of my knuckleheads blew out the speakers on the setup in our retail space last year. While I got the speakers fixed they donated a bose system from the mid aughts, tiny little cubes and a sub.
It sounded OKish (not really) for most of what they played. However if I put on certain kinds of music, like the Dubliners or other folk style stuff it sounded like ass, regardless of volume.
My question is not how to fix it, it's been replaced, but what caused it to sound so bad in the first place but only under specific conditions?
Well, the joke we used to tell was that Amar Bose swore a deathbed oath to his Bengali father, that he would spend his life destroying the British Hi-Fi industry, because the British had imprisoned his father for agitating for Independence.
But Amar instead ended up destroying the American hi-fi business.
The pre-CD Bose Wave radio retailed for $395. I was told that on the loading dock in Taiwan, each Bose Wave Radio cost Bose $35.
Bose designed its systems to sound impressive on a short audition. All the real engineering work went into driving down costs. So, those tiny cubes started out with unimagineably cheap drivers (tweeters), and then Bose's electronics EQ'ed the doo-doo out of them.
Those little tweeters most likely cost less than $3 each--if that. My current loudspeaker design (for a client) uses a pro-audio Air Motion Transformer (like a Heil AMT driver) from Spain that costs $336 each. And the woofers are $425 each, and each woofer has two passive radiators at $110 each. And so on. So, using the usual metrics, that's a $10,000 the pair set of 2-way monitor speakers, if they were to be sold in a brick-and-mortar stereo store.
I knew an engineer working for Bose in those days and agree with everything you wrote. At least their engineers were competent and worked hard. The design goals, on the other hand...
Morel supplies the OEM drivers for the autosound system (IIRC, a 9-channel autosound system) in the Pagani Italian supercar. My favorite Morel driver is a low-profile shallow 6-inch inverted carbon-fiber cone coaxial woofer-tweeter module designed for OEM or retrofits on private jets or luxury yachts. I made a prototype loudspeaker using it; I called it the "Dark Star."
Morel's Hogtalare (the name is Swedish for Loudspeaker--it's some kind of partnership with IKEA) is made in China. Which is what one would expect.
BTW, the (not quite unique) "Unique Selling Proposition" of the Hogtalare is that you can buy two and configure them as Left and Right Stereo speakers.
I can remember when Morel made all their drivers in Israel and then started making them in the UK too. I built the speakers for my main system based on a Focal design that I borrowed with an equal pressure box for bass using Focal woofers. I time aligned a Morel dome tweeter whose model number I don't recall, and a 75mm Dynaudio dome midrange that I think sounds fabulous and that now costs 4X what it did when I built those speakers.
Speaking of Focal, at Alex Roy's audio salon in NYC, I heard a system with Focal speakers, I think they were Sopras, and McIntosh electronics, playing recordings I'd heard hundreds of times, and it was revelatory.
So much effort, so many experiments and measurements, so much SCIENCE! to create a speaker that had a narrower effective bandwidth than a banjo. I bet if I could get a list of the frequencies they were measuring in their "1/8th sphere theoretical device", it would explain a lot. It certainly wasn't a Zep record or DJ Magic Mike.
An apocryphal-sounding but very true story: Talking to the sales staff at Crestview Cadillac in the very early Nineties, I was informed that they actively discouraged customers from taking the Bose option, and they preferred NOT to stock Bose-equipped Cadillacs on the lot, because of the number of owners who tried to have their stereos serviced on the basis that they sounded worse than in their previous Cadillacs.
Gordon Lightfoot had an enviable classical-music education when he was a young church singer. He won a Canadian national competition for boy singers whose voices had not yet changed.
His competition showpiece was the 1826 Franz Schubert lied (German art song) "An Sylvia." Sung in German. The lyric is from Act 4 Scene 2 of Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona," translated into German. Darn impressive for a preteen kid.
Lightfoot was studying Orchestration at a music school in Los Angeles when he opened up the envelope containing his first royalty check for "Early Morning Rain," and the rest is history.
I am convinced that Lightfoot's totally under-rated song (which applies to 98% of his catalog) "Rainbow Trout" is Lightfoot's tribute to Franz Schubert--it can't be a coincidence, I think.
So, not your run-of-the-mill three- or four-chord rocker.
If I had to choose the most unfairly neglected Lightfoot masterpiece, it would be "I'm Not Supposed to Care."
The cosmic irony being that "I'm Not Supposed to Care" is the song on the album "Summertime Dream" that comes after... wait for it... "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
As per the norm with Gord's songs about the loss of love, it is passive-aggressive and embittered. But to use one of my favorite self-devised quips:
If humans were like amoebas,
And multiplied by dividing,
We would never need
Sad songs about lost love.
all my best,
john
OH! I really should have put into my bio here that for more than 25 years I was a Visiting Lecturer at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. I lectured on Music Theory and Music History and I organized and presented the Chamber-Music Performing Arts Series.
Originally, "stereotyping" was the printing process of creating a solid metal cast copy of a mother print block that was made up of expensive hand-set type letters. "Stereo" being the Greek word for "Solid."
So, the use of the term Stereo in audio refers to the "solid" center image illusion that proper stereo micing and recording technique creates.
But in popular usage, the term stereotype became a metaphor for an idea or set of ideas that were subject to lots of repetition without any changes--just like a printed newspaper has thousands of identical copies.
There are the guys with expensive stereos but small CD collections of music they liked in college. OK.
But some audiophiles and even some people in the high-end audio equipment business might surprise you with their depth of knowledge and their tasteful connoisseurship.
I phoned to follow up, and the guy told me that he had listened to this Mahler Third (which is the longest symphony in the standard orchestral repertory) three times, but he still could not get his head around how different it was from the many other versions of Mahler 3 he has.
Of course, this guy can just walk into Boston Symphony Hall and hang out in the upstairs Recording Shack.
Wow, I immediately ordered that Mahler Third Symphony. Been looking for a good version for years. I wore out two sets of the Nonesuch version in HS and college back in the 70s. Those LPs were noisy, but they sounded better than the Unicorn CDs that I had in the 90s. My college stereo was dual New Advent loudspeakers stacked like Absolute Sound recommended, a Marantz receiver, and a manual Pioneer turntable. A good system for a college student in those days, all stollen few years later.
I did not have a college stereo system, but my law-school system was similar to yours: Marantz turntable, IIRC Sanyo receiver, and Fried (IMF) Q2 loudspeakers.
So everyone else understands about this only-recently-released alternate recording of a Mahler Third Symphony performance that has been legendary for more than 50 years:
The Nonesuch and Unicorn LPs were made from the tapes recorded by Unicorn's "house" recording team. However, in parallel with the House tapes, an entirely separate recording setup recorded all the same music, both in stereo and four-channel surround. More info here: https://trackingangle.com/music/an-epochal-performance-properly-heard-for-the-first-time
So, you are hearing the same performance of the same music as you heard on the Nonesuch LPs back in the 1970s, but from alternate master tapes that sat of a shelf for 50 years because they were mostly raw and unedited. Bob Witrak of HDTT did the analog to digital transfers, and John Haley meticulously matched up every part of the old Unicorn/Nonesuch edited LP with Jerry Bruck's raw tapes. A project that stretched out to more than a year.
You can (link above) read the Tracking Angle review I wrote, which I believe is the longest "record review" I have ever written.
Please post a follow-up after you get a listen!
john, the former Mahler unbeliever
BTW, because I am friends with Jerry Bruck, and because Jerry Bruck knew (BUT NOT IN THE "BIBLICAL" SENSE) Gustav Mahler's widow, there are only two people shaking hands (Jerry and Alma) between me, and the guy I call Saint Gus.
I can't resist: Here's a very top-level, nearly inscrutable musicological witticism I authored:
I think that it's likely that they use of the word stereo in audio was borrowed from 3D photography, the word stereograph first being used in the mid 19th century. Like stereo photography, which makes a solid, three dimensional image out of two independent images, stereo audio, creates a three dimensional soundstage from two independent audio sources.
I also see that the Greek word "stereos" can also mean three dimensional as well as solid, but a quick search doesn't show when that usage began.
Stereo audio was developed in the mid to late 1950s, with the first stereo LPs being released by Columbia in 1958. There was a big fad in stereo photography in the late 1940s and early 1950s, after the *Stereo Realist 35mm 3D camera was introduced in 1947 and around the same time Hollywood briefly embraced 3D movies (hence the image of a theater full of patrons all wearing anaglyph 3D glasses https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fd/c3/40/fdc340a3fb2254fa0bd55be3d3f5a5ce--d-glasses-opening-night.jpg).
Car trivia: The Nash Healey sports car came about because of stereo photography. Donald Healey was on a boat to America to try and buy some of Cadillac's then new OHV V8 to put in his sports car. I think it was the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth. Healey noticed a large man taking photos on deck with a stereo camera, probably a Stereo Realist. Healey being a bit of a photography buff, approached the man, who turned out to be George Mason, CEO of Nash. He told Mason of his plan to buy Caddy motors but Mason told him that Cadillac likely didn't have any to spare and if things didn't work out in Detroit, he should look him up in Kenosha. Mason eventually gave Healey an offer he couldn't refuse, a distribution deal through Nash dealers and complete drivetrains on credit.
Stereo recording and playback as we know it actually was invented in the late 1920s, early 1930s by Alan Dower Blumlein. He applied for his UK Patent in 1931. By some coincidence, the record industry pretended that Blumlein's patent did not exist--that is, until it expired. Which brings us to the 1950s. (Of course, there was a World War in there.)
Blumlein, who worked for the BBC, did not use the word stereo or any version of it in his patent application, perhaps because Western Electric had begun using the term(s) informally in 1927, but as far as I know they did not trademark any such word.
Blumlein died in the service of his country during WWII. He was testing airborne radar equipment, and the airplane he was in had (IIRC) engine failure and crashed.
If I could only have one album to play for the rest of my life it would be the Ella Fitzgerald (a desperately poor and unattractive young woman) singing Cole Porter (a child of wealth from a small Indiana town). An incredible voice singing the songs of America's most literate and creative songwriter.
Read over the lyrics to You're the Top or Anything Goes or even Let's Do It before you disagree with me.
I mostly agree... But I'd say that Cole Porter was "One of" America's, etc. rather than reigning supreme.
Part of my reaction is that because my Desert Island Ella choice would be "Porgy & Bess" with Louis Armstrong.
And Cole Porter had no monopoly on cleverness. Michael Franks's song catalog is rather small, but I think you have to hand some sort of prize to the guy who penned the couplet:
I hear from my ex / On the back of my checks.
I sang that to a bank teller once, and she and her colleagues split their sides laughing.
Fair point and very clever. Not to diminish it but I'd argue that you could throw a dart at a at a wall of Cole Porter lyrics and hit one that's competitive with that. And then there's Night and Day, Begin the Beguine....
I award him extra points for writing both the music and lyrics at a time when it was not that common, especially for musicals. I can't recall off the top of my head if he ever had any partners in that. Almost related, but similarly why I rate the old school quarterbacks higher than many younger ones with similar or better statistics. Because they mostly both called the game and executed.
Anyway, I failed to comment before that I enjoyed the post and look forward to the others. I live less than a hour from Suwanee and had not heard of that room. On the bucket list so thanks for that as well.
I should listen closely to that -- I don't think I've ever actually played the song all the way through. Even her "Promises", which is a brilliant song, I prefer in Julie Dexter's version.
My favorite audio system was a cassette tape player that I used to use on my TRS-80 CoCo. Sloshing around in my beat up Chevy LuV. James Brown Solid Gold 20 Hits.
Four D batteries for a premium DC power supply with no ripple. Radio Shack Battery of the Month baby!
Fun fact, we have a Radio Shack in Fayetteville that is locally owned and still operates like the old Radio Shack. Although I have been in for a couple years.
This was a fabulous surprise. Great and informative post.
i will now try to listen to this though a laptop and low grade headphones
Thanks. Please stay tuned for four more articles and playlists. john
Please curate play lists for us. These are gold.
Pick a subject, any subject that interests you, write about it, and put together lists please.
This is the only way some of us musically underdeveloped find other music worth listening to.
Someone had mentioned Patricia O’Callahan to me and I thought I would remember her name (I did not) so now I am listening.
I picked up five articles from John at once and will be running them once a week for the next month.
Seriously this is great. Education and entertainment as well as a great value.
Do you have a link so I can “gift” my son a subscription? Assume he is lurking for free and since he has made it past the first year at university will add it into his final exam care package his mom is going to send. The food will be gone quickly but hopefully what he learns and is exposed to here will last a bit longer.
A parent can dream.
That Ella - Cole Porter is a magical recording. I can’t tell you how many different pressings I have, but the DCC gold cds from the mid 90s beat even the best vinyl copy I have. If your cd player is good enough to take advantage of it. Played back properly, it’s like opening a portal in time and space, taking you back into the studio while it was being recorded. As I said, magical.
Of course I entirely agree.
As a matter of the intersection between "material culture and technology" (LPs vs. 78rpms) and the content of culture, especially the arts, Ella's Songbooks LPs present us with the fascinating almost-paradox that we can assume that most of her LPs were bought by white males, and most of those males were Protestants.
But the LPs they were buying were of an African-American lady singing songs on the boundary between popular music and art songs, with many of the songs (of course, not Cole Porter's songs) having been written by the children of Jewish immigrants from Russia, the Ukraine, or Germany. And I really think that most people did not care.
Someone once asked Louis Farrakhan why he (I am not kidding) played Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto (Mendelssohn's family having converted to Christianity from Judaism), and Farrakhan cleverly replied something along the line of "after all the things Blacks have been through, don't we deserve the best music?" (That was 35 or so years ago.)
So, music never fails to provide me at least a little hope for humanity.
john
To clarify, Louis Farrakhan could play Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto on a real violin, in front of an orchestra. Upon re-reading, it struck me that people might think I was referring to Farrakhan's playing an LP. Nope. He could really play the violin.
I wish I'd had an opportunity to discuss with him how one should bow the beginning of the second movement. I think it can be started on an up-bow. FWIW & YMMV.
dammit... now I'm gonna have to track down the DCC and it's probably stupid expensive.
I've got several DCCs if you'd like to work out a trade of lossless rips...
OK, I could not resist. Discogs has a couple/few from US Sellers, starting at 80 bucks.
https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/8817164?ev=rb
(The one at $75 is no bargain--it is missing stuff. Avoid.)
And there's one eBay listing that looks good at $71 plus sales tax, if any, all-in:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313&_nkw=ella+fitzgerald+cole+porter+dcc+cd&_sacat=0
Look at it this way. A 45 rpm PROMO single from The Velvet Underground's first album, one of only 10 known to exist, just changed hands for $30,000.
OK! As between Ella Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, and that 45 rpm promo copy, which would you rather have as your only music for your enforced stay on a Desert Island?
amb,
john
Given that I've got a NM 2007 Japanese stereo reissue of VU and Nico with the obi and a VG+ 1978 Verve reissue (with stereo side A, mono side B), I'll take the Ella disc, please. :-)
Obi-Wan Kenobi says:
You are wise.
john
Swapping rips on Jacks Substack? I’m shocked. Shocked!
Have Jack send you my email. :)
^^ Hey Jack ^^
A really nice bunch of selections.
I do cavil at the unscientific claim that a mono recording has “twice the data density” of a stereo one. There are reasons to prefer the mono masters of some recordings, but this isn’t one of them.
Hi, well, I was speaking about one particular recording, and I believe there were parallel mono and stereo analog tape setups at Capitol Studios, and I assume that the tape stock was the same for all four machines (mono and stereo, with a backup for each).
I heard the unedited backup three-channel safety tapes of "Kind of Blue" played back for me and two friends at Sony Music Mastering. IIRC, the mono and stereo tape decks used the same tape stock--why needlessly have multiple "consumables" SKUs?
I started recording in 1968, and the first commercial project of mine, on analog tape, from 1982, was last year released on a glass and gold signed numbered limited edition CD that retailed for $1200 each. So, in this particular case I might be wrong, but I have a lot of experience with analog tape. Bob Ludwig has done quite a few analog tape transfers for me.
When you record the same music onto two tape decks, and one is a two-channel stereo deck and one is a mono one-track deck, the mono music has a signal to noise advantage. None of this is about digital audio, it is all about analog tape.
john
Thanks for the clarification, John. I find the S/N on the stereo CD to be fine, but then I’m an old guy with high frequency hearing loss.
As I’m sure you know, Where Are You was the first Sinatra album recorded in stereo. You’ll also be aware that some Sinatra sessions were recorded in three-channel format, hence the famous photo of Old Blue Eyes at home with his three-channel playback system (and a huge bowl of cigarettes for guests).
I assume the center channel was primarily an isolated voice track, but I’ve never read any documentation on this ….
Yes, but for whatever reason, "I Cover the Waterfront" was only recorded in Mono. So, the original stereo LP had 11 tracks but the original mono LP had 12 tracks.
And as far as preferences go, I am a sucker for a holographic "Phantom Center Image," so I love great mono recordings like Ella's "Easy to Love" best when played back on a great stereo system.
BTW, my son named his daughter Ella, claiming that Ella was all he heard when he was growing up. I replied that she had to be Ella, because "David Oistrakh" would be a weird name for a baby girl.
An interesting list, and I'll have to check out some of these tracks. Curious to know what you think of using Fleetwood Mac's _Rumours_ as a reference recording, particularly Gold Dust Woman. I've often used it simply because I'm very familiar with it and there is so much happening in that track, and it's always fun to see how much of it a system will reveal. The album also is, so far as I know. beautifully recorded and mastered.
I've also heard of people using the first Rage Against the Machine album as a demo disc because it too is beautifully recorded.
Hope to see more audio / audiophile write-ups in the future... definitely an area I am interested in.
THEY RALLY ROUND THE FAMILY / WITH A CAREFULLY CURATED AUDIOPHILE SYSTEM IN A PROPERLY TUNED ROOM
I have a nice system, and I'm very happy with it. It brings me a lot of joy, and I don't regret any step I've taken on the journey to get here.
But back in 2017, while attending CES for a former employer, I wandered up to the suites in the Venetian where the truly high-end audio companies demo their gear. I was choosing rooms almost at random when I wandered into what I want to say was the VTL Amplifiers room but may be mistaken, as it was a brand I'd not heard of before. Aside from the company rep, it was me and one other guy, who was either a dealer or a very special customer because he was engaged in a very detailed discussion of the _cables_ the system was wired with. At one point the guy whistles softly and says, "That's about $60,000 in cables."
Cables. And it is worth noting that VTL's top amp, a pair of monoblocks, go for $65k for the pair.
I take my seat behind the only other guy in the room, who is in what I imagine was the sweet spot, and the company rep plays Mozart. It was so overwhelmingly beautiful to hear that it brought tears to my eyes. The fidelity, the sound quality, the experience of being _there_ ... every audiophile cliche you've ever heard about a system vanishing and the soundstage expanding in all directions and yada yada yada was true. I've never heard anything like it.
A short time later, I wandered into another room at random, which turned out to be the YG Acoustics room. YG makes ultra-high-end speakers; I believe it was the XV being demo'd, with _four_ immense towers. Two gentlemen seated behind me were discussing it, and one of them mentioned that the XV retailed for $250,000.
A quarter of a million dollars. For speakers. I scanned the room and saw all the other gear and would not have been surprised if someone told me the system was approaching seven figures. I got up and left. I just knew that if I heard that system, it would leave me chasing something I could never capture. An analogy would be your driving a Le Mans prototype once, and then spending the rest of your days racing the Neon. All these years later, part of me wishes I'd stayed, if only to glimpse what was probably the sharpest leading edge of audio reproduction. But it was probably best that I didn't.
I just checked, and the latest XV system, the XV3, goes for something like $375k.
The funny thing about the very top-end stereo systems is that they provide a sort of super-normal experience; I've stood in front of a full-sized orchestra but what you get listening to a system like that is very different from a "reproduction", if that makes sense.
Yes, it completely makes sense.
Jack, when you have time, please visit the listening room I helped design and build for the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. They just upgraded to Wilson Audio's XVX loudspeakers; I believe their MSRP is $325,000 the pair.
For everyone else here's a somewhat recent article that is a retrospective of the first decade or so. https://futureaudiophile.com/university-of-the-south-brings-a-million-dollar-audiophile-experience-to-its-students-and-you-too/
The thing nobody imagined when we were building the room was that, when some smart person added the Ralston Listening Room to the Campus Tour for prospective students and their parents, it became an important recruiting tool. There's a certain kind of student who would decide, "Wow, if they care this much about music, I want to be here."
I grew up relatively close to Sewanee; one of my best friends is the son of a trustee emeritus and significant donor. My friend attended the affiliated boarding school next door and earned such a distinguished disciplinary record that they told him - and his father - not to waste anyone’s time applying to Sewanee itself.
I went to grade school with the granddaughter of Harry Keywell, one of the principals of the Purple Gang. Another schoolmate's father owned Detroit's Fisher Building but how cool is commercial real estate compared to bootlegging hooch across the Detroit River?
The best test tracks are the ones you know by heart. Ideally, there's also a good amount of complexity, and the track has a good spectral balance from the bass through the mids and treble. Rumours will tell you more about a stereo than Patricia Barber ever will.
Your memory isn't lying to you on RATM. Bob Katz, a very well-respected audio engineer who also travels in audiophile circles, had the RATM debut on his list of great, clean recordings:
Rage Against the Machine Mastered by Bob Ludwig. Engineered by Andy Wallace. A heavy metal album that is not squashed, but amazingly loud on an intrinsic basis. Good dynamics, clean--let's roll back the clock! How far we have come to have lost this sound quality! Epic, 2k 52959, ©1992
https://www.digido.com/honor-roll/
if there were any justice in the world, Bob Ludwig would be immortalized with a bronze statue somewhere. There are many remarkably good mastering engineers, but has anyone produced the volume of excellent recordings that he has?
Thanks for reading and thanks for writing in.
If I had to pick one "Rumours" track as a test track, I'd choose "Second-Hand News." But as I said, my list is very subjective. If I had to choose one Fleetwood Mac track from all of them, it would be "Say You Love Me."
BTW, if you love "Rumours," I highly recommend Ken Caillat's "Kiss and Tell" memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Rumours-Inside-Classic-Fleetwood/dp/1683365909
john
Second Hand News is an excellent suggestion. Thank you.
I’ve read Making Rumours and have Tusked on the pile to be read.
BTW, some years ago, I privately asked Bob Ludwig if he could choose only one album as the one he remembered most fondly or proudly for his contributions, he named The Band's "The Band."
My relationship to Bob Ludwig was so important to me, that when I decided voluntarily to leave Stereophile magazine, I asked Bob to be my interview subject for my last column:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/fifth-element-93
john
What is the best medium for the album?
My Dad has “Rumors” on vinyl, but there are no turntables to hook to a stereo. I presume a CD is probably the best, if it can be found. (If you buy anything from Amazon Music, you get the album in lossless, DRM-less digital format to use as you choose.)
I’ve had some delusions of upgrading my home listening environment to something in the 21st century. What is the best value in receivers for a “step-up” from the consumer-grade Best Buy stuff? (Yamaha and Denon always had a range above the Best Buy stuff; I’ve got a Yamaha which can’t even do anything digital, FFS!)
Are the electrostatic speakers from Martin Logan Acoustics any good? I’ve got a set of NHT SuperOne Xus, but they’ve both tumbled off the speaker stands, and they’re done! Otherwise, since NHT is a shadow of its former self, I’d probably go with Klipsch speakers for everything, including sub and surround.
Rumours (along with the ‘75 self-titled album and Tusk) has a lot of little differences between the original vinyl and the various remasters. Go with the vinyl - rare is the remix that improves on the original unless there were blatant mistakes on the original master.
The Rumours mix that Apple Music defaults to is one of the most egregious things I’ve ever heard. On “Second Hand News,” it sounds like Mick was replaced with a wind up toy.
As far as upgrading or replacing a system... that's a whole can of worms.
When you speak of "Receivers," 50 years ago everybody knew what that meant, but today there are various kinds.
Trying to be brief here: First of all, I assume that all you need is a stereo receiver and not a Home Theater receiver.
I'd advise against a "CD Receiver" that plays CDs, in that the transport and drawer are mechanical systems that are prone to wear and failure (even though there are exceptions to that rule).
So, you then have to decide whether you need FTA Radio (Free Through the Air/Terrestrial FM broadcast radio), or if Internet Radio is all you need.
BTW, www.radioswissjazz.ch/en is wonderful.
Next, you have to decide if you want the ability to pre-amplify a phono cartridge so you can listen to LPs--although now you can get turntables with built-in phono stages.
Then you have to figure out:
Digital Audio Format Capabilities (how hi is the hi-res, and do you want to decode DSD)?
How much amplifier power?
Target price?
Here's a NAD integrated amplifier with onboard digital conversion and the possibility to add on Bluetooth, etc.
https://futureaudiophile.com/nad-c-3050-integrated-le-amplifier-reviewed/
Music Direct has 33 receivers on offer:
https://www.musicdirect.com/equipment/amplification/receiver/?sort=priceasc
As far as loudspeakers go, what is your target price?
If I had to choose one price-performance leader that is from a small company that is an "Insider's Darling," I'd recommend checking out Philharmonic Audio's Bending Mode Radiator Monitors--they come standmounted (from $1,700/pair) or floor-standing (from $3900/pair):
https://philharmonicaudio.com/products/bmr-tower?variant=44391572340980
Best of luck,
john
Home theater is a goal, but it looks like you’ve given me food for thought—thanks!
I just try to figure out what the people are chanting in "B.O.B" without looking up the lyrics and if I can then the latest headphones I got from 5 Below are good enough for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVehcuJXe6I
i could only figure out half
A question for John (or anyone else with expertise):
But first, a preamble!
It will surprise no resident of the comment section that I had a *precocious* adolescence. Particularly so when it came to music. There was absolutely, strictly ZERO “popular” or Top 40 music in my life when I was a child (born in ‘89); I don’t think that my father listens to any music recorded after ~1985. I spent a year of my middle school life listening only to instrumental music - surf guitar and Tubular Bells (yes … really).
By high school, I had emerged from the nest. I vividly recall a conversation that took place on or about December 17, 2003. I recall it with such ease because I know exactly where I was on or around the date - viewing the cinematic premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. A friend’s father chaperoned a group of high school freshmen to Atlanta on opening night. Our chaperone was a pediatrician, and most of us would have been his patients, at least at some point.
The pediatrician was also a big shopper. In the days of Tuesday media releases - DVDs, CDs, books, etc. - he took the day off each week and drove to Atlanta to buy whatever was new. He asked me what I was receiving for Christmas:
Among other things, I had decided that I HAD to have a SONY SACD player plus the receiver and speakers, etc. He said: “I think that’s sort of a dead end … I just got another iPod, and it’s amazing how easy it is to have ALL of my music with me wherever I go.”
What ever happened to SACD and DVD-Audio? Do the “best” streaming services approximate that degree of fidelity? If not, what’s the point of high-end Bluetooth audio (i.e., Bang + Olufsen, etc.) other than vanity?
I've never had an SACD player, but SACDs are still around; I know Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs still releases them, and I'm pretty sure Analogue Productions and others do as well - mostly reissues of the audiophile chestnuts. I can't speak to other labels or contemporary releases though.
I don't know if the highest levels of Qoboz and Tidal offer the same fidelity as an SACD, but they can offer truly remarkable audio fidelity when listened to with something other than a bluetooth speaker or cheap earbuds.
I gave up my subscription, but at one point I was listening to Tidal through an Aurender music servicer (hardwired to my router with an ethernet cable) and a Benchmark external DAC and it sounded wonderful (can't compare to an SACD, as I've never owned a player.) The sound quality is also quite nice played through Audirvana (third party digital music playback software) loaded on my MacBook Pro with an Earmen Sparrow USB DAC and Etymotic in-ear monitors.
Yes, I am a bit of an audio nerd. And I'm sure others with more experience with SACDs and streaming services can speak to this with greater authority than I.
i think you were just born old
aside from benign swipes at you i think the top level streaming or download sites can achieve the high fidelity most are after but the question is still "how high does the quality have to be for you to notice on the hardware you own"
I grew up as a fish out of water in a small, remote town: ~1,200 residents; minimum 70 mile drive (each way) to buy anything (books; groceries beyond white bread, American cheese, etc). My parents had dial-up internet (the only option available) until 2010 or so.
unironically glad you could become the man you wanted to be
An ongoing work in progress!
I spent over an hour this evening educating myself about Maison Bonnet’s offering of real tortoiseshell glasses, as worn by a variety of 20th century luminaries (Onassis, most French politicians, I.M. Pei, etc.)
Now I OBVIOUSLY need a pair 😂 … apparently it’s a five figure proposition!
E.g. - https://www.maisonbonnet.com/en/custom-made-glasses/pei
what do you mean five figures
are the real tortoiseshells fossilized or what
Bear in mind these prices are 14 years old
https://archive.is/Q4D6N
AFAIK, tortoiseshell is an endangered and regulated material, and so the legal way is to prove that the tortoiseshell was harvested pre-ban, which obviously drives up the price.
I have a fancy antique violin bow where the so-called "frog," the block that anchors the bow hair at the bottom end of the bow, is of real ivory. I have been warned that if I take the bow out of the country, it might be confiscated coming or going.
I recently started wearing glasses on occasion so I bought an aluminum model of the frames Malcolm X wore. They were surprisingly affordable although Lenscrafters initially didn't want to make lenses for 60 year old frames.
Despite my last name... my upbringing was so cloistered, parochial, and Irish that, as a precocious reader of the newspapers (age 6 or 7), I had somehow convinced myself that United States Black Nationalist leader Malcolm X was, in reality, "Pope Malcolm the Tenth."
Hey--John the XXIII, Malcolm X. They were both religious leaders with Roman Numerals instead of Last Names.
john
20K to look like a dork
Sherman, oh the horror, only white bread and American cheese. How did your parents ever expect you to develope sophisticated taste, by making you live in a community without a Whole Wallet Grocery Store that has 874 kinds of cheese and 158 types of bread. It is almost abuse to grow up in a community where you could go out at night safely or your mom could tell you on Saturday morning dinner will be at 5 and she did not expect to see you again until dinner. Oh the horror of all that adolescent freedom. 😁😁😁
Food is not particularly important to either of my parents; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been willing to live where we did when I was a child.
The town is very different now. There is a high-end steakhouse, a local outpost of an Italian joint in Miami, two competing artisanal olive oil boutiques, etc. My parents view all of that with bemusement; most locals resent it.
We lived on 10 wooded and steep acres that abutted a busy, four-lane highway. I did not play outside very often.
My parents think my wife an I are snobs because our idea of fine dining isn't "the olive garden"
I’ve actually never eaten in an Olive Garden.
There is one situated on a prominent site on what amounts to the Champs-Élysées for North Georgia hillbillies willing to drive 2/3 of the way to Atlanta to engage in retail commerce (i.e., a four lane road with a mall and every themed chain restaurant imaginable). As a child, I would sometimes ask to go; the answer was always “no,” presumably because both of my parents hated Olive Garden.
I'm Jewish in the same way that The Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.
In both cases, the names are misleading.
john
You can get high-resolution audio via certain streaming services (Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz) in the same quality as what SACD and DVD-Audio offered. I think it's a waste of bandwidth going beyond lossless into high-res audio. Our ears are not microphones or lab equipment, and can't pick up on this extra resolution over lossless and CD-quality audio.
The real benefit to SACD and DVD-A was multi-channel music, and the lack of adoption of those formats set the adoption of multi-channel music back about 15 years. Major tech companies (Apple, Samsung, Sony) and Dolby are pushing for multi-channel music again, to mixed results. I believe multi-channel music can be better - the Atmos mix of Pet Sounds done by Giles Martin is easily my favorite stereo mix of that album - but there are tons of crummy mixes a la the early days of stereo, and there's no quality control on what defines a proper Atmos system. A $100 soundbar, or your phone speakers, can be advertised as Atmos-capable along with a five-figure home theater setup. This is all before we open the can of worms that is trying to virtualize surround sound in headphones and earbuds for Atmos.
High-end Bluetooth audio exists because the marketing team insists on it. AirPlay and Chromecast generally supersede Bluetooth in these applications.
Thank you.
At this point I hardly even listen to music, anyway!
I stream jazz when in the house and in the car listen to our crazy local radio which plays “The Greatest Hits of the 20th Century” or as they say “Everything From Glenn Miller to Steve Milller”. The music selection is so weird I can’t help but listen.
I’m on the phone a lot during the day, and I listen to hours of podcasts every day / evening. I listen to white noise when I’m reading.
I still collect and listen to SACD.
Qobuz is theoretically just as good, but it's also a hassle to get into my sound system at the proper bandwidth.
SACD lived on as DSD recordings. It's a different way of encoding audio than PCM which is the standard of basically all digital audio. It's probably not perceptually any better than PCM but it sure takes up way more space so it's got to better, right? DVD-Audio was higher sample rate and bit depth PCM. It lives on in the "hi-res" tiers of Qobuz, Tidal Etc. Again it's questionable if anyone can hear the difference between 192khz 24 bit and plain old redbook 44.1khz 16 bit. I personally don't really hear a difference but I like listening to the relays click in my Schiit DAC whenever it switches bitrates so that's fun.
Not that I ever had a stereo setup worth a damn, but Steely Dan has long been my standard for evaluation.
It's only in the last couple of years that I really came to appreciate "If You Can Read My Mind," a fantastic recording and a really beautiful piece of songwriting.
I need to get my dad's old Pioneer HPMs fixed and find an appropriate vintage amp to run them through.
If you could read my mind, love
You'd have your hands up in front of your face already
Astounding how ready Gordon was to knock a broad around -- but not astounding why the broads never left despite that.
I am laughing, sadly. Jack, that was BRILLIANT!!!
I heard a gossip story that during his coked-out days in Los Angeles. Lightfoot was so out of it that a family of raccoons had taken up residence in his kitchen cabinets.
And this was a house is one of those legendary "House in the Clouds" areas.
Perhaps Lightfoot could not hold onto a Housekeeper.
More of a question about when things go wrong. My usual way of making things sound good enough is running things through a schitt dac to a reasonable amp to older Boston Acoustic CR speakers size dependant on space. I am happy enough with the results but I am sure there is room for improvement.
One of my knuckleheads blew out the speakers on the setup in our retail space last year. While I got the speakers fixed they donated a bose system from the mid aughts, tiny little cubes and a sub.
It sounded OKish (not really) for most of what they played. However if I put on certain kinds of music, like the Dubliners or other folk style stuff it sounded like ass, regardless of volume.
My question is not how to fix it, it's been replaced, but what caused it to sound so bad in the first place but only under specific conditions?
Well, the joke we used to tell was that Amar Bose swore a deathbed oath to his Bengali father, that he would spend his life destroying the British Hi-Fi industry, because the British had imprisoned his father for agitating for Independence.
But Amar instead ended up destroying the American hi-fi business.
The pre-CD Bose Wave radio retailed for $395. I was told that on the loading dock in Taiwan, each Bose Wave Radio cost Bose $35.
Bose designed its systems to sound impressive on a short audition. All the real engineering work went into driving down costs. So, those tiny cubes started out with unimagineably cheap drivers (tweeters), and then Bose's electronics EQ'ed the doo-doo out of them.
Those little tweeters most likely cost less than $3 each--if that. My current loudspeaker design (for a client) uses a pro-audio Air Motion Transformer (like a Heil AMT driver) from Spain that costs $336 each. And the woofers are $425 each, and each woofer has two passive radiators at $110 each. And so on. So, using the usual metrics, that's a $10,000 the pair set of 2-way monitor speakers, if they were to be sold in a brick-and-mortar stereo store.
I knew an engineer working for Bose in those days and agree with everything you wrote. At least their engineers were competent and worked hard. The design goals, on the other hand...
Thanks. In the fullness of time, I should write an article about the new generation of Bluetooth, one-box "Lifestyle" music players.
At this moment, one of these is playing in my kitchen, and the sound is amazingly acceptable for the $400 price:
https://www.amazon.com/H%C3%B6gtalare-Dynamic-Wireless-Speaker-Compatible/dp/B081S5181R/?th=1
Now this is right up my alley. Hope to read that article.
Me too
Always liked Morel tweeters. Particularly the MDT-33 and successors but you won't find them in a $400 speaker.
Morel supplies the OEM drivers for the autosound system (IIRC, a 9-channel autosound system) in the Pagani Italian supercar. My favorite Morel driver is a low-profile shallow 6-inch inverted carbon-fiber cone coaxial woofer-tweeter module designed for OEM or retrofits on private jets or luxury yachts. I made a prototype loudspeaker using it; I called it the "Dark Star."
Morel's Hogtalare (the name is Swedish for Loudspeaker--it's some kind of partnership with IKEA) is made in China. Which is what one would expect.
BTW, the (not quite unique) "Unique Selling Proposition" of the Hogtalare is that you can buy two and configure them as Left and Right Stereo speakers.
I can remember when Morel made all their drivers in Israel and then started making them in the UK too. I built the speakers for my main system based on a Focal design that I borrowed with an equal pressure box for bass using Focal woofers. I time aligned a Morel dome tweeter whose model number I don't recall, and a 75mm Dynaudio dome midrange that I think sounds fabulous and that now costs 4X what it did when I built those speakers.
Speaking of Focal, at Alex Roy's audio salon in NYC, I heard a system with Focal speakers, I think they were Sopras, and McIntosh electronics, playing recordings I'd heard hundreds of times, and it was revelatory.
"No highs, no lows, must be Bose."
He tells the story of the 901 here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150910082342/http://www.rle.mit.edu/bose/
So much effort, so many experiments and measurements, so much SCIENCE! to create a speaker that had a narrower effective bandwidth than a banjo. I bet if I could get a list of the frequencies they were measuring in their "1/8th sphere theoretical device", it would explain a lot. It certainly wasn't a Zep record or DJ Magic Mike.
An apocryphal-sounding but very true story: Talking to the sales staff at Crestview Cadillac in the very early Nineties, I was informed that they actively discouraged customers from taking the Bose option, and they preferred NOT to stock Bose-equipped Cadillacs on the lot, because of the number of owners who tried to have their stereos serviced on the basis that they sounded worse than in their previous Cadillacs.
I heard it this way:
"There are no highs. There are no lows. It must be Bose."
I think Amar Bose's greatest insights were:
4" full range drivers are cheap and if you use 9 of them they can move enough air for decent bass response.
Humans react favorably to the effect of sound bouncing off of the walls of the listening room.
With enough EQ even cheap drivers can sound okay.
I won't be unsubscribing over this!
Very nice!
Thanks!
john
Today marks the first time I've ever seen or heard Gordon Lightfoot mentioned outside of the context of his danged song about that damned ship.
It's like Leonard Cohen and "Hallelujah". These people wrote more than one song. Some of them are even good!
Gordon Lightfoot had an enviable classical-music education when he was a young church singer. He won a Canadian national competition for boy singers whose voices had not yet changed.
His competition showpiece was the 1826 Franz Schubert lied (German art song) "An Sylvia." Sung in German. The lyric is from Act 4 Scene 2 of Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen of Verona," translated into German. Darn impressive for a preteen kid.
Lightfoot was studying Orchestration at a music school in Los Angeles when he opened up the envelope containing his first royalty check for "Early Morning Rain," and the rest is history.
I am convinced that Lightfoot's totally under-rated song (which applies to 98% of his catalog) "Rainbow Trout" is Lightfoot's tribute to Franz Schubert--it can't be a coincidence, I think.
So, not your run-of-the-mill three- or four-chord rocker.
If I had to choose the most unfairly neglected Lightfoot masterpiece, it would be "I'm Not Supposed to Care."
The cosmic irony being that "I'm Not Supposed to Care" is the song on the album "Summertime Dream" that comes after... wait for it... "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
As per the norm with Gord's songs about the loss of love, it is passive-aggressive and embittered. But to use one of my favorite self-devised quips:
If humans were like amoebas,
And multiplied by dividing,
We would never need
Sad songs about lost love.
all my best,
john
OH! I really should have put into my bio here that for more than 25 years I was a Visiting Lecturer at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. I lectured on Music Theory and Music History and I organized and presented the Chamber-Music Performing Arts Series.
That sounds like Ogden Nash.
How does the saying go? "Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment."
I'll show myself out...!
No need to show yourself out...
I am well aware of that STEREOTYPE... .
Ha ha ha, a Material Culture and Technology Pun!
Originally, "stereotyping" was the printing process of creating a solid metal cast copy of a mother print block that was made up of expensive hand-set type letters. "Stereo" being the Greek word for "Solid."
So, the use of the term Stereo in audio refers to the "solid" center image illusion that proper stereo micing and recording technique creates.
But in popular usage, the term stereotype became a metaphor for an idea or set of ideas that were subject to lots of repetition without any changes--just like a printed newspaper has thousands of identical copies.
There are the guys with expensive stereos but small CD collections of music they liked in college. OK.
But some audiophiles and even some people in the high-end audio equipment business might surprise you with their depth of knowledge and their tasteful connoisseurship.
I sent a digital download to a digital-audio equipment manufacturer guy (you can download a hi-res excerpt here https://www.highdeftapetransfers.ca/products/mahler-symphony-no-3-jascha-horenstein-lso) of a just-recently released alternate recording of one of the most famous performances, from 1970, of any Mahler symphony.
I phoned to follow up, and the guy told me that he had listened to this Mahler Third (which is the longest symphony in the standard orchestral repertory) three times, but he still could not get his head around how different it was from the many other versions of Mahler 3 he has.
Of course, this guy can just walk into Boston Symphony Hall and hang out in the upstairs Recording Shack.
Wow, I immediately ordered that Mahler Third Symphony. Been looking for a good version for years. I wore out two sets of the Nonesuch version in HS and college back in the 70s. Those LPs were noisy, but they sounded better than the Unicorn CDs that I had in the 90s. My college stereo was dual New Advent loudspeakers stacked like Absolute Sound recommended, a Marantz receiver, and a manual Pioneer turntable. A good system for a college student in those days, all stollen few years later.
GREAT!
I did not have a college stereo system, but my law-school system was similar to yours: Marantz turntable, IIRC Sanyo receiver, and Fried (IMF) Q2 loudspeakers.
So everyone else understands about this only-recently-released alternate recording of a Mahler Third Symphony performance that has been legendary for more than 50 years:
The Nonesuch and Unicorn LPs were made from the tapes recorded by Unicorn's "house" recording team. However, in parallel with the House tapes, an entirely separate recording setup recorded all the same music, both in stereo and four-channel surround. More info here: https://trackingangle.com/music/an-epochal-performance-properly-heard-for-the-first-time
And even if you don't know much about Mahler, here's a laugh-out-loud funny vignette of my love life in college, which was tormented from beyond the grave by Gustav Mahler: https://trackingangle.com/features/the-brief-confessions-of-a-former-mahler-unbeliever
So, you are hearing the same performance of the same music as you heard on the Nonesuch LPs back in the 1970s, but from alternate master tapes that sat of a shelf for 50 years because they were mostly raw and unedited. Bob Witrak of HDTT did the analog to digital transfers, and John Haley meticulously matched up every part of the old Unicorn/Nonesuch edited LP with Jerry Bruck's raw tapes. A project that stretched out to more than a year.
You can (link above) read the Tracking Angle review I wrote, which I believe is the longest "record review" I have ever written.
Please post a follow-up after you get a listen!
john, the former Mahler unbeliever
BTW, because I am friends with Jerry Bruck, and because Jerry Bruck knew (BUT NOT IN THE "BIBLICAL" SENSE) Gustav Mahler's widow, there are only two people shaking hands (Jerry and Alma) between me, and the guy I call Saint Gus.
I can't resist: Here's a very top-level, nearly inscrutable musicological witticism I authored:
JESUS OF NAZARETH IS THE "CHRIST FIGURE"
FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN'T DEAL WITH GUSTAV MAHLER.
John,
I think that it's likely that they use of the word stereo in audio was borrowed from 3D photography, the word stereograph first being used in the mid 19th century. Like stereo photography, which makes a solid, three dimensional image out of two independent images, stereo audio, creates a three dimensional soundstage from two independent audio sources.
I also see that the Greek word "stereos" can also mean three dimensional as well as solid, but a quick search doesn't show when that usage began.
Stereo audio was developed in the mid to late 1950s, with the first stereo LPs being released by Columbia in 1958. There was a big fad in stereo photography in the late 1940s and early 1950s, after the *Stereo Realist 35mm 3D camera was introduced in 1947 and around the same time Hollywood briefly embraced 3D movies (hence the image of a theater full of patrons all wearing anaglyph 3D glasses https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fd/c3/40/fdc340a3fb2254fa0bd55be3d3f5a5ce--d-glasses-opening-night.jpg).
Car trivia: The Nash Healey sports car came about because of stereo photography. Donald Healey was on a boat to America to try and buy some of Cadillac's then new OHV V8 to put in his sports car. I think it was the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth. Healey noticed a large man taking photos on deck with a stereo camera, probably a Stereo Realist. Healey being a bit of a photography buff, approached the man, who turned out to be George Mason, CEO of Nash. He told Mason of his plan to buy Caddy motors but Mason told him that Cadillac likely didn't have any to spare and if things didn't work out in Detroit, he should look him up in Kenosha. Mason eventually gave Healey an offer he couldn't refuse, a distribution deal through Nash dealers and complete drivetrains on credit.
Hi, Ronnie,
Thanks.
Stereo recording and playback as we know it actually was invented in the late 1920s, early 1930s by Alan Dower Blumlein. He applied for his UK Patent in 1931. By some coincidence, the record industry pretended that Blumlein's patent did not exist--that is, until it expired. Which brings us to the 1950s. (Of course, there was a World War in there.)
Blumlein, who worked for the BBC, did not use the word stereo or any version of it in his patent application, perhaps because Western Electric had begun using the term(s) informally in 1927, but as far as I know they did not trademark any such word.
Blumlein died in the service of his country during WWII. He was testing airborne radar equipment, and the airplane he was in had (IIRC) engine failure and crashed.
john
If I could only have one album to play for the rest of my life it would be the Ella Fitzgerald (a desperately poor and unattractive young woman) singing Cole Porter (a child of wealth from a small Indiana town). An incredible voice singing the songs of America's most literate and creative songwriter.
Read over the lyrics to You're the Top or Anything Goes or even Let's Do It before you disagree with me.
I mostly agree... But I'd say that Cole Porter was "One of" America's, etc. rather than reigning supreme.
Part of my reaction is that because my Desert Island Ella choice would be "Porgy & Bess" with Louis Armstrong.
And Cole Porter had no monopoly on cleverness. Michael Franks's song catalog is rather small, but I think you have to hand some sort of prize to the guy who penned the couplet:
I hear from my ex / On the back of my checks.
I sang that to a bank teller once, and she and her colleagues split their sides laughing.
https://thetannhausergate.com/index.php/2016/04/12/michael-franks-sleeping-gypsy/
john
Fair point and very clever. Not to diminish it but I'd argue that you could throw a dart at a at a wall of Cole Porter lyrics and hit one that's competitive with that. And then there's Night and Day, Begin the Beguine....
I award him extra points for writing both the music and lyrics at a time when it was not that common, especially for musicals. I can't recall off the top of my head if he ever had any partners in that. Almost related, but similarly why I rate the old school quarterbacks higher than many younger ones with similar or better statistics. Because they mostly both called the game and executed.
Anyway, I failed to comment before that I enjoyed the post and look forward to the others. I live less than a hour from Suwanee and had not heard of that room. On the bucket list so thanks for that as well.
That couplet reminds me of Hank Williams’ Dear John:
Now, I went down to the bank this morning
The cashier said with a grin
I feel so sorry for you Hank
But your wife has done been in
Cf. “I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight,” my favorite version of which comes courtesy of Jerry Jeff Walker - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7co_G2ppkk
The opening few lines in particular are haunting:
“Well, I could live my whole life
Without a phone call
The likes of which I got today
It was only my wife
Said hello then goodbye
And told me she's goin' away”
Pretty good.
I didn’t cry, it was all cut and dried…..
That’s a song to listen to while drinking Jack Daniel’s
I have that Porgy & Bess on CD.
What do you think the best release is of the Gershwin/Whiteman Carnegie Hall recording?
Thanks for this post. I have some listening to do!
One of my favorite songs to test the breadth and depth of a sound system is Enya’s “Orinoco Flow.”
Does that have any merit, or should I be donning a garbage bag to try to not get completely besotted with rotten tomatoes?
I should listen closely to that -- I don't think I've ever actually played the song all the way through. Even her "Promises", which is a brilliant song, I prefer in Julie Dexter's version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDiqNEtf5Ew
orinico flow but smoover
Neat stuff! It fits perfectly!
I used to use Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush as a test track long ago when it came out.
Power of Love. If I am smiling after the first 5 seconds it's a good system.
My favorite audio system was a cassette tape player that I used to use on my TRS-80 CoCo. Sloshing around in my beat up Chevy LuV. James Brown Solid Gold 20 Hits.
Four D batteries for a premium DC power supply with no ripple. Radio Shack Battery of the Month baby!
HOLY SHIT
WHAT IS THAT I SEE IN THE DISTANCE
IS THAT A FELLOW MEMBER OF THE MASTER RACE
AKA
RADIO SHACK B-O-T-M UBER HUMANS
CARDS... DISPLAY!
Fun fact, we have a Radio Shack in Fayetteville that is locally owned and still operates like the old Radio Shack. Although I have been in for a couple years.