Feature Articles

: Written by: Garrett Hongo; Category: General Interest & Interviews; Created: 01 November 2010

201011_pic1 Summer in Southern California is beaches, BBQs, sun and fun, outdoor symphony concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, and a lot of freeway driving. It’s not as well known for audio, though manufacturers, distributors, and legendary dealerships abound in the area. I recently dropped in on two SoCal distributors: Philip O’Hanlon’s On a Higher Note, in San Juan Capistrano, and Dan Meinwald’s EAR USA/Sound Advice, in Long Beach. On a Higher Note distributes Brinkmann Audio, Luxman, Vivid Audio, and (soon) Audio Aero, while EAR USA/Sound Advice distributes EAR, Mårten Design, Townshend Audio, and Jorma Design.

Philip O’Hanlon lives in the foothills above San Juan Capistrano. I drove up through swank suburban roads to O’Hanlon’s large, two-story, Mediterranean-style home. O’Hanlon greeted me at the door and waved me quickly inside; he was busy making up playlists on an iPad, for later burning to CD. He spoke with the distinctive Gaelic lilt and precise pronunciation of the Irish; he’s from Cork, in the south of Ireland.

He led me into an incredible space. A long spiral staircase descended to a spacious (40’ x 31’ x 23’) master room with a cathedral ceiling, skylights, floor-to-ceiling rear windows, French doors at one end, large artworks on the walls, and, in a pot in one corner, a living tree. The staircase curled toward a long bar with a huge mirror behind it, then to a living-room space with couches and chairs on one side, and on the other a listening space with Vivid Audio’s distinctively shaped G1Giya speakers (91dB/6 ohms, $65,000/pair), a leather couch, assorted electronics, and other audio gear. Tucked under the staircase was a collection of LPs and CDs.

: Written by: Simeon Sandiford; Category: General Interest & Interviews; Created: 15 October 2010

A Pandora’s Box for audiophiles

My realization that Jack Renner had miked Ahmad Jamal’s Chicago Revisited from the audience perspective proved to be very serendipitous indeed. A piece to provoke healthy discussion among the many avid supporters of this publication was long overdue.

Renner’s statement was astounding because I had always assumed that pianos were miked from the performers’ perspective. So with my curiosity aroused, I spent days listening to nearly every piano recording in my library and contemplating the intrinsic sonic characteristics of today’s modern high-resolution recordings and audiophile playback systems. An audiophile’s Pandora’s Box had been inadvertently opened.

The main ingredients

Perspective relates to the way our senses perceive events. When we close our eyes and listen to recorded music, there should be spatial cues that allow the brain to reconstruct events accurately. We should see the performers. For clarification, players’ perspective refers to musicians onstage facing an audience, while audience perspective refers to an audience facing the performers.

Realism in audio reproduction pertains to the delineation of a soundstage into a facsimile of an original recording, without embellishment or interpretation. The term relates directly to nuances and detail, phenomena that are inextricably linked to the resolving power of audiophile playback systems.

Many factors influence perspective and realism. Some of the more commonly used industry terms are:

: Written by: Simeon Sandiford; Category: General Interest & Interviews; Created: 01 July 2010

The trigger

Recently, while reorganizing my library, I perused an article in the September 1983 issue of The Abso!ute Sound (Vol.8 No.31), "The Threat of the Compact Disc to the Sound of Music," by renowned mastering engineer Douglas Sax, of Sheffield Lab Recordings. Overwhelmed by curiosity and nostalgia, I resurrected a blue T-shirt I’d bought at the 1984 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas. Sax’s commendable crusade and its catchy slogan, "Stop Digital Madness," had received sustained support from skeptical audiophiles.

In concluding his piece, Sax wrote, "For me, all digital attempts thus far have been a failure. I simply cannot enjoy music that has been digitally processed, and the enjoyment of music in the home is the sole reason we have a high-fidelity industry. I support analog recording because it works.

"It is a time-proven process that contains musical information which is accessible to all and which has a resolution that allows the listener to continually discover hidden nuances as he improves the abilities of his home playback system."

The words thus far in that first sentence, reinforced by his description of analog as being "a time-proven process," prompted me to conclude that Sax, like most audiophiles, would eagerly anticipate future research and development into the optimization of digital sound, as audiophiles continued the quest to hear more and more, until the resolving capabilities of home playback systems approached its horizontal asymptote of live musicians performing in real spaces.

Sax’s article was published at a point in audio’s history halfway between the birth of stereophonic high fidelity and the current level of refinement of analog-to-digital conversion techniques. In the 27 years since that article’s publication, what sort of evolution has taken place? How much more are we hearing today at home, and how far away does utopia remain?

But first: Where and when did stereo begin?

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Category: Off the Cuff; Created: 01 March 2011

Jeff Fritz: Is point-to-point wiring better than circuit boards in all electronic applications?

Gilbert Yeung: It depends on what a designer wants the result to be and what the product is. The general rule of thumb is: With low-noise, high-gain, low-level signals, use a PCB. With low gain and a higher level of signal, use point to point.

JF: What is your favorite Blue Circle amp?

GY: I haven't designed that one yet.

JF: Have you ever just given up on a design that wasn't meeting your expectations?

GY: Yes. There were two occasions where I gave up on designs. Both designs were suggested and pushed by salesmen. Since then we have gotten rid of all salesmen and haven't given up on a design since.

JF: If you could change one misconception that most audiophiles share, what would it be?

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Category: Off the Cuff; Created: 15 December 2010

Jeff Fritz: Coda has been producing amplifiers and preamplifiers for . . .

Doug Dale: We started as Continuum in 1985 and made a small run of MC cartridge head amplifiers. Then we hibernated for a couple of years and began Coda with a limited line of preamps and amps. We operated comfortably from 1989 until 2003. We relocated at that time, forced by the purchase of the industrial park in which the original facility was located. We relocated again in 2007 and have worked to improve our product flow and continued to improve the designs.

JF: Class-A amplifiers sound so good because?

DD: A perfect design should be totally neutral, but nothing is perfect. If a spectral analysis is done of a class-A circuit the distortion that is produced has harmonics that are more related to the original signal than those that are present in a non-class-A design. This is a characteristic that is shared with tube amplifiers and may be the reason that class-A amps are often referred to as tube-like. When they do clip or distort they do so in a less "offensive" manner than a typical class-AB amp.

JF: Are Coda amplifiers of today better than the Thresholds of yesteryear?

DD: We certainly think so. Electronically our designs are quite different, being non-Stasis. The Threshold amps were quite good at the time, however. As a group we all preferred class-A circuits to the Stasis topology. In regard to objective measurements, there is no comparison. The class-A circuits implemented by Coda are dramatically better.

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Category: Off the Cuff; Created: 01 October 2010

201010_flemming Jeff Fritz: You’ve said Gryphon is firmly committed to the CD, not music servers. Any further thoughts?

Flemming Rasmussen: Our success with the Mikado and Scorpio CD players has confirmed for us that there are many audiophiles that have large CD collections that they wish to play back on a dedicated player. It has been my perception that -- at least in the beginning -- the interest in music-server technology was based on convenience and the ability to rip CDs and did not offer any sound-improving qualities. It is nice to note that hi-rez recordings are becoming available for download and that changes the picture. It is a can/shall question: Shall we go into this because we can? I don’t think so. When we anticipate a shift of preferences with our core Gryphon clients, then we shall, and we do have the D/A technology to do it.

However, we believe that there will be a market for CD players at the top level for quite some time to come.

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Category: Off the Cuff; Created: 01 September 2010

201009_chesky_330w Jeff Fritz: What do you hear with 24/96 that you don’t hear on 16/44.1?

David Chesky: More air, extension, low-level detail.

JF: What do you say to those audiophiles that feel vinyl still sounds better than high-resolution music from HDtracks?

DC: Digital has gotten a bum rap. It is not the digital but the execution. We do not have the jitter and error correction that laser players have. Try an HD file off a hard drive and hear for yourself.

JF: Do you hear a difference between 24/96 and 24/192?

DC: As you go farther up the differences diminish.

JF: Is 24/192 all we need to achieve the sonic potential of source material? Is 24/96 enough?

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Category: Off the Cuff; Created: 01 August 2010

Jeff Fritz: Ayre Acoustics stands for . . .

Charles Hansen: Designs so advanced that they are still state-of-the-art ten years after their introduction.

JF: Why is Boulder, Colorado, cool?

CH: It has a special vibe with the combination of a world-class university and an unbelievable number of Olympic-caliber athletes from dozens of sports. The result is a very rich, deep pool of talent in almost any field you can name.

JF: What is the best audio product to never be a commercial success?

CH: Hmm . . . there are lots of good candidates. Maybe the Versa Dynamics turntables (both the 1.0 and the 2.0), or the KLH 9 electrostatic speakers, or the Wingate power amp, which was the first solid-state amp with zero feedback.

JF: The problem with audiophiles is . . .

CH: There aren't enough of us -- go forth and multiply! Or at least turn a few of your friends on to what we do.

JF: The audio press would be better if . . .

: Written by: Richard Freed; Category: Richard Freed's Keepers; Created: 01 November 2011

The latter half of the 1950s saw the deaths of two youngish conductors who, with the significant encouragement of eminent senior practitioners, had established themselves firmly enough to create not only expectations but outright assurances of great careers ahead of them. The Italian Guido Cantelli was a protégé of no less a figure than Arturo Toscanini, who brought him to New York to conduct his NBC Symphony Orchestra. Engagements quickly followed with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. Cantelli conducted both concerts and opera at La Scala; appeared with the Scala Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival, and he recorded with four of the orchestras mentioned here (all but Boston), variously for RCA Victor, American Columbia, and EMI’s HMV. Many of those recordings have been recirculated on CD by the respective originating companies, and an international conducting competition was established in Cantelli’s name in Milan, where he had been named director of La Scala only a few days before his tragic death in an airplane accident in France in November 1956, at age 36.

The Spanish conductor Ataúlfo Argenta (1913-1958), seven years older than Cantelli, was patiently establishing his podium credentials while Cantelli was still in school, and both came to international attention at about the same time. While the younger Cantelli had the backing of Toscanini, Argenta attracted the interest of Ernest Ansermet, who was apparently grooming him to be his successor with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande -- and then he was suddenly gone, dead in a freak accident at age 44. According to Alan Sanders’s splendid biographical piece for a CD set of all of Argenta’s Decca recordings, the Spanish conductor "threw his life away with an act of thoughtlessness. One evening in January 1958 he returned home [in Madrid] with a student, and as his study was cold they went to the garage beneath while it warmed up. Argenta switched on the car engine and heater, but the garage doors were shut. The student was found unconscious and Argenta died of carbon monoxide poisoning. . . . On the day of his funeral crowds lined the streets through which the cortège passed, and his death was mourned [throughout Spain]."

: Written by: Richard Freed; Category: Richard Freed's Keepers; Created: 01 July 2011

Antal Dorati Music for ballets has been composed by some of the greatest composers since music as we know it today began, and a good deal of it has found its way into the concert repertory, either in whole or in suites prepared by the respective composers, or simply in the form of excerpts. At the same time, innumerable concert works have been used as is or adapted for service in ballets, only to come back to the concert hall in new form. One ballet score in particular, which straddles these categories, has been inexplicably absent from the concert hall and mysteriously neglected by the recording companies, despite its unarguable attractiveness: Scuola di ballo -- "School of Dancing" -- whose brilliant, vivacious score was fashioned by the aptly named French composer Jean Françaix from movements of Luigi Boccherini’s astonishingly numerous and substantial string quintets. Its nearest parallels in substance may be Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, based on music attributed (mostly in error) to Pergolesi, and the contemporaneous Good Humoured Ladies, which the otherwise forgotten Vincenzo Tommasini spun out of Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas -- but Scuola di ballo clearly has the best tunes. And Françaix’s witty treatment suits them down to the ground.

Like his earlier compatriot Scarlatti, Boccherini spent some of his most productive years in Spain and died in Madrid. He made use of Spanish forms and some actual Spanish tunes in more than a few of his works -- particularly in his several quintets for guitar and strings, one of which is an impression of the night watch in Madrid, and another includes a celebrated Fandango. Not all of his compositions betray a Spanish influence, but every one of them is filled with good tunes. So rich was his source of them that even Mozart based a movement in his own D major Violin Concerto, K.218, on one of Boccherini’s slow movements. He was an admired cellist as well as a prolific composer, and enriched that noble instrument’s repertory with sonatas, concertos, and dozens of string quintets in which the fifth instrument is a second cello. The minuet from one of them was notoriously popular on its own for years, as was a cello concerto the 19th-century virtuoso Friedrich Grützmacher cobbled together from parts of two different Boccherini concertos.