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The NRC, financed by the Canadian government, does basic research in many technological areas and makes its findings available to any firm wishing to use them. (Most other countries provide or encourage this kind of government/business cooperation. It is against the law in the US, to our great disadvantage.) The NRC's audio division, headed by physicist Dr. Floyd E. Toole, has devoted the last several years to the rather formidable task of defining, and assigning numbers to, the various aspects of loudspeaker performance that affect listeners' subjective assessments of their sound.

Damn! I hate when that happens. I ran the laserdisc back and played it again, this time louder.

"MNN MMMM MNN NNRM MURRRMR," said Bogart.

When you think about it, the center channel is probably the most important channel—if you don't believe this, watch a movie sometime with the dialog speaker turned off and see how compelling the experience is. I mean, I like explosions, rocket launches, and train wrecks as much as the next guy, but what I really want from a video sound system is the words.

Arbos: Arbos; An den Wassern zu Babel; Pari Intervallo; De Profundis; Es sang for langen Jahren; Summa; Stabat Mater
Gidon Kremer, violin; Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, organ; The Hilliard Ensemble; Brass of the Staatsorchester Stuttgart; others
ECM New Series 1325 (CD). Peter Laenger, Andreas Neubronner, engs.; Manfred Eicher, prod. DDD. TT: 59:21

The Little Monster himself, Keven Lee (son of Head Monster Noel Lee), jumped out on his own to start a new low-cost headphone company: SOL Republic. Their first headphone, the Tracks is a bit of a mixed bag, but quite interesting nonetheless.

Let's have a look and listen...

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Links:
The MOG May 2012 Playlist: Inflections

The Spotify May 2012 Playlist: What is a Song?

The May 2012 Playlists were a tough one to make at first. I was having technical difficulties with MOG. Whenever I paused Carolin Widmann and Alexander Longquich’s Schubert performances, the playback buffering would freeze and restart from the beginning of the album. MOG resolved this issue internally, as it was not happening the next day, but it was nevertheless frustrating. I could not get up to pee without having to restart the Rondo in B Minor, D. 895, Op. 70. First-world problems.

Equally adept at all three disciplines, Fischer-Dieskau became perhaps the most recorded baritone in history. There was a period in which nary a month went by without another LP from Fischer-Dieskau on which he sang either solo or in ensemble. Even today, when so many recordings have gone out of print, and large number of LPs have never been remastered for CD, arkivmusic.com lists no less than 490 titles that include Fischer-Dieskau's voice. The most recent release, a four-SACD remastered compilation of some of the monaural Schubert lieder (art song) recordings he made with pianists Gerald Moore and Karl Engel early in his career, became available on the website on May 8. Its 39 performances are but a fraction of the Schubert recordings he made in his five decades before the microphone.