Scull: Not so very easy to listen to?
Shibazaki: Yes, while second-order harmonics are, to human ears, sounding very natural. Push-pull, he says, can sound rather piercing that way. And, he says, in a well-designed single-ended amplifier, the…
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Shibazaki: Another difficult question, he says, but very interesting. Here's what he says, word by word: Push-pull technology has its own merits, of course, but only when correctly designed and aligned, as you might have guessed. You know, especially the odd-order harmonics left by push-pull, they are very...[waggles his hand and frowns]
Scull: Please, Shibazaki—you're doing a wonderful job of making his thoughts available to us all. Really.
Shibazaki: Thank you. So, one of his goals—his dream, in fact—is to recreate that Toscanini performance he heard in 1953 at Carnegie Hall.
Scull: It's wonderful to follow a dream. I don't want to be impolite, but that still doesn't answer the question: As you walk past that window, what tells you it's real? Is it dynamics, timbre, tonal color, harmonics, or something else?
Shibazaki: Well, he answers the question this way. He says it's not only Audio Note Japan, but…
Todd Garfinkle, guiding light of M•A Recordings, travels the globe recording provocative music in unbelievably wonderful acoustic settings. Todd travels to exotic climes such as Macedonia and Southern Siberia to capture unique and beautiful traditional ethnic music and song. He records with only two omnidirectional microphones, the signals of which are fed into handmade recording equipment designed especially for his work. Kathleen and I caught up with him at St. Peter's on 20th Street, a popular recording venue in the West Village. After wrapping a session, Todd stopped by our loft, where…
Scull: So you have DAT tapes with a number of takes on them...?
Garfinkle: Yes, and remember, they're 96kHz takes. So I have to do a sample-rate conversion.
Scull: What do you use?
Garfinkle: I've had access to an English unit made by Audio Digital Technology. And I'm now using a unit that I absolutely swear by from DB Technologies, an American company. It's called the 3000S 96kHz Digital Enhancer, and it does many things, including down- and upsampling. To my ears, when I use the 3000S, the sonic integrity of the 96kHz signal is quite well preserved. But I won't use CDR…
That recording's not jazz, it's not classical, but something in between; it even has some elements of traditional Portuguese music. The point is that people should at least open up and lose their traditional concepts of what music is supposed to be.
Scull: But most of the artists you work with are on the same wavelength, yes? You're not just an engineer recording musicians. You're deeply involved.
Garfinkle: Yeah, that's true.
Scull: So are the performers aware of participating in that specialness that makes it art?
Garfinkle: Well, yes, it seems so. They keep…
Sidebar: A Selected M•A Discography
A small selection of M•A recordings to whet the appetite:
J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations (M024A)
Japanese pianist Ito Ema's masterful performance on her own 1903 Steinway D concert Grand.
Dusan Bogdanovic: Untitled (M036A)
This fifth M•A recording by guitarist Bogdanovic emphasizes the classical repertoire, including Spanish composers Luis de Milan and Tarrega, plus Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos.
Peter Epstein Quartet: Staring at the Sun (M041A)
Veteran sax man Peter Epstein plays "Music from the young and energetic…
Label heads—those at the very highest positions of power at music companies. To anyone who's spent time near the record business, they're a mythical breed. Like gnomes. Or dragons. Often, it's their vision that spells success or failure for the label they run. And what they say goes. Over the years, many a legendary creature has assumed the title: Goddard Lieberson, Clive Davis, Mo Ostin, to name just a few of those who have survived and prospered. The list of those who did not is at least twice as long.
Several years ago, the head of publicity at Atlantic Records engineered (…
Like all record heads, Kallman remembers the musicians who made the first records he ever bought—in 1978, at the Musical Maze in Midtown Manhattan. Led Zeppelin, Parliament/Funkadelic, and Fleetwood Mac were among the choices. He became "the music guy" of his class at Trinity High School, at 91st Street and Columbus Avenue, and deejayed school dances. By the tender age of 17, Kallman had talked and spun his way into deejaying in New York clubs, beginning with the Mansion and working his way up to Friday and Saturday nights at the most infamous of all New York dance scenes, Danceteria. In no…
The recording project I've mentioned before in this column, that of documenting the historical and significant pipe organs of Rhode Island, is finally (!) in the can. (Except that today, of course, we no longer use cans. Or tape, for that matter.) It has been a learning and growing experience for us all—more than a dozen remote-location recording dates, spread over eight months.
But before sending any PMCD master files off to the pressing plant, it's necessary to give them a few very careful listens. Some tools for doing so are the subjects of the first part of this column: a high-…
Ultrasone Edition 9 headphones
Ultrasone's earlier top-of-the-line model, the Edition 7, was a limited edition. The Edition 9 ($1500) does not appear to be such. Which is all to the good. I can imagine quite a few headphone listeners falling for the Edition 9's ultra-rich, lush, seductive sound.
Ultrasone's earlier top-of-the-line model, the Edition 7, was a limited edition. The Edition 9 ($1500) does not appear to be such. Which is all to the good. I can imagine quite a few headphone listeners falling for the Edition 9's ultra-rich, lush, seductive sound.
The Edition 9s are dynamic, closed-back headphones. The drivers are 40mm titanium. The headphone cord is a nondetachable Y running to both sides. A hinge-and-pivot arrangement allows the earpieces to flop flat for storage in the provided mock-Anvil transit case. The earpieces can…