In the beginning, I had a room adjacent to my office—a room filled with bicycles, hi-fi gear, and assorted crap I'd never gotten around unpacking since our last move. Feeling ambitious, I thought I might turn it into a guest room, and emptied it.
It wasn't a large room (15' L by 9' W by 7' H), and, looking at it empty, I realized that by the time I'd installed a queen bed in there, there wouldn't be tons of space left for any other function—and besides, how often did guests sleep over? So I did what any audiophile would do: I decided to turn it into a dedicated if economy-size…
One problem remained: the room is small. Only 9' wide, it limited the amount of space I could leave between the speakers, which meant I had to listen in the quasi-nearfield, the speakers toed-in in an attempt to ameliorate the first wall reflections. Winer had a solution for that, too: two of RealTraps' RFZ Panels. (RFZ stands for Reflection Free Zone.)
Each RFZ Panel ($249.99) measures 42" H by 32" W by 2.25" D and has a beveled frame, so it almost disappears when mounted on a sidewall—preferably at around that wall's first-reflection point. The RFZ Panel also absorbs bass—a bit less…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Panels intended acoustic room treatment.
MondoTrap: Dimensions: 57" (1460mm) H by 24" (615mm) W by 4.25" (110mm) D. Weight: 28 lbs (12.7kg). Price: $299.99 each. (RealTraps Stand costs $89 each.)
MiniTrap: Dimensions: 48" (1230mm) W by 24" (615mm) H by 3.25" (83mm) W. Weight: 18 lbs (8.2kg). Price: $199.99 each.
RFZ Panel: Dimensions: 42" (1075mm) H by 32" (820mm) W by 2" (50mm) D. Weight: 15 lbs (6.8kg). Price: $249.99 each.
Manufacturer: RealTraps, LLC, 34 Cedar Vale Drive, New Milford, CT 06776. Tel: (866) 732-5872, (860) 210-1870.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; Bel Canto e.One DAC3 D/A converter; McIntosh MS750 music server; Muse Polyhymnia universal player.
Preamplifiers: Ayre Acoustics K-1xe, Conrad-Johnson ACT2.
Power Amplifiers: Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 300, Moscode 402AU.
Integrated Amplifier: Ayre Acoustics AX-7e.
Loudspeakers: Dynaudio Special 25, Thiel CS3.7, Usher Audio Technology Be-718.
Cables: Interconnect: Shunyata Research Aries & Antares. Speaker: Shunyata Research Lyra.
Accessories: Ayre Acoustics L-5xe line filter,…
Everyone knows music is a good thing. More than merely good, it appears to meet some kind of human need, because every race in every land has a musical tradition going back to before recorded or recounted history. Some of their music may not seem like music to our unsophisticated ears, but as soon as someone discovered that two sticks of different sizes produced different pitches when struck on a venerated ancestor's skull, he advanced beyond mere rhythm to what must be considered music. (Two sticks would, presumably, play binary music: the first precursor of digital sound.) In fact, were…
During my recent interview with the Sheffield Lab people in connection with their Moscow recording sessions (Vol.10 No.3), both Lincoln Mayorga and Doug Sax had some unkind things to say about the cost of recording an orchestra in the US. Their complaints are justified. It costs more to record in the US than anywhere else in the world, and these astronomical costs are detrimental both to symphonic music in the US and to the audiophile's pursuit of sonic perfection.
Orchestral music is the justification for high-end audio—its raison d'être. The sound of a real, live orchestra letting…
One by one, the record companies agreed to the royalty payments—of between ¼ cent and 5 cents per record—and the American Federation of Musicians earned a reputation as a union to be feared. In fact, after that, it was unstoppable. Every recording contract thereafter, and every revised set of work rules, was more draconian than the last and, as recordings came into ever-widening use, more inspired by paranoia.
Here, in essence, is what those rules have to say about recording in 1987:
For a recording session, all musicians must be paid at least a standard recording rate of $69…
But let's forget about the musicians for a moment and think about the music.
Every symphonic musician knows that he plays best on those special occasions when the orchestra and the audience are hyping each other—those rare times when the tension between them is almost electric. When this happens, the excitement and inspiration of that performance can transcend any shortcomings in the orchestra's execution. It hardly needs to be said that this almost never happens at a recording session.
Typically, a commercial recording is made up of bits and snatches of different "takes," often…
February is traditionally the month for music features, so I start this column with some recordings you really should hear. This year I had a greater-than-usual number of worthy candidates for "Records To Die For." Which discs got named as R2D4s and which got column coverage was, to quote the Iron Duke, a near-run thing.
Alexander Tikhonovich Gretchaninov (1864–1956), fascinating in his own right, is as well a prime subject for a game of historical "what might have been." A late bloomer as far as composers go, he claimed not to have set eyes on a piano before he was 14. He had started…
After you've given the Gretchaninov and Janácek discs a few spins, and if you're up for even more fantastic choral singing fantastically recorded, the same forces heard in the Gretchaninov have released Sacred Choral Works (SACD/CD, Chandos CHSA 5055), a disc of music by Josef Rheinberger, about whose Abendlied "Bleib bei uns," as sung by the Cambridge Singers under John Rutter (Collegium COLCD 131), I have raved in these pages. The most important difference I think you'll want to know about is that, for most Westerners, the Gretchaninov really seems to come from an alternate universe—New…
