MEL TORMÉ/MARTY PAICH DEK-TETTE: In Concert Tokyo
Concord Jazz CJ-382 (LP), CCD-4382 (CD). Hatsuro Takanami, eng.; Carl Jefferson, prod. TTs: 44:15 (LP), 47:17 (CD)
Although such fruitful collaborations as Sinatra/Riddle and Cleo Laine/Dankworth have received wider and more consistent exposure, neither has produced more meaningful results than the synergistic working relationship intermittently enjoyed by Mel Tormé and Marty Paich over the past 34 years. Their first recording together—Lulu's Back in Town—dates from 1956, and it remained for Concord Records President Carl Jefferson to…
A persistent complaint from some of our readers concerns our seeming preoccupation with exotic components. (Presumably what they mean are scarce, unusual, or hard-to-find components, because "exotic" really means "from a foreign country," and there is sure as hell nothing hard-to-find about a Panasonic receiver.) "Why," you ask, "do you devote so much space to reports on components we can't buy from our local audio discounter? Why can't we have more reports about products from the old, established, reliable companies like KLH, Harman/Kardon, Electro-Voice and Sansui, whose stuff we can listen…
As Chester Rice, co-inventor of the moving-coil loudspeaker, once ruefully observed: "The ancients have stolen our inventions." So often, what is painted as new and innovative turns out to be something someone thought of long before. We have a habit of forgetting, and that applies not only to inventions, but to knowledge of other kinds as well.
If you've been reading audio magazines for the past 30 years or more, you may recall that in the late 1970s there was a short-lived furor, first in the US and then in the UK, about forgotten lessons of tonearm/cartridge alignment. It…
The latter feature is necessary to achieve the first, but I know from three decades of writing on this subject (footnote 9) that it puzzles many people. So, using some straightforward geometry, let's clarify how it comes about. Fig.2a shows a triangle representing a pickup arm aligned at the inner of the two zero-tracking-error radii (distance SC). Point S represents the stylus position, point P the arm pivot, and point C the center of the turntable platter. The distance SP is the effective length of the arm and exceeds the distance CP by the overhang: if we use the figures quoted in the…
Another factor that graphs like fig.3 should state is whether RIAA weighting is applied, as suggested by J.K. Stevenson. Because the RIAA deemphasis (ie, replay) curve, ignoring the IEC amendment (footnote 12), declines from +19.4dB at 20Hz to –19.5dB at 20kHz (using the equation in IEC 60098)—an average rolloff of 13.0dB/decade or 3.9dB/octave—Stevenson suggested modifying Baerwald's distortion equation to account for this. If this change is made, then the 1.07% maximum second-harmonic distortion of the red trace of fig.3 is reduced to 0.68%.
The justification for this is perfectly…
I still believe that 58mm is a good practical figure to use, but for the reason already stated, there is good justification for playing safe and using the theoretical minimum of 56mm—as I have done throughout this article.
Alignment Errors
Although this issue is often conveniently ignored, accurate cartridge alignment is very difficult to achieve, not least because the overhang and offset have to be set within extremely tight tolerances if anything like the distortion behavior shown in the red trace of fig.3 is to be realized in practice.
Let's demonstrate this by assuming…
Readers of a mathematical bent will already see what's wrong with this type of protractor. Correct arm/cartridge alignment requires that two independent parameters, overhang and offset, both be set correctly. As is drummed into math students when they learn simultaneous equations, to solve for two independent variables, you need two independent equations in those variables—or, in the case of an alignment protractor, you need two setting points. So achieving optimum alignment with a single-point protractor is a matter of luck. The only thing in its favor, apart from its simplicity, is that…
I always enjoy CES. Like the Big Apple, or the City of Angels, the Consumer Elecronics Show is stimulatingly frenetic and enjoyably fatiguing—things that would soon put me in the funny farm if I lived with them year 'round, but can easily cope with twice a year. In fact, attending CES is rather like visiting the city of my birth, a place whose culture is one with my own because I grew up there, and where half the pleasure lies in seeing once again those audio people—the Allisons, Marantzes, Frieds, Beveridges, Haflers, and Tuckers—whose durability as friends always reminds me of how rapidly…
Best of Show
Before the show, Larry Archibald asked me to look for "about twelve significant new items, for in-depth writeups." I could not find twelve such items. But then, after attending shows like this for more than 30 years, it is perhaps understandable that I can longer consider a new preamplifier from Company X or a new cartridge from Company Y to be "significant." While I don't wish to minimize the importance of evolutionary improvements in the state of the art, I find it increasingly difficult to take seriously the products embodying those evolutionary advances—which will be…
I was visiting a high-end audio manufacturer several years back, and as the chief engineer and I talked about speaker design, the company's president popped her head around the door and told him that she was sending MacroVision their annual five-figure check.
"MacroVision?" I was surprised. "You don't make video recorders." (MacroVision owns and licenses the technology to prevent the copying of analog video signals.)
"We're about to launch a DVD player," the engineer explained, "and you wouldn't believe the licensing fees we have to pay. MacroVision is just one of them. But as we…
