It’s tough being an audiophile. Tell someone you like high-quality sound and they might look at you like you’re an alien. We forget that hi-fi used to be the coolest endeavor in town. Look at black-and-white advertisements from decades ago and you’ll see handsome men, surrounded by enormous loudspeakers, massive tube amplifiers, LPs tossed about like useless clothes and knotted bed sheets, gorgeous women…
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Henry Rollins: Audiophile. In a blog for the LA Weekly, Henry Rollins describes the pleasure of listening to music through his Wilson Audio Sophia 3 loudspeakers. Photo: Maura Lanahan.
Letters in response appeared in the June and July 2011 issues:
The upward price spiral
Editor: In John Atkinson's very appropriate column on "The Upward Price Spiral" of audio gear ("As We See It," April 2011), he seemed to accept the inevitability of growing income inequality, although, to be fair, he did not seem to feel it was necessarily a good thing. There is certainly a lot of merit in his solution: that companies continue to make quality products at an affordable price. Certainly, from my point of view, there is no need to apologize for reviewing $300 speakers. When I still…
I’d like to give you a tour of my listening room. Please excuse the mess. I’ve been evaluating cables.
Because all the new LPs had started to take over the apartment, I was forced to do some rearranging. Over the last couple of weekends, I’ve managed to shape some order into my listening room. And order is very important to me. When my home is messy, my soul feels messy; and, when my soul feels messy, I become grouchy, lethargic, and I can’t get anything done.
A couple of other things have inspired this post. First, recent visits to friends’ warm and lovely apartments had me…
How am I to convince music lovers that this CD is markedly different from Attention Screen's first two live CDs?
The question kept running through my head as I marveled at the breadth and maturity of Attention Screen's remarkable improvisations during a pre-concert sound check in the Piano Salon of Yamaha Artist Services, Inc. (YASI), at 689 Fifth Avenue, in the heart of Manhattan.
Attention Screen impressed even more at the public concert the following night, April 24, 2010. As the band members engaged in one improvisational miracle after another, fearlessly exploring new…
Live Recording: Documentary or Artifice
I learned my way around a recording studio during my brief career (1972–1976) as a professional bass guitarist, during which time I recorded three albums and some 20 singles with various bands and singers. But I grew increasingly dissatisfied with the conventional practice of overdubbing voices and instruments onto a basic rhythm track until the producer deemed everything perfect. I was redoing my bass part on one session when it dawned on me that even though the notes I was playing fitted better with the overdubs and were technically better played…
Sidebar 1: The Music (with samples)
Attention Screen: Takes Flight at Yamaha Stereophile STPH021-2
Don Fiorino (guitars, lap steel, electric mandolin), Bob Reina (Yamaha AvantGrand N3 electronic piano), Chris Jones (fretless electric bass guitar), Mark Flynn (drums, percussion)
Track Listing
[1] Sleeping Metronomes Lie* 5:45
[2] Ear Topology 11:09
[3] Yamanization 10:04
[4] Inner Dimensional Light 10:24
[5] Carnatic Rhapsody 12:50
[6] 13 Trojans of Vundo 9:52
[7] The Deer and Buffalo…
Sidebar 2: The Nature of Improvisation
"Nothing happens purposefully in our improvisations," Bob Reina declared, post-concert in a five-way conference call with the band. "What you hear is how we all feel collectively about the direction of the piece. Given all our musical backgrounds, I think it's amazing how underivative our music is. It doesn't remind you of another band, or another type of music that we're copying from."
"I really enjoy taking an instrument, seizing the improvisational nature of sound, and playing off it as though I were painting," Don Fiorino…
Should an audio component accurately reproduce the signal it's fed, or should it evoke the sound and feel of live music? Accuracy or musicality? This question has been at the heart of high-end audio since its inception. Back then, the question often took the form of the tubes-vs-transistors debate. Proponents of solid-state pointed to the far superior measured performance of transistor designs, and claim that they thus more accurately reproduced the input signal. Tube lovers steadfastly maintained that their gear sounded better, more natural—more like music. Since then, both camps have…
The Vincent's superb resolution of low-level detail was a big part of how it re-created this live feel, and one way that it distinguished itself from most other CD players I've heard. Many CD players, even some of the very best, struggle at the very softest end of the volume spectrum, losing the finest, lowest level of detail in a digital silence that feels a bit electromechanical. With the Vincent, those tiny details were there, distinctly drawn yet coherent, with a realistic surrounding ambience, just as they are with a top-flight analog front end—or a live performance.
Even more…
This isn't to imply that the C-60's soundstage was smaller than those of other source components. To the contrary, the Vincent's soundstage was consistently large, extending well outside the speakers, projecting slightly in front of them, and creating whatever depth had been coded into the bits and bytes. Images were always appropriately sized, and I never felt that the Vincent was expanding or limiting the scale of the players or stage. In fact, the C-60's knack for reproducing fine detail behind louder, more prominent lines worked well with recordings of a soloist and orchestra. Listening…