search

One by One: the Cantus Recording Project Capturing Cantus

Capturing Cantus: John Atkinson

Cantus Artistic Director Erick Lichte was very clear about what he wanted: "A clear, focused sound, not a reverberant, cathedral sound. That would not be appropriate for the music." We were talking in the lobby of the Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey, after a astonishingly profound concert of unaccompanied choral music. Erick, a Stereophile reader and an audiophile who's served time at a Minneapolis specialty audio retailer, was floating the idea of me recording a CD for Cantus' eponymous label.

Five months later, I was listening…

One by One: the Cantus Recording Project Capturing Cantus part 2

Well, that may have put the kibosh on the high-speed plan, but we could still go ahead at 44.1kHz, using my other 24-bit dCS converter for one pair of mikes and the Nagra-D's 20-bit internal converters for the other pair. Take that, Mr. Murphy!

I made test recordings at 44.1kHz. The sound from both pairs of mikes had superb clarity, but it was perhaps a bit too immediate, particularly from the omnis. Luck favors the unprepared: Erick found a large oriental rug in another anteroom, and we put that on the floor between the singers and the omnis, which tamed the treble balance.

The…

One by One: the Cantus Recording Project Capturing Cantus part 3

We used two strategies to resolve the situation. First, we increased the level of the quiet, contemplative tracks by 6dB. This may sound extreme on paper, but it didn't sound wrong in the mix, and didn't result in an unnatural "gear-change" effect. Second, I isolated each of the 12 railroad-spike transients by creating a very short crossfade before and after each one with the Sonic Solutions and reduced the level of just the initial transient by another 6dB. Somewhat to our surprise, this was completely inaudible, and got us back another bit's worth of dynamic range. (The human ear judges…

One by One: the Cantus Recording Project Cantus Details

Sidebar 1: Cantus: Let Your Voice Be Heard

Cantus is: Brian Arreola, Michael Hanawalt, Curt Hopmann, Albert Jordan, Lawrence Wiliford, Peter Zvanovec, tenors; Adam Reinwald, Paul Wilson, baritones; Kelvin Chan, Erick Lichte, bass-baritones; Alan Dunbar, Timothy Takach, second basses; with Dave Hagedorn, marimba.

[1] "Let Your Voice Be Heard," Abraham Adzenyeh, Talking Drum Music
[2] "Dravidian Dithyramb," Victor Paranjoti, transcribed by Donald Patriquin, Earthsongs Music Publishers
[3] "El Yivneh Hagalil," trad. Hebrew, arr. by Peter Sozio, Boston Music Company
[4] "…

One by One: the Cantus Recording Project Who Was Who, What Was What

Sidebar 2: Who Was Who, What Was What

Production: Cantus
Executive Producer: Erick Lichte
Engineering, Editing, Mastering: John Atkinson
Recording Venue: The Concert Hall at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota
Recording Dates: March 19-22, 2001
Microphones: two Neumann M147 cardioids as ORTF pair, two B&K 4006 omnis as spaced pair
Mike Preamps: Millennia Media HV3B
A/D Converters: dCS 904 (master, cardioids) at 24 bits/44.1kHz; internal Nagra-D ADC at 20 bits/44.1kHz (slave, omnis)
Recorder: Nagra-D 4-channel, open-reel digital
Tape: BASF/Emtec 931
…

The Puzzle of Perception

"Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about."---John Lennon

"Reality is nothing but a collective hunch."---Lily Tomlin

The thing pictured above---a poyuit? a potrzebie?---puzzled me immensely when I first saw it in MAD magazine in the early '60s. It is, of course, a trick, the two-dimensional drawing giving conflicting clues to the poor brain trying to visualize it as a three-dimensional solid object. But I used it to open this discussion because, far from being fully understood, the more there is known about human perception, the more it seems there is to know. Sir…

The Puzzle of Perception Page 2

Without sufficient information at your brain's fingertips for the map to be formed, it's hard to make sense of what you hear. I had firsthand experience of this when I was 14. I went to live in Paris for a few weeks to improve my command of French. Upon arriving, however, I was horrified to learn that despite my theoretical knowledge and the fact that I could read written French, I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying. It was impossible to detect the starts or ends of words; all I heard was a continuous string of mellifluous sound that had about as much meaning for me as birdsong.…

Musical Fidelity CD-Pre24 CD player-preamplifier

How much fun can you have with an audio component? Fun for me is having a Nakamichi BX-300 analog cassette deck running into Musical Fidelity's evolutionary, revolutionary CD-Pre24 preamplifier, with the unit's digital output feeding the Alesis Masterlink hard-drive-based digital recorder, and being able to monitor the digital loop through the preamp once again in the analog domain.

I'm preserving a wacky cassette compilation made by Byron Werner, an old L.A. acquaintance I met back in 1982, when we worked together on the movie Tron. Back then, Byron was a rabid collector of…

Musical Fidelity CD-Pre24 CD player-preamplifier Page 2

The CD-Pre24's preamp facilities are said to be very closely related to those in MF's highly regarded A3CR, though improved using techniques learned during the design of the Nu-Vista amps and CD players. Entirely discrete power supplies are used throughout, with grounding schemes carefully chosen to avoid analog, digital, and CD-stage interaction. Combining all of this functionality into a single box can remove unpredictable variables such as cable, AC interference, and differing grounding potentials. It also saves valuable rack space.

Construction quality and appearance also match those…

Musical Fidelity CD-Pre24 CD player-preamplifier Page 3

In most ways, the CD-Pre24's analog preamplifier compared quite favorably with the Hovland, especially in terms of its dynamic authority—its ability to scale the large dynamic peaks was effortless, confident, and fully fleshed-out. On Classic Records' 45rpm edition of the Reiner/CSO version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, the orchestral crescendos were nothing short of explosive. Instrumental timbres were somewhat drier and less complex but still convincingly rendered, and delivered absolutely free of grain and grit. My reference was somewhat more pure and finely textured on top,…