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When Cantus's artistic coordinator (and Stereophile reader) Erick Lichte phoned me in the summer of 2000 about my recording this Minnesotan male-voice choir, it didn't occur to me that I was entering a long-term relationship. But just as sure as 16-bit digital is not sufficient for long-term musical satisfaction, my first Cantus CD led to a second, and now a third. (All available from this website). For Deep River, I traveled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where the city has spent millions of dollars to transform the downtown high school into a gloriously warm-sounding, state-of-the-art…
The outputs of the DPA 4003 omnis were brought up to line level with their power supply-preamp then fed to two channels of an eight-channel Metric Halo MIO 2882—an immensely versatile, FireWire-controlled preamp and A/D converter. This was hooked up to an Apple Titanium PowerBook G4, and my original plan was to record the two omni channels straight to the laptop's hard drive using Mac OS X and the Bias Peak 3.0 program. However, I could not get a reliable lock with the program clocked from the MIO 2882, which in turn was slaved to the master dCS converter. While the MIO had no trouble locking…
Sidebar 1: Deep River: Track Listing
Deep River, Cantus CTS1203
Cantus is: Brian Arreola, Brad Erbes, Michael Hanawalt, Albert Jordan, Lawrence Williford, Peter Zvanovec (tenors); Kelvin Chan, Alan Dunbar, Adam Reinwald (baritones); Erick Lichte, Tom McNichols, Timothy Takach (basses).
[1] Ezekiel Saw de Wheel, arr. Harry T. Burleigh 1:60
[2] Heav'n, Heav'n, arr. Harry T. Burleigh 1:45
[3] Poor Man Lazrus, arr. Jester Hairston 2:01
[4] King Jesus Is A-Listening, arr. William L. Dawson 3:06
[5] This Ol' Hammer, arr. John W. Work III 6:17
[6] Great God A'Mighty,…
Sidebar 2: Recording Setup
Microphones: two DPA (B&K) 4011 ½" cardioids (ORTF pair), two DPA 4003 ½" omnis (close-spaced pair on Jecklin disc), two EarthWorks QTC-1 ¼" omnis (spaced pair)
Microphone preamps: two Millennia Media HV3Bs (4011s & QTC-1s), DPA HMA4000 high-voltage power supply/preamp and Metric Halo MIO 2882 (4003s)
A/D converters: two dCS 904s (4011s and QTC-1s), Metric Halo MIO 2882 (4003s), all word-clock-synchronized, running at 88.2kHz with 24-bit word length
Session recorders: Nagra-D (QTC-1s), Tascam DA-38 with Prism MR-1024T (4011s), UniQpc 2.4MHz…
Sidebar 3: Who are Cantus?
Cantus was founded in fall 1995 when four students—Brian Arreola, Albert Jordan, Erick Lichte, and Kjell Stenberg—came together in their sophomore year on the campus of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, a place renowned for its virtual wellspring of activity in choral music. Their objective was to spend time away from the rigors of college life doing something they enjoyed: singing. During the next two years the ensemble grew to 12 members and began performing at venues on campus.
Three of the four guys were cellists who reveled in playing…
The following letter appeared in May 2004 (Vol.27 No.5):
That's incorrect
Editor: I look forward to hearing Cantus' Deep River CD. However, I have deep reservations and concerns about the premise of the recording. In March (p.53), Erick Lichte is quoted as trying to create a recording that mirrors the African-American experience and goes on to attempt to re-create the ideals of Burleigh, Hairston, and Work.
None of this works. How can a bunch of guys who live in the American Heartland and have been trained in the classical tradition possibly understand the African-American experience…
Everyone knows that advertising people make more money than ordinary people, but many assume that the high pay is because ad writing is so difficult. This is not true. Low-income people can write advertisements, too, so just in case somebody should accost you on the street and ask you to write an advertisement, here is how you may go about it.
There are three basic points every ad writer should bear in mind. First, no advertisement may tell a lie. Lying in ads is dishonest. It is also illegal, so don't. Second, if you have a really good product, tell the truth about it, in tedious detail…
It is not usually wise to invent specifications, except in those cases where it would be difficult for anyone to disprove them.
The Calculated Omission: If the product you are advertising is really quite good in most respects, but has a few less attractive features, play up its positive qualities to the exclusion of everything else. It is bad practice to try and explain that the aspects in which it is inferior aren't really important, because this will only draw attention to the fact that competing products are better in these respects. Publish a factual-looking spec sheet, but omit the…
We received one letter in response
No Advertising
Sirs: I do not see how you expect to make a magazine pay off without admitting advertisers, but I suppose you know what you're doing. I hope so, anyway, because after publishing "How to Write an Ad" in your first issue, you certainly won't get any advertisers even if you do decide to accept them.
This kind of thing needed to be said, and I think you chose a perfect way of saying it. Advertisers have been sacred cows for so long that some of them have gotten the impression there is no deceit or misrepresentation they can't get…
Although I still haven't been able to listen to the Cary Audio Design 805 single-ended tube monoblocks that Stereophile praised so highly a year ago (Vol.17 No.1, p.104), I've recently auditioned many other tubed single-ended designs. Undeniably, a good SE design has a distinctive quality of harmony and atmosphere in the midrange that reaches well beyond the average attainment of its solid-state brethren.
Provided that very high sound levels and gut-thumping bass are not required, Tim de Paravicini's small SE amplifier, for example, works just fine with the relatively kind and uniform 6…