In the New Hampshire countryside where I grew up, the loudest noises…
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My topic today is not the hardware that we use to reproduce sound, but the delicate precision instruments we use to detect it: our ears. Our enjoyment of musical sound is important enough to justify spending thousands of dollars on recordings, electronics, loudspeakers, and concert tickets. What is it worth to preserve your hearing so that you can continue enjoying great sound 10 or 20 years from now? I've been conducting an experiment for the last 30 years, at a cost of less than a penny a day. It began when I was 17.
But the example of the Peruvian Indians, if true, is suggestive. So is the well-known gender difference. The numbers cited above were only for males. Adult women apparently hear high frequencies more acutely than most men do. Is this due to genetic factors? Or is it actually an effect of long-term noise exposure? On the average, men spend much more time in noisy environments than women do. Whether inborn or due to socialization, this disparity begins in childhood. Boys are more likely to engage in active games involving a lot of shouting and screaming, while girls play quietly with dolls.…
Stereophile's seventh CD of Minnesotan male choir Cantus, called with delightful originality Cantus (CTS1207) and recorded at 88.2kHz with 24-bit resolution, is now available from our e-commerce page, for $16.95 plus S&H.
Update 12-11-07: Cantus was listed at No.9 in the list of Top Next-Generation Classical CDs of 2007 compiled by Cincinnati-based NPR radio station WGUC. You can audition the hymn "Salvation is Created" on the station's website.
Cantus's concert programming represents a great mix of styles and influences, and on Cantus, producer Erick Lichte decided to…
WAGNER: Siegfried
Reiner Goldberg, Siegfried; Heinz Zednik, Mime; James Morris, Wanderer; Hildegard Behrens, Brünnhilde; Ekkehard Wlaschiha, Alberich; Kurt Moll, Fafner; Birgitta Svendén, Erda; Kathleen Battle, Forest Bird; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, James Levine
Deutsche Grammophon 429 407-2 (4 CDs only). Cord Garben, Claudia Hamann, prods.; Wolfgang Mitlehner, eng. DDD. TT: 4:10:29
Deutsche Grammophon 429 407-2 (4 CDs only). Cord Garben, Claudia Hamann, prods.; Wolfgang Mitlehner, eng. DDD. TT: 4:10:29
Götterdämmerung's orchestral textures may be heavier, but Siegfried's are thicker, harder to pierce, even though, on average, the actual number of instruments scored for is considerably lower. Though…
I don't remember the year, but I remember the moment when I first became intensely curious about Roy DuNann. It must have been about 1975, right after I moved to Seattle. I bought a Sonny Rollins LP called Way Out West, took it home, cued it up on my Thorens turntable, dropped the tonearm, and suddenly I was in a room with Rollins and Shelly Manne and Ray Brown. It was a shipping room with records stacked on shelves all around the musicians, but I wouldn't know that until many years later.
The song was, improbably, "I'm an Old Cowhand," and it began with Shelly Manne striking a woodblock…
The breakthrough came by way of Bernie Grundman, the well-known mastering engineer who runs the BGM mastering studio in Los Angeles. I learned from Joe Harley that Grundman had briefly worked under Roy at a Phoenix recording studio in the mid-1960s. When I reached Grundman, he had some interesting things to say about Roy, and one stopped me cold. He said that Roy had moved to the Seattle area many years ago because his children lived there. "I'm pretty sure he's still in Seattle...if he's still alive."
I called Seattle Directory Assistance and got his number immediately. A high, clear,…
"So," Roy continues, "it was my idea—why attenuate the microphones and then amplify the signal again? Why don't we just take the signal out of the microphones and run it through variable attenuators, and we wouldn't need any amplifiers? So that was the original console. Nothing to it. I probably had eight attenuators. That was before they had sliders, even. Couldn't find any decent sliders. Didn't even want one. We did all our mixing by turning knobs. We went from the attenuators right into the tape machine—no other equipment."
Forty-five years later, Bernie Grundman reflected that "Roy…
Sidebar: A Selected Roy DuNann Discography
Originally released on Contemporary, reissued on JVC XRCD
Barney Kessel/Ray Brown/Shelly Manne, The Poll Winners, JVCXR-0019-2 (1957)
Art Pepper, Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, VICJ-60087 (1957/1997)
Art Pepper + Eleven, Modern Jazz Classics, VICJ-60245 (1959/1998)
Andr;ae Previn/Red Mitchell/Shelly Manne, West Side Story, JVCXR-0209-2 (1956/2000)
André; Previn/Leroy Vinnegar/Shelly Manne, My Fair Lady, VICJ-60216 (1956/1998)
Sonny Rollins, The Contemporary Leaders, VICJ-60244 (1958/1998)
Sonny Rollins, Way…
"You've set the audio industry back 20 years!"
That was a fellow engineer's response upon seeing vacuum tubes in William Z. Johnson's amplifier at a hi-fi show in 1970. Back then, the vacuum tube had been totally abandoned in favor of the transistor. In fact, the only newly made audio components based on vacuum-tube technology you could buy were guitar amplifiers. Glowing bottles were embarrassing reminders to the engineering community of just how "primitive" electronics technology had been just a short time ago.
Imagine that engineer's surprise if he could have known that,…
Harley: You once said that hi-fi is one of the few industries where products are measured one way and used in another way.
Johnson: I have said that on more than one occasion. Every measurement that we're aware of falls into the realm of what we call repetitive, or static, measurement. In the real world, the simplest musical signal has component signals 1/10000 the size of some of the other signals present, and at many, many frequencies at once. It simply defies the abilities of static circuitry measurement.
Harley: Have you found areas of technical performance that correlate…