Issue 1, March 7, 2016

Copper

JOURNAL OF MUSIC AND AUDIO

Copper Magazine © 2016 PS Audio Inc. www.psaudio.com email [email protected]

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Credits Publisher Paul McGowan Editor Bill Leebens Columnists Seth Godin Richard Murison Dan Schwartz Bill Leebens Lawrence Schenbeck Duncan Taylor Scott McGowan Writers Elizabeth Newton Bill Low Ken Micaleff

Issue 1, March 7, 2016

Copper

JOURNAL OF MUSIC AND AUDIO

Inquiries [email protected] 720 406 8946 Boulder, Colorado USA Copyright © 2016 PS Audio International Copper magazine is a free publication made possible by its publisher, PS Audio. We make every effort to uphold our editorial integrity and strive to offer honest content for your enjoyment.

Copper Magazine © 2016 PS Audio Inc. www.psaudio.com email [email protected]

Copper JOURNAL OF MUSIC AND AUDIO

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Issue 1 - March 7, 2016

Birth of a Child Letter from the Publisher Paul McGowan

The birth of a child is always a cause for celebration. For the new parent, it's also a time of uncertainty and anxiety: Am I doing this right? Is THAT normal?? Creating Copper has been pretty much the same for us. There is exhilaration, the excitement of starting something completely new, of charting the course as we go. And of course, there is the desire to do everything perfectly. The first issue of Copper, now before you, requires a little by way of introduction. Copper is dedicated to furthering the art of home audio reproduction, and growing the community that supports it. Whether you call it Hi-Fi, hi-res, or High-End doesn't matter; such labels tend to separate and isolate people, which is exactly what we don't want to do. We'll do our best not to be audio snobs. Any system, technology, or category of product that faithfully reproduces music, honoring its source and intent, qualifies as fair game to us. Vinyl, digital, portable, expensive, inexpensive, new or old: if it makes music, it's of interest to our readers. Copper is not a traditional audio magazine. It is published by a well-established audio manufacturer, and we hope you do buy our products... but that's not the point of this magazine. Copper won't sell or promote products, services, or advertising. Instead, Copper aims to inform, entertain, inspire, motivate and build community. We believe that a diverse, strong, well informed community of like-minded people, sharing ideas, news, and knowledge benefits all. We don't believe in trickle-down economics, but we do believe that a rising tide floats all boats. Copper will not focus or feature equipment or reviews; there are plenty of great print and online resources that cover this. Copper will bring to its readers the most interesting voices of the audio and music industries. Interviews, thought-provoking articles, opinions–--sometimes strong ones, that we may disagree with--- technology, knowledge, music, humor, advice, perhaps an occasional piece of fiction. I like to think of Copper as the New Yorker of audio and music. I say that not to sound unbearably pretentious, but to indicate the high standards to which we aspire: well-written prose that stimulates, informs, encourages and moves its readers. Copper welcomes your voice too. If you have a comment, positive or negative, we want to hear from you. Each issue will feature the best of those comments. You're encouraged to contribute in other Copper Magazine © 2016 PS Audio Inc. www.psaudio.com email [email protected]

Page 4 ways too. We intend to feature systems that our readers are proud of, from the smallest desktop to the biggest ass-kicking zillion dollar rig. If you're making good music at home, share it with others. We'll handle writing the article for you---just supply us with photos, notes and a few paragraphs about the system, and we'll take care of the rest. Copper is free. If you enjoy its contents, and we hope you will, help us build community by subscribing and spreading the word. Servers willing and Boulder Creek don't rise, we'll publish each and every week. It's always a nail-biter to launch any new project, and Copper is no different. From the beginning, we've been met with skepticism about our ability to launch a magazine without benefit of advertising, or hope for financial reward. We believe down to our bones in supporting the community that we are a part of, and have faith in our goal of helping more people enjoy music in their homes. We hope you will join us.

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Letters

Is There an Absolute Sound? When I was living in community housing at the university, I would sometimes catch a bus that made the 10km trip between the city centre and the university. After several stops in the CBD, it would travel express to the university - in heavy traffic this would be about 25 minutes. On one occassion there were only 2 passengers on the bus: my 40 year old self and a 10 year old I discovered was called Tom. After Tom had introduced himself, for the entire journey he retold stories that had been on the T.V.series: Dr Who. He was an excellent and enthusiastic story-teller and did a great job of explaining about half a dozen plot-lines. When the bus arrived at the university, I asked Tom the question: “Tom, do you think Dr Who is true?” Without a pause, Tom replied: “The important thing is that it could be true”. As plenty of people will say, there are lots of different sounds in different concert-hall seats. And there may also be philosophical arguments about the very existence of an “absolute" sound. All good arguments - - but only very rarely do I hear reproduced music sounding as though it could have an accurate (absolute) relation to the original musical event - and when I do, I am overawed. Ian Lobb

Video Killed the Radio Star

…Cultural Appropriation in the Age of Corporate Music. First thanks to all the Folks at PS Audio who are working very hard to produce a new online audio magazine. Good luck to all. Where I am coming from: Like many audiophiles, I am an aging product of the Baby Boom, edu-

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Letters

cated to believe in an America that vanquished evil and offered endless opportunity and, at least, in my home state of California endless sunshine. My musical awakening came with Elvis, The Beatles and the Stones. The emotional impact on this "new" music was profound, indeed, I still enjoy the music of the British Invasion. We boomers are not unique, each generation has a musical awakening. My mother, born in 1911, remembers her brother rolling in the floor whist listening to Bing Crosby, and my grandson is quite a fan of rap music. Cultural appropriation has always been with us, (Nan Wynn as Princess Luana in Abbott and Costello's " Pardon My Sarong", or Bob Hope in the "Road to Bali" (et al) comes to mind) it is only in the last few years that the "Rote Cappella", which makes up a good portion of social media, has been stalking various artists complaining of music videos or performances where a cultural transgression has occurred. My guess is some of the appropriation outrage is spawned at our universities where political correctness among the over privileged has overcome intellectual development and free speech. The fact of the matter is that Cultural Appropriation provided a great many people of my generation the gift of an expansion in music appreciation. Using Blues Music, as an example, In 1964, I can tell you that there was no way anyone in a small radio market in Santa Barbara County could hear blues music. I doubt that I would have been exposed to the great artists of the blues without the Rolling Stones and other British bands to spark my interest. So, in conclusion, I am a big fan of music and a big fan of the appropriation of musical styles by any and all artists. If you hear something new in this corporate age of auto-tune and Nordic tune smiths with their advanced algorithms you indeed may be tempted to explore the more authentic source of the music. A win for all. Thank You. Louis Fashion

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Letters

The World has Changed …and the audio magazines are standing on the sidelines. In the modern world we can losslessly stream just about any performance using Tidal or Deezer. Better yet we can stream playlists and we can share playlists between anyone using the service. What this means is that a magazine can now have a shared playlist filed with the streaming service accompanying every edition. For example, the July 2016 issue of Copper can have a quickly curated list on Tidal of some or even most of the specific songs/performances alluded to in the edition. Now everybody subscribed to the streaming service can play along during or after reading. The best things about this are that it establishes a frame of reference on audio, and it takes us back to the music instead of just the equipment. My guess is Deezer and Tidal would both be interested in the synergy as well. Everyone wins. Roger Parker An Opera Buff I have been listening to Opera for over 50 years. Recently I've come to realize that most (not all) of the current singers in the past 30 years do not provoke any emotional response from me. There was a golden age of Opera singing and the recordings from that time dominate my enjoyment of the medium. I attend Opera and listen to the Met broadcasts but most of the singers fall short of the greats of the past. Is it the same for equipment used to produce sound? Was there a golden age of mono or stereo equipment that surpasses most of what exists today? Is Paul's IRS better than anything on the market? Some reviewers hold fast to older equipment. I would like to hear from the audio community on this subject. Nick Arenare Copper Magazine © 2016 PS Audio Inc. www.psaudio.com email [email protected]

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Letters

Midlothian Texas

Excited I am excited to be in on the ground floor of Copper as a frontier subscriber! My hope is that you will continue to untangle the increasingly interdependence of computers and high end audio. As a long time audiophile, I have seen my system morph from discrete two channel to two channel plus surround sound theater. Now, another layer of complexity is added with computer, NAS drive and IPad interface! What's next? I hope Copper will demystify and further increase my love for a hobby that is, unbelievably, 45 years old! Ed Schreiber

Starstruck! Starstruck. That's what I was the first time I heard a good hi-fi system in my teens in the mid-1960's. It was magical, I couldn't believe my ears. My lifelong hobby was born, and it has been a magical mystery tour ever since. There is something mystical about music and the way it can connect with our hearts and minds. We audiophiles are the happy few who enjoy pursuit of an ever-elusive Platonic ideal of musical perfection. We know it can never be ours, but the joy is in the journey. Thanks for this magazine and its effort to capture the spirit of our vocation to good sound. Stewart Wilber

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The Miracle and the Fog

HOBGOBLIN

By Seth Godin I saw it happen. In person, with my own two eyes. In Jamaica. Of course, a lot of people in Jamaica (and Colorado) see miracles happen, but I hadn't smoked a thing. And I had seen it and so had the people around me. About ten years ago, I was at a Club Med with the family. On the second to last day of our time there, we were sitting watching the kids enjoy the 25-foot-tall water slide. One after another, each sunburned youth hurtled down the steep slide, hit the water, and about a foot later, stopped cold with a huge splash. At 5 pm, the pool was closing, time to go. The guard at the top of the tower closed the gate, and then he went last, coming down the easy way. Except... Except when he hit the water, he didn't stop. He skitted across the top of the water, not slowing down, making it a full fifteen feet, all the way across the pool to the other end. This was clearly impossible. Newton was aghast. Gravity's not just a good idea, it's the law. All of us (kids and parents, perhaps thirty of us, coalescing into a fascinated and determined mob) demanded he do it again. So he did. Twice. A miracle. Afterward, I tracked him down and asked him to teach me how to do it. The next day was his day off, but for $20, he agreed to come early and show my kids and me the secret. For the next hour, before we had to run to our plane home, we skitted. Each us got to ten feet. It was amazing. And that feeling, that's what we get from the high end when it works. Copper Magazine © 2016 PS Audio Inc. www.psaudio.com email [email protected]

Page 10 Most of us remember the first time we felt it. For me, it was the Celestion SL6 bookshelf speakers. I set them up in my little apartment in New York and was just stunned. Did they sound like the Blue Note, where I had been the week before? Of course not. Did they sound like the Bottom Line, which was literally across the street from my apartment, where I had just heard Buster Poindexter? Not even close. They didn't even remind me either of those experiences. What they sounded like was a miracle. Isn't it interesting that there are countless people who are into food, trading molecular gastronomy tips and whispering about Chowhoundian restaurants? And so many of us into audio, always trading up... but very few people with the same passion about video. Video can be measured in lumens, but more important, we can see it. Vision, our highest-resolution sense, can easily tell the difference between good and great video. It's fog-free. We know it when we see it. And generally, people agree about this picture being somehow better than that picture. But audio, audio is a series of skittish butt slides. Audio is indistinct, foggy, hard to measure, easy to argue about. Not only that, but we can't possibly be done in our quest, because once we discover something really good, it fades on us. It becomes the new normal. In calculus (damn Newton again), we don't care so much about measuring the absolute as in measuring the delta, in measuring how much something changed. It's those leaps that give our entire hobby its reason for being. When we go to a jazz club, we rarely say, "wow, it sounds live in here." No, the sound in a jazz club is invisible, it's the standard, the one we expect. The performance might be amazing, but what we hear is what we hear. No veils, no windows, no noticing the absence of veils or windows. With high end audio, though, we have the chance, every once in a while, thanks to technologies, to placebos and to the magic of our neurons, to witness a miracle, a tiny glimpse of magic that might not stay, but we hope it does. That miracle is not caused (ever, ever, ever) by something we can measure. It is caused by the unexpected juxtaposition of what we expect and what we get. That means that there are two (not one) matched bookends to our craft. On one hand, we're trying to change what we get, using the best engineering we can find. And we're also trying to change what we expect. Don't take the fog away. When the fog is gone, so is our hobby. The fog is the point. And the occasional glimpses of light through the fog are what we're working for.

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Page 11 The best way to figure out what to do next in any project is to ask, "what's it for?" For me, high-end audio's mission is simple: to make you feel wonder. And once that feeling fades, to do it again. Seth Godin is the author of 18 bestselling books on ideas that spread and doing work that matters. He bought his first decent stereo shortly before he wrote his first book. A coincidence?

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The Digital Revolution By Richard Murison

QUIBBLES AND BITS

Digital Audio has revolutionized music playback. It was originally conceived as a means of addressing the massive inconvenience of analog playback, Photo Brianfactor Bloom in the form of vinyl disks, cassette tapes and the like, and was even hailed as a fundamental leap in sound quality. The launch of the CD in 1982 was a major success, and within a decade had changed the face of the business forever. 30 years on, however, the very industry that spawned it – the music distribution business, not the music creation business – faces an existential crisis brought about by its own prodigal son. For the audiophile audience here, though, we mostly care about the issue that the threatened industry apparently couldn't care less about, that of sound quality, and we delight in the delicious irony of it all. Because digital audio is finally delivering what we want most of all. Great sound quality combined with real convenience. Like analog audio, it is still a broad-brush-strokes medium. There is nothing about either that prevents anyone from creating and distributing content with low quality using a format designed to deliver a high-quality product. Low-quality reproduction equipment will still deliver low quality sound, even from the very finest recordings, and the highest-quality reproduction equipment still demands a commensurate budget. But on balance, most people will broadly agree that the average quality of music playback in today's digital age is significantly in advance of what it was in vinyl's heyday, particularly when you compare like-for-like in terms of cost. I am going to write a series of columns on Digital Audio. Mostly, these will be of an unapologetically technical nature. The thing is, whereas there was a lot of art and craft involved in the reproduction of LPs, digital audio is seen to be a much simpler, more black and white thing. You've either got it right or you haven't. It is easy to reduce the whole topic to a set of simple numbers – bit depth, sample rates, and the like – and comfort yourself in the certain knowledge that if the numbers meet some easily-remembered criteria then there is little else you need to know. Of course, the truth is never as simple or as cut-and-dried as any of us would like it to be, and any in-depth discussion of why that is so must inevitably lead to the rabbit hole of technobabble. So, if you are going to continue to read my columns, you need to prepare for a couple of things. Copper Magazine © 2016 PS Audio Inc. www.psaudio.com email [email protected]

Page 13 First, mathematics. Now, I'm not to require you to learn any tedious theorems named for people with unpronounceable names. But I am going to refer to their existence from time to time, and explain what they prove and why they are important. Digital Audio is all numbers, after all, and once you reduce something to a bunch of numbers – even a colossal bunch of numbers such as a digital audio file –you can look to mathematics to tell you what is contained within those numbers, and what is not. For the most part, this can be done with both precision and certainty, although we'll need to call upon one or more of those unpronounceable names to accomplish that. The second thing you're going to hear a lot about is DSD, which may both surprise and disappoint you. After all, isn't DSD that odd-ball audio format promoted enthusiastically by super-serious audiophiles? It requires enormous file sizes and special hardware and software to play it back. It is seriously fringe stuff. So why do you need to be concerned with it? Well, the fact is that the principles which underpin DSD are hard at work in almost every digital audio device you own, from the cheapest DAC chipsets built into your mobile phone, to the most expensive stand-alone audio DACs. Even the ADCs which convert the recording studio's microphone feeds to digital audio numbers do so based on the principles that underly DSD. So, at some point, if you want to understand Digital Audio, you're going to have to understand DSD. For all the fact that digital audio has moved the audio playing field from the art and craft of vinyl to the mathematics and computers of digital, it still hasn't managed to completely disconnect itself from some of the strange things that made us scratch our heads back in the day. Lest we forget, there was a lot of loud protest at the notion that one might wish to test an amplifier by connecting it to loudspeakers and listening to it, rather than hooking it up to a honking great resistor and an oscilloscope. And hoots of derision were howled at the idea that the bit of a turntable that makes the record go round actually has a greater impact on the sound than either the tonearm or the cartridge. That such "radical" ideas were quickly assimilated into the mainstream was made possible at least partially because they could be acceptably assigned to the 'black art' aspect of the audio art. So when the digital world starts to encounter its modern equivalents we prefer to think that there are no longer any of these 'black arts' still in play, and this – together with the internet – causes major rifts. Why should a USB cable affect the sound of a digital audio system? Or even the Ethernet cable that connects the computer to a NAS, for example. Why should a bunch of numbers stored as a FLAC file sound different from the same numbers stored as a WAV file? Indeed, the strange things that happen in the world of digital audio can sometimes be the strangest of all. All these things and more shall be added unto thee, at least they will if you stick with my column for a few weeks. Digital audio is an endlessly fascinating – albeit challenging – topic. Happy reading! Richard Murison enjoyed a long career working with lasers, as a researcher, engineer, and then as an entrepreneur. This enabled him to feed his life-long audiophile habit. Recently, though, he started an audiophile software company, BitPerfect, and consequently he can no longer afford it. Even stranger, therefore, that he has agreed to serve in an unpaid role as a columnist, which he writes from Montreal, Canada.

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I am So Over CES By Bill Leebens

AUDIO CYNIC

I remember the first Photo time Brian I was Bloom called a cynic. At least I think I do; past the 40-year mark, it's hard to separate self-delusion from reality. Anyway, it was 1968 or '69. I was in 8th grade at Lincoln Junior High, Carbondale, Illinois. During a Student Council meeting, I rolled my eyes and made a disparaging comment about a particularly egregious proposal before the Council. Given the general meaninglessness of all we did, it must've been a real stinker. Mrs. Dillard---the always-upbeat advisor who also coached cheerleaders--- got a look on her face like a storm cloud, and spat out, "BILL LEEBENS---you're SUCH a CYNIC!!" Ever-defensive, I shot back, "I AM NOT!!" Really, is there any better place for a cynic than in the audiophile world? Introspective, antisocial misanthropes angst endlessly online over picayune distinctions between various versions of mediocre music. I'm NOT one of those guys—but, boy, can I MOCK them.... And yet: God help me, the dysfunctional family of music-lovers and audio geeks are my people. Like my own family, they may make me want to commit violent acts, they may drive me to drink, but by GOD, nobody from the outside better give them crap. Then I get angry. And you wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Which brings me to CES. I first attended CES in Chicago, the summer of 1989. I was a UPS driver with a side-business in audio, so imagine what it was like for one whose contacts in that world had mostly been by longdistance or as a pen-pal, to enter a hotel full of the cranky and irreverent geniuses of the high-end audio world. To use a creepy contemporary parallel, imagine a lonely sci-fi geek from the middle of nowhere, stumbling into Comic-Con. Not to sound too fanboy, but that's what my first CES was like. David Manley, Bud Fried, Matthew

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Page 15 Polk (thanks for that fabulous lunch!), and many more of the glitterati, all wisecracking, all smoking; it was the '80's, after all. After years of isolation, I felt I'd come home. In the decades since, I've eagerly anticipated CES...but not any more. Why? That requires some explanation. Back at that summer CES in Chicago, the "Specialty Audio" exhibitors, as they were then called, were all in one hotel. Exhibitors came from other areas to take notes and steal ideas---not to mock, or to gape in horror at stratospheric price tags. CES was the place where audio brands broke out, where new products were launched. It was not just significant, it was vital. In the years since then, all that has changed, and not for the better. Let's look at the number of High Performance Audio (in CES-speak) exhibitors. Going back a few years to when such exhibits moved from the casino-free Alexis Park to the top floors of the Venetian hotel (and casino) in 2007, the outrider THE Show was adjacent to the Alexis, and both shows could easily be covered by press. At that point, floors 29-31 of the Venetian were nearly filled with purely audio exhibits, and additional exhibits were in ground-floor ballrooms and in large suites on 34 and 35. The Venetian tower is configured like a Mercedes star, with three wings to each floor. Floors 29-31 each had about 90 exhibit rooms, with 15-20 on each of 34 and 35, and perhaps another dozen down below. Add in the 40-80 rooms at THE, and you get around 350-400 exhibit rooms. It's been downhill from there. CEA---which, in my hearing referred to THE Show and other off-site exhibitors as "parasitic bloodsuckers" --- may have moved the HPA exhibits in order to discourage exhibits at THE, which ended up even farther away at the Flamingo. Where are we now? Back in 2013, I worked in an exhibit room on the Venetian's 29th floor. Allied with a number of other exhibitors, we tried to track the volume and type of traffic through our rooms. At the end of the show, we concluded that about 2,500 people had walked through the audio exhibits. That's less than one can expect at any reasonable regional show in the US, these days. And Munich is a whole 'nother story. That was admittedly, a SWAG--- a scientific, wild-ass guess. But even more significant than the number of visitors was the type of visitor. In past years, most visitors wore badges labeled BUYER, DISTRIBUTOR or RETAILER. What we saw in 2013, and which has only worsened since, was that an overwhelming percentage of our visitors wore EXHIBITOR badges. They appeared to mostly be guys (and yes, 99% were male) working at booths over at the main convention center for Intel, HP, or other megacompanies, and had come through our domain for amusement. While it's nice to have pros in other fields aware of our work---unlike the Good Old Days, they didn't seem to be there to steal ideas. They were simply there as a hoot. Let's also look at the number of High Performance Audio exhibitors at the 2016 CES. Remember, less than a decade ago there were 300 exhibitors, filling up floors 29-31, with more on 34 and 35, and a dozen downstairs in ballrooms. This year, floor 31 was completely given over to tech-y, nonaudio exhibitors, mostly software providers. Floors 29 and 30 had significant holes and non-audio

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Page 16 OEMs; there were 136 audio rooms on those two floors. 34 and 35 had a total of 18 audio rooms. Downstairs? Aside from B&O, maybe a handful. Let's say 5. All told, that makes 159 audio exhibit rooms---about half the number of just 8 or 9 years ago. THE Show no longer exists in Las Vegas; organizer Richard Beers focuses on the highly-successful THE Show in Newport Beach, California. So in total, we're down well over 200 rooms, compared to 2007ish. There are still additional offsite exhibits, as there were back then, mostly at the Mirage—but that number has stayed stable, around 20. THE Show was the cut-rate alternative to CES; companies that used to exhibit there are nearly all absent from CES. They can't afford it. For those who do exhibit at CES, the ROI is under close scrutiny. Add up the cost of a basic room at the Venetian, sleeping rooms for crew, meals for same, wining and dining dealers and distributors...$20,000 goes pretty quickly, with many companies spending far more. That doesn't sound like much in today's business-world, but remember: most of these companies are under $5M/year, and that expenditure may define the knife-edge between red and black. Or, it'd pay for a lot of visits to dealers. I've heard from several veteran audio companies that 2016 will be their last CES. I'll likely be there for at least part of the 2017 show, happy to see friends, colleagues and media. I'll likely end up exhausted and sick as a dog; after all, that is part of the CES experience. For me, CES is now like a girlfriend who once broke my heart: nice to see, with lots of wistful, nostalgic overtones...but no longer a big part of my life. Bill Leebens is Editor of Copper and Director of Marketing at PS Audio. He has been in and out of the audio business for over 40 years. Each time he returns to it, he becomes more cynical. He does not intend to go quietly.

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Paul Kantner is Dead By Dan Schwartz

MUSIC AUDIO AND OTHER ILLNESSES

He died on Thursday, January 28th. The news hit me hard, and I was surprised at that. Not quite like Lennon, or Garcia forPhoto that matter I was so much younger Brian –-Bloom then. But after the week's reflection, on reading endless online eulogies to him, the music, the times, I see it now. After the Beatles --- the reason I and countless others got into music --- the Airplane was the biggest thing that happened to me when I was 13. My aunt gave me Jefferson Airplane Takes Off and Crown of Creation for my birthday. I bought a bass soon after, and immediately fell under the spell of Jack Casady, a spell that lasts until today (when I can say, cursorily at least, that Jack and I are friends). The appearance of Casady was such an outsize event in my life, and in the life of many fledgling (and veteran) bass players that one really can't say enough about him, so much so that the event obscured others. The Airplane's singers of course, of which Kantner was one, were truly powerful, celebratory, frightening and impressive –-- one of the great vocal trios of the time. And Jorma on lead guitar, well, he was all over the place, you couldn't not hear him. Spencer on drums was his phenomenal self, pushing and pulling and coloring like mad. You see where this is going: Paul Kantner (on rhythm guitar --- mostly 12-string) went sort of unnoticed in the fury that whirled dervish-like all around him. Even on stage, he was unprepossessing, seeming to be the least among equals visually. But now I'm listening to the Mobile Fidelity gold CD of Crown, and hearing for what seems like the first time how utterly essential he is to the whole. He's the center, the body, the thing that everyone can fly off of. He actually plays the songs; all else is color. And it turns out, he was also the principal writer. How could I have not noticed how utterly essential he was? It wouldn't be unfair to say he WAS Jefferson Airplane; as Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead has observed, he was "the backbone" of the band.

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Page 18 And he's gone. When I heard the news, it was like hearing of the death of close friend. Even though the Airplane are many, many years gone, they're still alive for me musically –-- or at least were until last week. I know this makes his death ultra-dramatic --- it's not quite as severe as it sounds. But there's something essential to knowing that one's early influences and heroes are still here, still walking around and sipping coffee at Caffé Trieste in San Francisco; a city he was from, where he lived his entire life (and not incidentally, where I intended to live but for circumstance). When Lennon was murdered, it was personal. Even though I hadn't listened to the Fabs in quite a few years, I grieved as if a family member had been killed. When Garcia died, it wasn't a surprise --- I knew he was in questionable shape. And I had seen him the year before. But Paul Kantner's death took me by surprise because I hadn't been paying attention. And that was my error. I suppose we can't pay attention to everyone everywhere all the time, and we had just had a beloved pet die --- in my hands --- a week before. But the next day it came out that their original singer, Signe Ettlin (before Grace Slick), died on the same day as Kantner. Last fall, a friend who writes for Bernie Sanders' website and I had the idea of trying to do some songs for his rallies. This brought us into contact with Kantner and the band, some of whom were very enthusiastic about Sanders using the song Volunteers. I discovered that Kantner had chosen to split all the royalties from the song with the whole band, way back when. He put his money where his mouth was. With all that as preamble, I want to suggest a few songs to listen to, to hear what was so great about him. (None of these are audiophile records). I'm long past being objective about any of this, but, subjectively, what would I recommend? Try these: "In Time" from Crown of Creation; Kantner at his most meditative and quietly psychedelic. The way the band handles the easy tension, as the song snakes to its conclusion is still, 46 years later, inspiring. In much of his writing from this period, you can feel the, um, "enhanced" perception that would develop from that altered view. Lean close put your lips next to my face Look further on past the surface Orange, blue, red and green Are the colors of what I feel And my mind you know it starts to reel in time "Fat Angel" from Bless its Pointed Little Head; a grey and foggy cover of the song Donovan wrote about the band. Fly Trans-Love Airways Gets you there on time.

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Page 19 "We Can Be Together" from Volunteers; this is the man at his most expansive and seemingly political –-- while remaining outsiders in Nixon's America. Definitive. In fact, in reissue liner notes, he says the song isn't not overtly political, not a call-to-arms, but rather a call to attention. We should be together, my friends... We can be together We will be "Wooden Ships", Volunteers; co-written with David Crosby and Stephen Stills. I play this version for people to make a stark contrast with the CSN version, which to my ears is too tidy and much less fraught with emotional danger. Live tracked, with their trademarked vocal approach, and sounding like it's about to fall apart (which, at least while the faders are up, it doesn't do). Blows Against the Empire. You've got to hear all of it, at least the first time. Then you can pick your songs --- which will no doubt include "Have You Seen the Stars Tonight?". Here he brought together everyone in the Bay to make a Hugo-winning science-fiction album. Some of it is sloppy and strident, some of it sublime, and all of it constitutes an extraordinary narrative. There have been dozens of articles about Kantner since he died and most of those cite his writing on the albums Surrealistic Pillow and After Bathing at Baxter's. Of those, I particularly like this: As I write this, February 6th, it's just been announced that Dan Hicks (of the Hot Licks, and the early SF psych band the Charlatans) has died as well, of cancer. Another hero. It's too much. I mean, I didn't like Glenn Frey at all, but still --- they're falling fast now. Dan Schwartz is a parent, sort of a husband, and has been a musician of some years, having played on quite a few records - and even a few good ones. He's recorded or played with Rosanne Cash, Bob Dylan, Jon Hassell, Brian Eno, Bernie Leadon, Dave Navarro, Linda Perry, Sheryl Crow, Stan Ridgeway, and was a member of the Tuesday Night Music Club. In his spare time, he used to write for Harry and Sallie at the absolute sound and the Perfect Vision. Professionally, he keeps trying to leave music, but it keeps coming to get him.

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Page 20

Mahler Tall, Grande, Venti By Lawrence Schenbeck

TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

Maybe you've experienced this: you offer your friend a bracing taste Photo of music byBloom Gustav Mahler (1860– Brian 1911) and your friend turns you down flat, saying "Sorry, bro. Ars longa, vita brevis. Why sit through two-and-a-half hours of 'Life Sucks and Then You Die'? I've already got the t-shirt." Or maybe you're the friend who turned down that offer. Here's another way to look at it: Yes, Mahler wrote a few of the longest, saddest pieces in Western music. That's why some of us love him. He may be telling more of the truth about human existence than everyone wants to hear. Unfortunately, this also limits his appeal to the uninitiated. The best way to introduce a friend to this particular giant of classical music would be via something short and (at least partly) sunny. Such Mahler does exist. I'm thinking of his songs, which come attractively packaged in collections that alternate sunlight and shadow, joy and grief. You can bite into one or two without making a bigger commitment. Seriously, it can't ruin more than five minutes of your day. Start by giving a listen to Mahler's songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, an anthology of German folk poetry from the early 19th century. Mahler was fascinated by these poems, which he refused to read nostalgically, as artifacts of lost innocence. For him they weren't relics. Rather, their human immediacy—their now-ness—struck a chord. He responded by creating folk-like but original melodies and superb orchestral settings, both of which brought out their authentic depth of feeling. The subject matter ranges from frankly playful to deadly serious: Once in a deep vale Cuckoo and nightingale Decided to make a bet To sing for the master-prize. Copper Magazine © 2016 PS Audio Inc. www.psaudio.com email [email protected]

Page 21 By skill or by luck, The victor would carry home the palm. Cuckoo said, "with your permission, I have chosen the judge." And named the donkey right away. . . . I, poor drummer boy! They lead me out of the dungeon. Had I only remained a drummer boy, I would not lie in prison. Oh gallows, you high house. You are such a dreadful sight! I will not look at you again, Because I know that I belong there. These excerpts are from an excellent recent recording of the Wunderhorn songs by soprano Christiane Oelze, baritone Michael Volle, and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln conducted by Markus Stenz (Oehms Classics OC 657). In Europe, Stenz has become known as a consistently successful Mahler interpreter. It's time he and his collaborators were celebrated on this side of the Atlantic. (Incidentally, Stenz and his orchestra make live recordings available after concerts to anyone with a ticket and a thumb drive: read about it here.) If you're a vinyl fan you might keep your eyes peeled for the classic Forrester-Rehfuss-Prohaska Wunderhorn recording produced in 1963 by Seymour Solomon, who—for those of us less keen on dumpster-diving—supervised a digital remastering in 1991 (Vanguard Classics OVC 4045). Mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink offers a broader, chronologically organized survey of Mahler's songs for Harmonia Mundi (HMC 902173; 2014), including selections from Songs of a Wayfarer, Kindertotenleider (Songs on the Deaths of Children), and the Rückert-Lieder (poetry of Friedrich Rückert). A further advantage to this set is that it mixes piano and orchestral accompaniments, including the chamber reductions that Arnold Schoenberg made in 1920 for his Private Musical Performances in Vienna. You get a sense of how Mahler conceived settings for these songs, not to mention why it was natural for him to integrate many of them into his symphonic works. Here is a bit of Schoenberg's arrangement of one of the Wayfarer songs: This morning I walked over the field, Dew was still hanging on the grass. The happy finch called out to me: "Hey you! Good morning! Hey You! Isn't it a lovely world? And here is Mahler's own chamber-like orchestration of the first of the Kindertotenlieder: Now the sun will rise as brightly As if no calamity had befallen during the night.

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Page 22 The calamity befell me alone; The sun shines on everyone. . . . All in all a useful sampling, nicely delivered by Fink and her colleagues. Eventually you will want to explore Mahler's song repertoire further, but this well-thought-out introduction helps you understand how his creative concerns evolved. Which takes us from Tall to Grande. Are there Mahler symphonies that don't last forever, don't address Major Issues Facing Humanity? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Yes, there are. Start with Symphony No. 4. Providing the conductor doesn't dawdle, it clocks in at under an hour, nevertheless acquainting you with the fundamental aspects of Mahler the symphonist. Also, its finale incorporates one of the most charming songs in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, "Das himmlische Leben" ("Life in Heaven"). In one of his incandescent later performances with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Claudio Abbado conducted both the Rückert Lieder and this symphony. The latter begins with sleigh bells' gentle sound: That Wunderhorn song—about an angelic feast full of earthly delights—commences at 47'30"; Magdalena Kožená sings, and English subtitles are provided. The whole concert is available on Blu-ray video (EuroArts 2057984) and as part of Abbado's Mahler Symphonies 1–7 set (also EuroArts). For those who'd rather not see the musicians, Iván Fischer's recording with soprano Miah Persson and the Budapest Festival Orchestra provides an equally rewarding experience (Channel Classics CCS SA 26109; SACD and download). If Mozart had been born a century past his time, this is music he might have made. It's just that graceful, human, and profound. It's also relatively pocket-sized. Or as the Starbucks people might put it: Grande. (Sorry, bro. Venti next time.) Lawrence Schenbeck was born on a mountaintop in Tennessee. In spite of that, he became a historical musicologist. He is the author of two books, many more scholarly articles, and countless liner notes, music reviews, and "casuals." He lives in the Atlanta area with his family and too much music, Tchaikovsky being the least of it. Literally.

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Page 23

Smell You Later, Save Your Ears

BEHIND THE GLASS

By Duncan Taylor You know what stinks? Photo Brian Bloom Scientists say that your smell receptors can replace and regenerate damaged neurons. Yet hearing receptors can never regenerate or repair themselves. When was the last time you smelled something that was as all-encompassing and enthralling as the sound of a orchestra's crescendo when sitting in the middle of the hall? Can even the richest smell temporarily remove you from full consciousness, or make you cry? It's an injustice, I tell you. Which is why my conductor/composer father has always warned me about the dangers of listening to music too loudly. I often saw him cover his ears if we encountered too loud of a moment when taking in live music. He'd bring ear plugs sometimes, and I remember at least one occasion where we had to make our own using T.P. form the bathroom. Preserving our hearing was paramount to him. And I'm so glad I had that example to follow. I never thought my life would lead me to a career focused on music from all sides. But now that I'm here, I'm more careful than ever to take steps to preserve my hearing. If you see me out at a show, there's a good chance you'll also see two orange plugs sticking out of my head. Also, I try to never use the type of headphones that may be the most common nowadays: earbuds! To be clear, some earbuds are okay. The ones Apple supplies with every iPhone are fine, because they're ported on the back and so they don't build up a lot of pressure on your eardrum. They also don't have a rubber or foam tip that would seal them into your ear canals. Those are fine. My concern is focused on the really prevalent style of 'buds, which are called inner ear monitors, or IEMs, and have that recognizable rubber tip.

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Page 24 When an earbud is stuck in your ear, it creates a seal, and the movement of the driver produces nearly identical movement of your ear drum. Which is way more movement and pneumatic pressure than your drum is used to. Your ears then activate what's called the stapedial reflex, which is an emergency response that lowers the volume in your head by pulling the three little hearing bones in your ear away from one another. Incidentally, the reflex also activates whenever you speak, and that keeps the sound of your own speaking from overwhelming your consciousness. Anyway, the problem lies in the fact that when it's always on, this reflex is annoying and fatiguing. Plus the volume drop usually causes you to turn the volume up on your device, further exacerbating the issue. But don't worry, there's always hope! Headphone companies are waking up to this problem, and some are now designing IEMs with pressure relieving devices that restore the normal function of your ear drum and hearing during a listening session. Check out this link for a cool video explaining one approach to this big problem. Smelling may be forever, but you can make your hearing last with a little knowledge and prevention. Duncan Taylor is a product specialist at PS Audio, and recording engineer and producer of livetrack video recording studio Second Story Garage. He also plays a few instruments, pens a weekly music column for college students, and likes to build speakers and amps in his spare time.

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Page 25

What is Vintage? By Bill Leebens

VINTAGE AUDIO

What's wine got to do with us? As is often the case in the notoriously-fluid English language, the word "vinPhoto Brian Bloom meaning the year tage" has morphed from a noun--in which grapes are harvested and wine is produced from them--- to an adjective with a broader meaning. "Vintage" in mainstream usage refers to items of high quality or excellent design, from an earlier period. Confusion comes from trying to define the term from the perspective of different folks: "vintage" clothing to a 20-year-old may mean skinny ties, hip-huggers, and fringed leather boots. A 70-year-old might view such things as "the stuff in the back of my closet". Audiophiles and audiophools are by nature contentious, and few things will cause flame-wars ---the sedentary-audiophile equivalent of bar fights--- to erupt, like the topic of vintage audio.To look at craigslist, you'd think that a $199 GPX rack system from 1993 was "vintage audio". To a 19-year-old, used to soundbars and Bluetooth speakers, that rack system may seem, umm, awesome and bitchin'. To a (cough) 60-year-old who has spent much of his wasted life carting around massive, dusty amplifiers and speakers that take up more living-room real estate than his couch—well, that rack system would just be...crap. Who's right? Maybe both. Our expectations are formed by our experiences, and to the 19-year-old, raised in the era of lightweight injection-molded products, that forty pound rack might seem both hefty and bulletproof. To the elder gent, having played Indiana Jones in old movie houses and carted off Western Electric gear by the half-ton....it's crap. Everyone has certain hot-buttons, things that trigger memories and wistful associations of another time, and those nostalgic longings are tied to the era of upbringing. Our 19-year-old may get verklempt at the sight of Magic: The Gathering cards and a Mazda RX-8; for our 60year-old, it may be Pong and a '68 Road Runner with a 440 Six Pack. Realistically, it's more likely that "Hey 19" will go for the Road Runner, beep-beep horn and all, than

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Page 26 "60 is the New 40" will find the RX-8 irresistible. The 'Runner is big and brash and noisy, totally unlikely Mom and Dad's Altima. Old dude may not even fit in the Mazda, and find its charms elusive. Applying that same logic to the audio world, Millenials/GenZs/whatEVer may well find the heft and industrial chic of '50's-'70's audio gear alien and irresistible. AARP-ers are unlikely to find most gear from the '90's captivating. That's our theory, and we're sticking to it. In weeks and months to come, we'll look at products from the past and the companies that made them. We'll focus on the period from the end of World War II to, oh, the late '70's. Our subjects will largely be American, but side-trips to Europe and Asia can be expected. There WILL be history, biography, engineering, and economics involved. There will NOT be a test. We hope to show that the past is prologue, and by knowing more about the products of the past, we can better appreciate those of the present day. Or...we may end up thinking the new stuff is all crap. We'll see. Bill Leebens has bought and sold vintage gear since the days when it was new. He regrets that a goodly number of classic American components now reside in Japan, because of him. Mea culpa.

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Page 27

Quiet is the New Loud By Scott McGowan

BASEMENT BEATS

March 6th, 2016 marks fifteen years since millennials found our generation's Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel. Steel strings by Photoby Brian Erlend Oye, nylon strings EirikBloom Glambek Boe, and delicate harmonized vocals by both, Norwegian pop icons Kings of Convenience blessed the ears of budding hipsters the world around, pronouncing (not shouting) from the rooftops that Quiet is the New Loud. Before I lost all my CDs and laughed about it, before I was falling asleep with an iPod, and even before I'd fully unplugged from Dave Mathews (and his Band), the stylus of my friend's TT dropped on track-one/side-one of this touching album— their first studio—and four bars later I heard two voices. Not two people singing. Two distinct voices. Stereo sound in perfect harmony. HiFi no longer belonged to my parents. By track four -- "I Don't Know What I Can Save You From" – with my head right next to the driver, I was confounded and struggling with how best to give each ear equal air-time. Just then Ian Braken's Cello arrives intimately on the scene. Calming, intricate, emotive, and just plain gorgeous to behold, Quiet achieves a sublimely subtle and engaging musical experience. With top-notch recording and production by Astralwerks, each detailed note and every savory phrase sends the listener deep into the ether, where definitions fade and only senses remain. Eyes closed, volume up, head swaying, we were drunk on invaluable inflections and cheap beer. The jam bands of my youth seemed to fade away with the cascading passages of those tender strings. I bought my first record player a week later. My friend still has the cherished original pressing he bought for twenty bucks in 2001—something I never, ever talk about—but us regular people can demo the album on Spotify or Apple Music. (News in just in time for print: the album is scheduled for re-release on vinyl, April 8th!)

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Page 28 Just when we'd worn the LP down sufficiently, and after Quiet's mellow strides were in want of a kick in the ass, Kings offered their 2004 sophomore studio album Riot on an Empty Street. The first five notes of "Homesick"—cut #1—I exhaled a sigh of relief. Artists have their whole lives to write the first album and only a few years to write and record the next. How often have we heard the words It's not as good as their first album (don't worry if you haven't heard of it...it's super obscure...it barely exists in fact). You don't have to worry about that. Kings dive into Riot like no time has passed. Cut #6, "Sorry or Please" is a jazzy expression. In addition to the usual suspects, this track enjoys upright bass, trumpet, banjo, and viola. They proceed to kick it up a notch with plenty of faster tempos and even songs that straight make you want to shake it. The horn section grows to include trombone. Vocals take a surprising twist by featuring Canadian artist Feist as lead for two songs. When she sings you think it's her band you must have been hearing all along. Listen to the last song, "The Build-Up" just before you go to sleep. Leslie Feist's outro will be with you in the morning. Riot is hard to find on vinyl. But if you have $20 you can order the 2009 album Declaration of Dependence—aren't these titles fantastic?—on vinyl, and I suggest you do. The first song, "24-25" is one I often demo at trade-shows and really stands up to the HiFi Challenge. Not unlike Scandinavian design, the Bergen-based duo exemplifies hard-fought perfection in every detail. Before you know it, those same hipsters which lauded only the original album will regale you with "Yeah, yeah---all their music sounds the same..." You know what? It doesn't matter that much, when all your music is great. Scott McGowan is Sales Director of PS Audio, which is his dream job. His coolest possessions are his Studer Revox A77 reel-to-reel tape deck, and his Technics 1210-MKII turntable. He doesn't like TV very much. He loves things you can touch, and he spends a strange amount of time reflecting on the physical properties of aluminum. Wikipedia is his secret best-friend. His house is littered with record sleeves and liner notes. He collects headphones passionately. Most nights he stays up too late listening, reading, writing. His favorite author is James Joyce. He lives with his wife in Denver, where he writes fiction, poetry, editorials, and the occasional music review.

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Page 29

Eleven Records That Changed my Life By Ken Micallef As a working music journalist, I've covered multiple genres of music for dozens of publications. I spoke with Frank Zappa about the future of the Republican party's Jesse Helms, and with Yoko Ono about John's favorite experimental music. I talked Coltrane with Elvin Jones, and Magical Mystery Tour with George Martin. Except for my profession, my love of music is probably no different than yours. Which leads to --- "the records that changed my life." If you can remember where you were the first time you fully experienced a favorite LP --- that's a lifechanging record. The idea that a record "changed your life" is no small thing. Taking stock of your personal history through music will bring up of special life moments: some forgotten, some branded on your psyche as times good and bad. Some records are gateways. With hindsight it's easy to see where a door opened, where you passed through, where previously unknown recordings created connections that formed the music lover you are today. Every record you've loved, and every person that introduced you to that record, has had a major impact on that man poking his Pono or that woman dropping a needle. So here are the records that changed my life, in no particular order except that dictated by the alphabet. These are mine; I look forward to reading yours. John Abercrombie Timeless (ECM) Inspired by Miles Davis, fueled by Jimi Hendrix, Timeless is one of the great early ECM albums, combining scorching guitar lyricism, psychedelic synthesizers, and interstellar space drumming. "Lungs" is a perfect example of jazz with its stylistic chains unbound, three profound soloists unleashing balls-to-the-wall solos as supercharged missiles. Abercrombie's guitar riffs like John McLaughlin aping Hendrix; keyboardist Jan Hammer (fresh from Mahavishnu Orchestra) plays incredible Moog and electric piano; drummer Jack DeJohnette maintains an impossibly fast cymbal beat while bashing toms and snare drum to a bloody pulp. If Bitches Brew and Live-Evil make you think of satanic rituals, Timeless should be the first stop on your electric jazz initiation. Albert Ayler Spiritual Unity (ESP) Today's buzz phrase among hipsters and hip-hop heads alike is "spiritual jazz." To what was once called "free jazz," spiritual jazz adds Pro Tools sequences, glossy hip-hop production, and bellowing sax and voila! Kamasi Washington resurrects jazz for 2016! The seeds of free jazz can be found in John Coltrane, further expressed by his tenor saxophone disciples: Pharaoh Sanders, Archie Shepp, and Albert Ayler. Spiritual Unity is the gateway drug of free jazz, a soaring, spacious, tenor-led trio that flies off the cliff, takes you along for the journey, then safely deposits you on level ground, panting for more. The Beatles The Beatles (White Album) (Apple)

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Page 30 The Beatles album where John has a monkey, Paul does it in the road, Ringo sings for attention, and George divulges Eric Clapton's sweets addiction, The Beatles (aka White Album) is supposedly the sound of the band falling apart, but you could've fooled me. Is there a bad song on this album? Four separate Beatles working apart with the others as backing band is the best of all possible worlds. I submit: "Back in the U.S.S.R." One of the finest rock and roll moments of Paul McCartney's career, where he plays the bass, the guitar solo, and the drums. "Revolution #1" and "#9." The first song is a rejuvenated John Lennon shredding his larynx with revolt as the message, the second a tape loop symphony inspired by Stockhausen which still sends shivers. "Savoy Truffle." "We all know what you eat you are, but can you show me who you are?" "Dear Prudence." John's reverberant fingerpicking guitar unfurls a tribute to Mia Farrow's sister, morphing into a full-blown psychedelic epic that rises like the sea, loops odd vocals, and generally turns a thudding dirge into one sexy beast. Ornette Coleman This Is Our Music (Atlantic) If your jazz frame of reference is limited to the quintuple thrills of Mingus, Monk, Ellington, Miles and Coltrane (ok, Charlie Parker for the joker), Ornette Coleman is truly the wild card worth hearing. An original musician, reared in Texas, writing music in his own code, Ornette Coleman played alto saxophone like no one before then cracked jazz open to include the entire universe. This Is Our Music (and his other Atlantic LPs) is the sound of Texas blues and hillbilly swing, wide-open soloing vistas where everyone leads and no one leads. Coleman's band became overnight stars upon their 1959 debut at NYC's The Five Spot, though the then prevalent jazz intelligentsia (including Miles) thought Ornette couldn't play and laughed at his tunes. Truth is they were intimidated by the media's embrace of Coleman and the authenticity of his music – which no one else could play. Bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Ed Blackwell and trumpeter Don Cherry became three of the most important musicians of the 20th century, and Ornette's music lives on. Miles Davis Miles Ahead (Columbia) As a 12-year-old staying up far past my bedtime, I'd often sneak downstairs to watch "The Late, Late Movie." The show's theme song was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard: Lilting brass, cool piano, and acoustic bass gracefully grooving over brushed drums, and above it all, a haunting flugelhorn illustrating a bittersweet melody. When years later I learned that song was Kurt Weill's "My Ship," performed by Miles Davis and arranged by Gil Evans from Miles Ahead, it was one of those synchronicity moments when everything seems to make sense, even though it doesn't. Miles Ahead is one of Miles Davis' most shimmering, enigmatic and lovely LPs. Recorded with a large ensemble at Columbia's fabled 30th Street studios in 1957, Miles Ahead is one third of Miles' trilogy of albums with Gil Evans which includes Sketches of Spain and Porgy and Bess. For me, Miles Ahead remains the most exquisite, the most lyrical. Playing flugelhorn throughout, Miles sails like a sullen angel on opener "Springsville," leading to some amazing ensemble figures. "The Duke," written for Ellington, is playful and wry, like the man himself. The title track is more of that lovely, swaying melodiousness that Evans and Davis conjured so well, so haunting, and so graceful. "New Rhumba" kicks it up a notch, a bold brass shout over drummer Jimmy Cobb's simmering pulse. Miles Ahead is classic, late '50s New York City, like a stained-glass time capsule of black and white photos of Times Square, oversized Buicks roaring down the FDR, and jazz clubs all over town. Miles Davis Nefertiti (Columbia) The first time I truly got Nefertiti was while grilling chicken and drinking red wine in my mother's

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Page 31 backyard in Charlotte, North Carolina, 1979. I didn't begin with Kind of Blue like most. Nope. I'd actually met Miles the year before while visiting my sister in Manhattan. We were walking the Upper West Side where she lived. Sis pointed down 78th Street and said, "Miles Davis lives down that block." I ventured down with my camera; there was Miles, standing on the stoop of his building. I asked, "May I take a photo?" He waved his arm, granting my wish. I still have the photo. Nefertiti was and is a game changer. After the classic hard bop of his '50's quintet, Miles blew it all away: elastic, shifting meters, expanding tonality and harmony, drummer Tony Williams altering the rhythms like a machine-gunner murdering Viet Cong. The more wine I drank, the more hallucinogenic Nefertiti became. Wayne Shorter's "Fall" and "Pinocchio" seemed to warp time itself, the songs' melodies bending and swaying, repeating once, then twice, each instrumentalist delaying release so that every line mirrored and foreshadowed the next. Post Ornette, pre Live Evil, 1967's Nefertiti hits the sweet spot of damaged jazz for experimental wanderers. Pat Metheny Group Still Life (Talking) (Warner Bros) The best-selling Pat Metheny Group album after the rather garish solo Secret Story, 1987s Still Life (Talking) is where the guitarist's glorious melodies sing over humid Brazilian beats and wide-open Missouri spaces. Such tracks as "So May It Secretly Begin," "(It's Just) Talk," and "Third Wind" are future jazz standards in the making, just as Metheny's "The Bat," "Are You Going With Me?" and "James" have entered today's jazz lexicon. Still Life (Talking) is really about beauty, from the voice of Pedro Aznar and Metheny's glistening guitar to greatly missed drummer Paul Wertico's supple cymbal interplay. It's high art, complex jazz and people's music all at once. Still Life (Talking)'s windswept, high-flying vision sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and remains the compositional muse Metheny has chased ever since. Hank Mobley Soul Station (Blue Note) The lightweight tenor champ to John Coltrane's heavyweight title, Hank Mobley is the sweetest cat to ever pick up the tenor saxophone. Mobley's sound is all burnished tone and satin texture, his tunes epitomizing the swing and energy of hard bop with a dry wit that was his alone. Backed by drummer Art Blakey, pianist Wynton Kelly and bassist Paul Chambers, Mobley lets fly one soulful tenor breeze after another on 1960's Soul Station. When jazz newbies ask for recommendations, it's Miles Davis' Milestones, Ella Fitzgerald's Swing Brightly with Nelson, and Soul Station, every time. Sonny Rollins Alfie (Impulse!) One of a handful of perfect jazz albums that includes Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Oliver Nelson's Blues and The Abstract Truth, and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, Alfie is Sonny Rollins' feelgood jazz hit of 1966. The soundtrack to the film that starred Michael Caine as a womanizing and ultimately tragic figure in swinging '60s London, Alfie is so much more than the movie, great as it was. With Oliver Nelson's popping arrangements, and exceptional support by pianist Hank Jones, guitarist Kenny Burrell, pianist Stan Tracy and drummer Frankie Dunlop, Rollins blows some of his most majestic moments ever, in some of best compositions. Alfie is that rare album where rapturous, economical solos, sublime arrangements and Rollins' haunting compositions are framed by gorgeous melodies. And as great as Burt Bacharach's "Alfie" is, its omission here is barely noticeable. Squarepusher Feed Me Weird Things (Warp)

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Page 32 Tom Jenkinson, aka Squarepusher is a Jaco Pastorious-inspired, Dizzy Gillespie-informed bassist/ programmer who created some of the most incendiary electronic music of the mid 1990s. Just as the entire London dance scene was blowing up with innovative drum-and-bass and trip-hop artists, Squarepusher rewrote the rules. Programming jack-hammer rhythms over which he slung his mad electric bass lines, Jenkinson could change gears in an instant with such profoundly sad and atmospheric songs as "Goodnight Jade." Jazz guitar strums racked by breakbeat warbles, solar dub-quakes, madly colliding dance anthems, and eerie, frozen ambient interludes, Feed Me Weird Things remains a stunning electronic jazz achievement. King Crimson Larks' Tongues In Aspic (joker) 70s longhairs helmed by guitar wizard Robert Fripp and loin cloth-wearing percussionist Jamie Muir, King Crimson had already trashed several lineups when Larks' Tongues arrived in 1973. With exYes drummer Bill Bruford onboard and future Asia bassist John Wetton crooning, Larks' Tongues explored the humming percussion and proto-metal guitar dynamics of the title track, the wheezing progressive rock sturm und drang of "Easy Money," and the contemplative "Book of Saturday." Instrumentals "The Talking Drum" and "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part Two" are shot through with jazz fusion, European free-improvisation, and shards of heavy metal. Muir's chimes, bells, thumb piano, mbiras, musical saw, shakers, rattles, found objects and various drums and chains are skillfully inserted throughout the music like woodland animals gone mad. A bed of Mellotron smoothes all rough edges. The connective tissue of my eleven life-changing records is lost to time. And better it stays that way, those "mystic chords of memory" now shadowy images that I joyously relive through the music. "There are places I remember, all my life, though some have changed . . ." Ken Micallef loves cheap cigars. Smoking cheap cigars has enabled Ken to direct his funds into building a fine audio system and an even better LP collection. Combine Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Sibelius, Shindo, DeVore Fidelity, Bartok, Enrico Rava, Franc Kuzma, and Miles Davis -- and everything else is secondary.

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Page 33

The Lossless Self By Elizabeth Newton In June, NPR published a widely shared quiz called "How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality?" It tests a listener's ability to perceive distinctions among different recordings of the same track. Presented with six songs from a range of genres, for each song, listeners were asked to select the highest quality version among three of the same recording encoded at different bit rates. How I yearned to ace that test, proving to myself that my ears are not only discriminating, capable of perceiving the slightest shades of sonic nuance, but correctly discriminating, ordering such distinctions from best to worst. I took it twice. I flunked the first time. The second time I got three of six correct. I was not alone in my failure. The aggregate results of quiz takers suggested that few listeners can correctly distinguish a lossless, uncompressed FLAC file from an MP3; overall, listeners scored barely higher than if they had guessed at random. When I failed, I, like many listeners, blamed the quiz's authors for choosing tricky songs. Then I glared at my headphones for leading me astray. Finally, growing desperate, I resorted to critical theory: "What even is real?" I asked, channeling Baudrillard a few decades too late. Counterfeit money is real if someone accepts it. Is counterfeit sound real, then, if someone hears it as such? If someone likes it? If someone buys it? If someone shares it with a friend? Simply put, there is no such thing as an "authentic" reproduction of a sound source. Philosophers such as Joshua Glasgow have exhausted themselves trying to prove that full fidelity, identical replication of an originary musical event, is possible, but myriad factors impede perfect replication of a listening experience, however pure the signal: the varying lengths of our stereocilia (ear hairs); variations in the acoustics of our studios and in our playback equipment; and most significantly, our unique memories and aesthetic ideals. But, they say, imagine if we could listen in a vacuum. Okay, but we can't. From nearly every angle, listeners keep getting in the way. In an era of T-Pain Autotune apps and vinyl pressers ripping "hi-fi" cuts from YouTube, fidelity should be a lost cause. Miraculously, it's not. The terms of fidelity remain pervasive and persuasive marketing tools. Facebook, for instance, flaunts its "high definition" audio messaging, borrowing branding terminology from music-based social-media platforms. Chicago-based coffee roaster Intelligentsia offers an "Analog" espresso blend, comparing their coffee's "true" taste to the "real" sound of the pre-digital. What enthusiasts love about analog technology — the weight of those buttons, the tug of that tape — would seem to have little to do with the berry notes of a breakfast roast, but the ideal of fidelity is flexible, applicable across the senses. The word analog, like fidelity, is pure gimmick. These terms easily detach from any clear meaning and become fetishes ready to be enlisted in the

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Page 34 service of a variety of agendas. We know the concept of fidelity to be a sham, yet many of us still pursue it as a mode of resistance to haste, waste, and careless consumerism. The notion of "hi-fi" sound, though eventually exploited by mainstream record labels, stereo manufacturers, and lifestyle magazines, emerged in the 1940s among hobbyists interested in small-batch craftsmanship, in opposition to the mass production associated with television. Today, cutting edge technology is put in service of aims that have remained stagnant since those early days: sonic immersion, the pursuit of perfection, and escape from the dullness of everyday life. As early as 1939, these values were described, in a General Electric ad for "high fidelity" radio receivers, as spectacular realism: sound engineered to not merely resemble its source but transcend it, becoming realer than real, like a GMO apple that improves upon any apple found in nature. Today as before, hi-fi shops are testaments to our belief that the perfect combination of copper and gold might bring us one step closer to what was lost before it was ever once found: full fidelity. In gadget-filled shops from Los Angeles to Brooklyn, expert gearheads quibble with clients on the finer points of each jack, cord, and coil. Storefronts become model living rooms, resembling bachelor pads circa 1970. Men regard tube amps as living creatures. Steely Dan is played at "ideal" volumes. If you listen to Steely Dan as a 128-kbps MP3, do you really hear it? At stake in the possibility of "counterfeit listening" — listening that acknowledges degraded sound as real — are some of our deepest moral values, including mindfulness, attentive citizenship, and conscientious consumption. How we listen seems to echo, if not dictate, how we think about the world. Though audiophiles' obsession can border on egomania, their resistance to low quality is instructive, a form of conscious listening that, at best, may be likened to a kind of political consciousness. Sound has long been imbued with the power to influence our dispositions. A Spotify tagline tells us: "Find playlists to fit — or change — your mood." Inattentive listening can open one up to deceit, control, and manipulation. From this perspective, to accept degraded sound is to give in to ethical decay in other realms of life. To be not only fooled but happily fooled by unfaithful sound can indicate the worst sort of decadence. But sonic verisimilitude is just one way of understanding fidelity. In genres such as punk, lo-fi, and noise music, unwanted sounds conventionally heard as impediments to fidelity are heard as signs of enhanced authenticity. Those who appreciate these genres are not dupes; rather, they are drawn to what Jonathan Sterne, the author of MP3: The Meaning of a Format, calls the "affective intensity of low-definition experiences." On recordings, audible transduction noise, mistakes, and ambient sounds establish their own histories of resistance, flouting unrealistic standards of beauty and perfection. "Noise occasions presence," in Stan Link's words, connecting us both to the embodied world of mediation and to the past that recordings document. Imperfection humanizes recordings, bringing us closer to ourselves. Should we dismiss hi-fi logic as materialistic and vain? Or should we pursue high fidelity, combating compression with all our might, letting our ears guide us to integrity at last?

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Page 35 The NPR quiz was framed by its authors as service journalism, signaling to listeners that "higher quality" streaming services, such as Tidal's "HiFi" option, are not worth the cost, given that aesthetic benefits of higher quality will likely go undetected. The quiz recalled a similar experiment from a century earlier, when sound was the epitome of ephemerality and listeners were genuinely befuddled by the possibility of capturing it. Edison Records, while marketing the newly commercialized phonograph, sponsored a series of "tone tests" in which listeners, positioned behind a curtain, were asked to distinguish between a live performance of a piece of music and the same piece played through the horn of a phonograph. Like Spotify today, Edison was interested in convincing listeners that they couldn't tell the difference. That they were expected to fail the test suggests that what humans hear as noise is historically contingent. Today, it is unfathomable to us that listeners then could not distinguish between a phonograph disc, its sound laden with fuzz, and a performer there in the flesh. The tone tests, like the NPR audio quality quiz, articulate an enduring truth: Fidelity has less to do with what is heard than with who hears it. Listening for fidelity is not about empirical comparison between two measurements, but about similarity, or resonance, between two emotional experiences. Fidelity is not something absolute but something dreamed, sensed, and felt. Spotify exemplifies this notion, making no claims to high sound quality. Instead, it deals in its own logic of fidelity, in which its seemingly infinite music library is meant to evoke the same feelings that our tangible music libraries can. The Spotify interface, which allows users to browse through folders, compile playlists, and stream radio, aggregates past modes of listening through metaphor. It refers to many media at once: milk crates filled with vinyl, mixtapes lovingly curated, and the surprise and surrender of radio listening. By referencing our listening pasts, Spotify constructs historical continuity, even as it claims to transcend limits of time and space. They are concerned not with the accuracy of our perception of sound waves in time but with our entire experience of music listening, engaging not only our ears, but our fingers, minds, and memories — in short, our deepest, fullest selves. We have been freed from comparing recordings to originary live musical events held to be "real," but we remain as tied down as ever to our own originary moments of feeling, of loss, of discrimination and evaluation. We seek affective fidelity: faithfulness to our own pasts, preferences, and principles. Many audiophiles find it difficult to admit this. When a person aces the NPR quiz, he may appeal to empiricism as a higher power to anoint his ears as super-human, honed perhaps by years of experience as a musician or sound engineer, attuning him to the slightest nuance of each cymbal scrape, each hushed whisper. He is a sonic hound dog, detecting differences among EQ ranges as though sniffing out sacks of weed in someone's carry-on bag. But what he cannot admit is that his expertise is drawn not from hard facts but from his own affective past. The reproduction of sound introduces at least two levels of technological mediation — recording and playback. Nothing warrants labeling a particular playback of a particular recording as the

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Page 36 right one. The gradations the audiophile perceives are not realer or deeper or closer to the "true sound" but rooted in patterns of listening he has established for himself. Affective fidelity reframes what is false in sound as a byproduct of our own subjectivity rather than some flaw of sound design. This places responsibility for unfaithful listening onto the listener, potentially shaming us when the signal seems spotty to us. SoundCloud, a platform for artists to share their own music, is riddled with bugs but blames users for its errors: "Sorry, something went wrong. Is your network connection unstable or browser outdated?" Maybe we should have bought more bandwidth! Better speakers! Some lessons in taste! But the history of fidelity has taught us that we can no longer blame our dissatisfaction on the sluggish bit rate, the faulty needle, or our lousy headphones, acquired second-hand. Even if they were perfect, perfection is boring, and not what we want. Fidelity is deployed to compensate for the loss it reveals. The achievement of what we call fidelity has always involved the recuperation of things once lost: loss of information, loss of quality, and — more so today than ever before — loss of self. The ambivalence of contemporary discourse on selfhood, from feminist reclamation of narcissism to research on brain plasticity, suggests a destabilization of our very concept of self. How can we be true to our own listening habits if our ears are unsteady to begin with? To cope with loss of all kinds, we aestheticize loss as a gain. Early sound engineers used the loss of information that occurs during recording and playback as a space in which to explore untapped creativity and imagination. Composers Paul Hindemith and Ernst Toch crafted one of the earliest pieces of experimental turntablism by deliberately recording the sound of gramophone discs being played back at the wrong speed. In 1930, they presented the resultant Trickaufnahmen ("trick recordings") at a new music festival in Berlin, transforming the glitches of a medium that felt clunky, even to its contemporary users, into high art. Today, in response to precarity, we celebrate infidelity, interruption, and imperfection, elevating transformation as a value. One of the earliest media for recording sound, the wax cylinder, wore out after only five or six plays. Contemporary sound artist William Basinski exploited that loss, inherent in sound recording since the start, for profit. You can buy a vinyl version of his Disintegration Loops, which digitized the sound of old tape loops literally crumbling, for $358. Fidelity, in this case, is to degradation itself — decay Basinski has tried to render poignant. What is lost in depth of sound is potentially regained in depth of meaning. Perhaps audiophiles are concerned less with loss of quality than with loss of motivation to recover from that loss. When Spotify instructs us to "just sit back" and listen, immersed in passive pleasure, who among us is not tempted to comply? And even if we maintain consciousness, what if we are among the 80.6 percent of listeners who failed NPR's audio quality quiz, yearning to resist but never knowing how? Consumer capitalism leads us to believe that lapses in listening are best offset through increased consumption. If fidelity can be achieved only through our own faithful performance of listening, then to accept loss

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Page 37 is to risk losing something of ourselves. My own fantasy of achieving full affective fidelity is a lost cause; I know I am far too fickle to ever feel the same way more than once. Fidelity to ourselves, however appealing, joins high fidelity as an impossible dream. What we love about noise is the way we lose ourselves in it. The trouble settles in when we are not even sure what we're losing. This essay originally appeared in The New Inquiry, Volume 44. The author gives thanks to Rob Horning and Kerry O'Brien for contributing their ideas. Elizabeth Newton is a Doctoral candidate at the City University of New York (CUNY), in the field of Historical Musicology. She holds undergraduate degrees in Music and International Political Economy, and attained a Master's degree in Musicology at Indiana University.

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Page 38

Who's in Charge, You or Your Music System? By Bill Low Seems like a simple enough question — we are the masters of our castles. However, I want to shine a little light on the larger phenomenon of how we choose to engage with music, the when and where and how of allowing ourselves to become emotionally vulnerable, and then let music become our master. For many of us, our serious hi-fi system, the one that costs a bit more than we can afford, the one that often competes with family and other interests, is not the music delivery system that supplies most of our musical stimulation. For many of us, the car stereo, a portable speaker in the kitchen, a portable device on a subway or bus or while exercising or biking or skiing or running or walking, the occasional YouTube music video link sent by a friend — either alone or in combination, do more to define our daily relationship to music than does the big rig. Digressing for a couple of minutes, looking for an analogy: Because we are conscious beings, we imagine that most everything we do is because we consciously decided to do it. However, an equally valid perspective is to see consciousness as something of a servant. Evolutionarily, the nervous system came first, which in a sense invented a centralized brain to gain more leverage (octopuses took a more dispersed route to intelligence), and the brain invented consciousness to better enable the whole organism to survive. Fact is, the conscious is often the last to know. I watched a hilarious video a couple of weeks ago, that revealed a young woman's subconscious deciding which button to push. Thanks to wires connected into her brain, the light for that particular button came on when her subconscious self decided which button to push — much to the total astonishment of her conscious self. There's no URL link yet, but the TED presentation will show up on TED.com before too long. I wish to suggest that for many of us, while it's the main rig, the destination-worthy hi-fi system, that as with consciousness, gets all the credit — that it's really part of a larger ecology, and often not the most important part — except maybe the way a cabin-by-the-lake or in the mountains that we never have time to visit is nevertheless part of what keeps us sane 365 days a year. I'm not going to get into how we might better optimize all these other audio systems in our lives, at least not this time. I want to focus on the main system, I want to encourage a possible redefinition of the goals and purpose of the main system. A crucial fork in the road question: Do you listen to the same music, well, mostly the same music, in the rest of your life as you do through the good system? If not, is this because so much of the music you like isn't well enough recorded to provide as much pleasure on the good setup as on a set of earbuds? Is it because radio and streaming are how you listen to music you've never heard before, while you play your known favorites on the serious

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Page 39 system? There are many, many reasonable answers, assuming you don't have a single diverse soundtrack to your life, heard on many systems, but most fully experienced on the big rig. I abhor too much navel-gazing, something all too common in the audiophile world, but a little introspection can be productive. There is a wonderful renaissance in process — more and more people are discovering the pleasure of playing music on purpose, which is the number one attribute of vinyl, more important than the sonic differences. However, we as a society seem unlikely to ever return to the "glory days" of hi-fi — back when the music on the radio was the music that filled the rooms and corridors of hi-fi shows. "Bette Davis Eyes", "Kodachrome", "Diamonds and Rust", "Peace Train" were not better music than we have today —- but vastly more people were fellow travelers in the world of superior audio when the purpose of a hi-fi was to provide more effective immersion in the music that was the soundtrack to our lives. How is music integrated into your life? How is your main hi-fi integrated into your life? Do they overlap in a manner that gives you the most pleasure ... not just for a minute or a song, but as food and fuel for life? William E. Low is the Founder and CEO of Audioquest. He's an enthusiast of music, travel and all the good stuff in life.

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In my Room By David Dezelan

I would sum up my system by saying it is the "near-perfect" audio system for my difficult room with its 20-foot ceilings. It's hard to put into words, until you hear it in this space. The soundstage might be improved by different speaker placement, but the raised hearth does not allow that. As it stands, the sound nearly surrounds you sometimes. My wife and I live in a contemporary home in Lake Bluff, Illinois. The living room/dining room combo is about 20' X 30', with a vaulted ceiling that reaches a height of 20' in the living room end, where my speakers are. My Avrak audio rack sits in the dining area, where the ceiling drops to 8'. A pair of Thiel CS6 speakers are roughly 15' from the rack, on either side of the living room fireplace. The Thiels also serve as pedestals for a bust of Gustav Mahler on the left, and a small replica of Rodin's "The Thinker" on the right. I have mostly McIntosh equipment: an MR 7084 tuner, MCD500 CD player, and MS750 music server are used as sources, feeding a C46 preamp and MC602 power amp. I recently added a PS Audio Power Base and a P3 Power Plant, which made the soundstage even more breathtaking, and the voices of nearly any music genre superb. What a surprising difference these two products made to an already great system! P5 power cords from PS are also used. The Thiel CS6s are connected with 20' runs of Straight Wire. The CS6s were chosen in 1999, after auditioning two models of B&Ws. I felt there was no comparison, and the high ceiling allows the

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Page 41 Thiels to really sing. Years ago Kathy Gornik, President of Thiel Audio, told me that Jim Thiel felt the CS6's were his best creation, and were the only speakers he would have in his home. They've been the perfect sound reproducers for my space. Most of my listening today is to classical music from streaming sources, along with many classical Telarc CDs. At present I don't have a turntable, but I do have most of the Telarc classical LPs from the late 70's and early 80's in storage, and in great condition. They'll be brought out if I add a turntable any time soon. I would say that 90% of my listening today is to streaming music, and I especially like the HIFi quality of Tidal. This music mode is so convenient and the flexibility of having many genres of music and breadth of artists suits me very well. Our 18 month old twin grandsons enjoy Tidal's plethora of children's music. I even placed a Sonos Play 5 wireless speaker in our family room so we can entertain there. I added an Arcam DAC to the system, based upon a dealer's recommendation, and it adds a beautiful balance and openness to this mode of listening.It is noticeably better than the DACs that are built-in to the McIntosh MCD 500 CD Player and the Music Server. I often wonder what the PS Audio DirectStream DAC would add. As far as streaming sources go, Tidal's classical catalog is adequate, but certainly not comprehensive. I navigate by composer, then look for certain orchestras---which isn't very efficient, and I am always searching. I also use Amazon Prime Music, Spotify and Rhapsody quite a lot, and so I am covered pretty well. I do believe streaming music is the future and hope streaming companies and the likes of Sonos will pour their research money into vastly improving the quality of streamed and distributed music. It offers so much!! I'd say that rather than being proud of my system, I am just very satisfied with the enjoyment it provides, whether CD's or streamed music are being played. I believe the biggest improvements I have made since I started assembling my gear have come from upgrading from my McIntosh MC 300 Power Amp to the MC 602, then from adding the PS Power Base and P3 Power Plant, and finally, from adding the Arcam DAC. While I have an open mind about future additions or changes, I'm really quite happy with the music this provides in my home!

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