PORTABLE, NOT POTABLE

Consumer audio gear--we used to call it hi-fi--is ever more sophisticated and widely useful in this age of digitality. Also astronomically better in the electronic specs, easily matching plenty of pro equipment and sometimes surpassing it. And yet the old original dividing lines between con sumer and professional remain strong.

They have to. And that in spite of something called "semi-pro" that keeps surging forward in generation after generation of audio. We mustn't fool ourselves. Professional is professional. This thought came to me as I looked over the specs for the new Car los Moseley Music Pavilion (which I will pass on to you in part), that enormous and utterly pro "portable" audio sys tem which will take over New York's summer outdoor classical concerts by the Philharmonic and the Met Opera this year in some 24 park locations.

"Professional grade" in any area, including our own, is simply an inescapable necessity, no matter how extensively we may cross it. With high-level consumer gear exists a perennial third category, semi-pro, that meets a lot of pro needs but also appeals to the con sumer looking for solid stuff. As who but myself should know, having made use of it throughout my life.

Just so you'll know what I mean, take the reel-to-reel tape recorder. The semi-pro began here at the beginning, with the Magnecorder, and went on, still mono, to the once-sensational Ampex 600 line of the '50s, portable in a spiffy hard-plastic suitcase with a matching speaker case-portable for those with good backs. After that, the semi-pro recorder branched splendidly into dozens of models and on into stereo-from the Concertone to the Revere/Wollensak and eventually Crown, TEAC, et al. But you will not find such equipment in the Moselely Music Pavilion. This is sterner stuff.

Even the power sources, big groups of heavy storage batteries in each of the 24 speaker towers, are so weighty that they serve a second purpose, to hold the towers down in case of, say, a hurricane. These bats won't fit into your Honda Civic or Bronco II, whose audio gets power from a semi-pro consumer-type battery. Moseley's are marine units--designed to start large diesel engines in sizable ships--big, bulky, and potent. Six of these in every speaker tower--that's 144 batteries right there. And no doubt more for the rest of the "portable" audio.

Once set up for a concert, this Moseley Music Pavilion, which looks so much like a weightless, airy kite about to take off, could be dislodged only by military bombardment or an earth quake.

Those in audio who are into professional outdoor/indoor pop music will be amused at all this. Are you bomb proof? More practically for exotic travel, protected against tropical thunder storms and hurricanes? Portable pop goes all over the world. Which prompts me to a further thought--Moseley, remember, is different: it amplifies old fashioned live classical music played on acoustic instruments numbering in the hundreds, including large numbers of strings. As anybody knows, both symphony and opera are for this reason strictly dry. Indoor fun. Or were. The Carlos Moseley is waterproof.

Everything! The speaker towers, 15 feet high and full of electronic gear as well as speakers, could probably operate under water, batteries and all, though the sound might be somewhat muffled. The stage, for all those bone dry-type musical instruments, is 118 feet wide and surrounded by a stretchy plastic reflecting cloth (if that is the word), even overhead, for excellent rain protection. Even a good way out front of the curved stage, as I remember. So on first and hasty thought, the Philharmonic and the Met can easily produce outdoor music in the rain.

They'll stay dry, though not the audience, which will get wet or go home.

In New York the chances of rain in the summer, especially in early evening, are very high. It rained the day I went to the Moseley preview, also that night. It often rains. And when it does, it comes down hard. Ask ball fans. Games are often called. Concerts too, even with waterproof audio? In an outdoor concert, you aren't dealing merely with a slippery field and a damp ball. There are priceless ancient instruments involved, Stradivarius and the like, as well as others worth only slightly less. The front of the Car los Moseley stage is wide open to the public--and to the dampness and fog, maybe drizzle blown in by the wind. Is this a proper environment for such technically unwaterproofed music? Paradoxically, it is the music itself that is the weak link in the waterproof Moseley! That's what we get with old-fashioned classical sound.

Well, suppose we get practical, if unmusical. You can waterproof a pair of leather shoes, so why not a violin? Surely the marvels of current technology. . .? So let's imagine. First you remove all the strings on all those instruments, pull out the tuning pegs, and spray with an appropriate (?) water proofing medium, outside and, especially, inside, where it counts. Spray the pegs and the holes before reinserting, with hopefully enough rosin to make the necessary bind to hold the strings in tune. Restring with all-metal or synthetic strings. Next, remove all the horsehair from dozens of bows, spray them top to bottom, and install a new material that will take enough rosin to grab the new strings and so make music. Reassemble all the instruments. And play.

I enjoy, a bit sadistically, the very thought of the first trial of these millions of dollars of music makers--Strads, Guarneris, whatever--all now totally waterproof! A fair first trial would, of course, be in the middle of a thunder storm on the Moseley stage. Have you ever heard those old mechanical violin players in coin-operated machines that run rollers against the strings to pro duce the sound? That's about what I would expect, x100. Goodbye, the famous tones of Stradivarius! Hail the ungodly screech of the modern water proofed fiddle! Do you doubt me? Perhaps a less disastrous remedy, if even more expensive, might be a vast transparent curtain that would rise up across the stage front at the first sign of excess "hummidity," as one of my New England friends likes to call it. A necessity, even so, would be a huge array of instant dehumidifiers back stage, to dry out the enclosed parcel of air. Totally silent, of course. That would do it. And preserve the Strads.

I do not know what the plans are for a wet night. Not mentioned in the publicity. Sometimes it’s clear, mild, and dry in New York's summers. So let us return to the audio.

As you now can realize, the 24 Moseley speaker towers (fewer in smaller parks) are not only self-powered but controlled, wireless, by radio. No cables anywhere. The radio signal is mono (except the inner stereo arc near the stage) and undelayed; all the delay processing is built into the towers, adjustable before each concert to suit the location and distances. Also, no doubt, the individual volume balance. Each tower includes two speaker systems, each with its own delay. The radio signal comes out of an active, manned, control console, and up to that point, the mike channels and general mixing are relatively what you might expect, allowing for the peculiar and nonstandard "reverb" situation-very little in the stage space, a great deal generated out in the field.

The ingenious Jaffe-inspired system involves a progressive "forward" delay in the fan-shaped array of towers, so that the speakers-which are all around the audience--do not clash with each other no matter where the audience may sit among them. But it is worth repeating that there is a "reverse" delay out of the second speaker system in each tower that is aimed toward the stage, a longer delay than the front-facing speakers, if I am right.

As noted previously, with speaker towers located around the audience, this creates a curious and innovative new kind of "concert-hall reverb" that has absolutely no dimensions or direction and yet gives the classical effect of sound diffusion such music re quires. This seems to me a unique advance in our adapting of older indoor acoustic music to large open spaces.

What about feedback, with those speakers aimed at the live sound source? There is virtually none, al though I heard for a while at rehearsal a dull tone or hum that was evidently feedback of some sort. It went away.

Feedback, for one thing, is much reduced by top-level, "flat" equipment, minus the peaks that used to be all too common. These, when reinforced accidentally by assorted peaks of hall resonance, could set off the awful howls we all know. Moseley's equipment, like so much today, is very low on peaks, in or out of the audible range. And there are no walls! Except for that plastic surround, almost entirely in irregular curves, smoothing out the stage ambience.

Finally, a few Moseley specs and Moseley people: Christopher Jaffe was the sonic architect of the Moseley, acting much like a structural architect, working with a multitude of suppliers and builders whose job was to carry out the system specs, electronically and in all matters of choice, construction, portability, durability, and so on.

Much of the Moseley is not audio, though sound is its intention. Jaffe's parallel architect, Peter Wexler, de signed the Pavilion itself, and in the same way worked through numerous construction firms and suppliers-a big operation. As the Philharmonic puts it, Peter Wexler "created" the Pavilion. That's a favorite publicity term and in this case remarkably accurate. I talked to Wexler, and indeed he knew every detail of the system, including the audio. I also talked to Jaffe, the prime audio man, who told me more of the "reverse" delay sound field. (That's my term, not his.) It pays to go to the horse's mouth.

The Philharmonic people whom I contacted were keeping close to the musical side, leaving audio strictly to those who understood it.

Statistics: Those six big batteries in each speaker tower are Exide deep-discharge marine units, 105 amps apiece, with a charger alongside in each tower. They drive, through assorted electronics, four Linear Power 5002 pro amplifiers rated at 250 watts per channel. In each tower, three of these feed-in bridged mono-an 18-inch woofer, two 12-inch low drivers, two smaller midrange drivers, and a separate high-frequency system. Additional speakers at the top of the towers pro vide the "reverse" delay, toward the stage, presumably powered by the fourth amp. The two delay units in each tower, independently adjustable, are Audio Digital ADD3s. The all-important mono music signal reaches each tower via Sennheiser wireless receivers.

(Hey, maybe some New Yorkers can pick up the signal in their nearby apartments.) Each of these has two channels, one kept as a standby. All this and much more, multiplied by 24, doesn't even include stage and con sole. Not exactly sports-car audio. Nor even semi-pro.

The audio system as a whole, under Jaffe's direction, was built by Maryland Sound Industries, which worked with David W. Robb of Jaffe Acoustics. That 18-inch woofer is the Model 1752S servo-subwoofer system, evidently from Linear Power too. Maybe the rest of the speakers also? Plenty more--a Ramsa WRC 900 console (waterproof), a front-house system (Lexicon, Aphex, Klark-Teknik, Sennheiser), and a monitor system. I counted some dozen mikes, in fat pop screens (thunderstorm?) plus one in dubitably coincident stereo array.

Nobody told me how long it takes to set up/take down this gigantic portable music system. I'd rather not hear.

(by: EDWARD TATNALL CANBY; adapted from Audio magazine, Jan. 1991)

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