Dear Editor (Jun. 1972)

Crossfeed Circuit

Dear Sir:

Those of your readers who made up the stereo-crossfeed circuit for headphone listening in the December, 1971, issue, will wish to extend thanks to Mr. Siegfried Linkwitz.

At moderate cost it certainly makes a welcome improvement. However, I for one would like even more forward depth added to my headphone enjoyment of stereo records. Until such time as I can listen through the AKG K-180 headphones with their knob-adjustable drivers, I must be content with the vast improvement Mr. Linkwitz's circuit makes with my admittedly cheaper Sony DR-5A's. It even reduces their hiss! However, is my hearing in any way unique? Prior to assembling this device, it felt as though I were squatting on the floor of the orchestra pit with at least one soloist sitting on my shoulders.

Now I am happy to say, it sounds as though I had fallen through into the theater basement and the musicians were scraping, tooting, and banging through the hole above my head! Of genuine forward sounding perception of distance there appears to be very little--or is that largely due to the ridiculous way the record companies go about producing stereo recordings? Oh, that we had the choice of genuine un-gimmicked binaural stereo! We might not then need the newer quadraphonic set-up, save for added echo and reverberation! Probably one answer is to try and find those recordings where, as Mr. Linkwitz suggests, some semblance of balance between the soloist and the orchestra is retained!

-John Matthew Toronto, Canada

Stimmung Revisited

Dear Sir:

I should like to comment on William N. Agosto's article on Stockhausen's Stimmung performance at Alice Tully Hall (Audio, Feb., 1972, p. 63). The taped sounds of the performance were more than reference pitches. They included narrow-band filtered harmonic-containing waveforms, subtly mixed in ensemble with the singers, and were clearly audible to the audience.

The overtone separation was not achieved "with the human voice alone," but by the interaction of the vocal cavity resonances with the non-linear characteristics of the microphones and amplification system.

These technical procedures, as well as the coincident issues of musical continuity demonstrated by Stimmung, have been used by various American composers (La Monde Young, Alvin Lucier, John Cage, and others) for at least a decade. Up to the composition of Stimmung, Karlheinz Stockhausen dismissed these procedures as decadent in his lectures and writings. By his use of these procedures Mr. Stockhausen has produced an impressive work, but it does not deserve to be called "pioneering."

-Gordon Mumma Cummingham Dance Foundation, New York, N.Y.

Mr. Agosto comments: The composer's notes on Stimmung imply no direct electronic alteration of the vocal parts, but I don't know that for a fact. Mr. Stockhausen and his staff left for Boston immediately after the concert and were not available for comment.

It's certainly true that the flexible narrowband sound and remarkable overtone separation we heard that night are consistent with the audio mix Mr. Mumma describes. I think we could all profit from further clarification of that point by Mr. Stockhausen, which I hope to obtain in correspondence.

On the point of "pioneering," I stand fast. A pioneer doesn't have to discover the territory he settles, and I think there's general agreement that Stockhausen has staked a legitimate claim with Stimmung no matter what he may have said about drome music or its like in the past.

A composer's ultimate statement is, after all, his music. It must transcend what he speaks if he's to amount to anything.

Test Big Speakers!

Dear Sir:

I'm tired of your speaker tests that review only small speakers. Why don't you test something big, such as the Bozak?

-Robert Zimmerman; Horse's Breath, Montana

No, Small Ones!

Dear Sir:

Now that quadraphonic systems are upon us, it seems imperative that you direct more attention to testing small speaker systems....

Tony Laurie; Longueuil, Quebec

(Source: Audio magazine.)

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