TELL-TAIL SINES

As I look forth on today's world, including audio, I find myself pondering upon, of all things, the sine wave. Literal and figurative.

It's everywhere, in the most astonishing places, once you look--I mean, the principle of the thing. It rules a large part of audio, quite aside from the test equipment that generates the electronic sine wave. It rules the rest of the world too, if you will stop to notice.

The sine principle is one of nature's most elegant patterns. It's a dynamic, undulating, ongoing cluster of force that swings back and forth as it goes around an invisible central vector that does not exist. Yet that vector contains the very meaning and sense of the whole. A dynamic balance of continuous, seamless change and no stop ping points anywhere. A conjunction of opposite thrusts, opposed excursions, first this way and then that way. Sine and cosine! Complementary in trig, balancing forces everywhere else, even when these are merely the forces of strong argument. Plenty of that in audio! But sometimes the sine is merely a physical change in taste, placid enough and even pleasing.

Ladies' skirt lengths in the '20s and '30s, for instance--long, short, long, short. Titillating but never an all-out battle. House-building styles, from the two-story house with dormer windows to the one-floor ranch house or spit level-and back to the two-story. That's where we are now, a cycle that is very long in the wave.

Then there is music, and the multiple sines that are the base of most music, if not always the bass. The fundamental sine wave is the dullest of all sounds in music. The accretions are what count-everything from overtones to sawtooth and IM and, the most useful of all, the percussive transients.

Finally we have audio, with figurative sines and cosines by the dozens and enormous, oscillating, even furious arguments, one side or the other and in the middle. We swing and we sway. All sorts of interesting sine waves, like the 78 versus the LP, followed by the LP versus the CD. And, of course, the disc versus the cassette. Sometimes these sines become entangled. We've also had mono versus stereo and tubes versus transistors, once hot arguments, and recently, analog versus digital.

There are even sines within sines, little ones along with the big. Williamson-circuit amplifiers versus-what was that other one? I forget. Ah yes, also triodes versus pentodes, and maybe it would have been back again there too, but the larger sine wave eclipsed all the tubes and subdued the little undulation. You can think of dozens more of these--anything that wags back and forth like a puppy dog's tail.

Now I don't mean to go off on a tangent here, nor do I need a cosigner for this column to witness my remarks and help you believe. (Editor's Note: You can see, can't you? -D.H.) What matters is that all-important median validity, the nonexistent center of dynamic balance in the sine, whether it is a balance of fierce argument or of electronics. Of course there are mountains, whole worlds of audio detail along the way, the whole area of audio activity.

But paradoxically, it is just this ongoing enormity of complexity that hides the essential, the sine pattern so dimly perceived yet so significant.

In theory the sine wave is as pure as the driven snow. I'm a snow lover too. In practice, in the real world, sines aren't so pure, and just as well. Sines do not stand still, even electronically. All our sines are progressive. They never stay put. They always come back at a different point from where they were. Sines mean progress, movement, from somewhere to somewhere else. That's the pattern.

Oddly, this implies impurity, doesn't it? Changes in detail, additions, subtractions, aberrations. Or, figuratively, new arguments, new discoveries.

Nice contradiction. Even the purest electronic sine wave has a finite series of sine curves, which, if in nothing else, are different in time. That's a meaningful difference. But the sines that are more figurative are absolutely loaded with impurities! That is the point. And the paradox.

In music, again, the impurities are virtually the art. Harmony, tone color, rhythmic patterns, even the perception of pitch. Why do musicians like me use a pitch pipe to set the tone for singing? Because it is loaded with coloration, overtones, designed to accentuate the fundamental. A tuning fork is more difficult, accurate but with the wrong "distortions"; a pure tone or near-pure, as in a cheap electronic keyboard, is deadly. Too close to a sine.

The musical sine wave by itself, the musical driven snow, if you will, is all too much like the "pure" acoustics of the anechoic chamber, which can make you feel faint or even nauseous, it is so UN-natural. Our senses are inherently tuned to "distortion" in every area, not to the pure mathematically simple pattern.

And yet, beneath so much, the powerful sine wave lies dimly. An elemental natural force.

Enough! I hereby sign off the generalities and move to the phenomenon that started me on all this. It came through the mail. I couldn't believe it. A large package containing two LP records! What, back to the LP again? But yes. New and improved, of course.

Moreover, these were not like the last LPs I received some years back and more, the late-late digital sort.

These were analog LPs, and boasted themselves as being so. If the fanciest CDs carried the cachet of DDD--all digital in the now--extinct SPARS code-then these LPs would be flamboyantly AAA. Analog, analog, ANALOG. How's that for a swing? Not only that. There was another boast as well. These neo-LPs are all-tube. From the beginning, which happened to be around 1961 or '62, to the end, the present-day rerelease. The original tapes, played on the kind of good old Ampex I worked with for so many years. Nostalgia--for me. Sine wave for audio. Back to our earlier selves-only improved.

For me, another wave. I knew both of these LPs from the original and probably wrote about them at the time. I spotted the covers instantly, just as they were except for a new label name, Analogue Productions. I remember the recordings, the performances. Van guard Records! Talk about déjà vu.

More of these have been coming in on CD, from a label called Omega.

Hmmm. First letter of the Greek alpha bet is Alpha. Does that relate to Van guard, i.e., out in front, the first? If so, then Omega, the last letter of that alphabet, means not only the end, but the ultimate. Do I infer a subtle relation ship between Vanguard and Omega? (Editor's Note: Not so subtle, as Seymour Solomon founded both. –I.B.) I am not going to make comparisons in this return of the LP and the tube, not to mention the Ampex. I have not the slightest doubt that these are superb LPs, technically state of the art as of now and well ahead of the originals.

Vanguard, in its own quiet way, was one of the most consistent classical labels for high-quality recording back in the '60s. I know the performances too, and they are okay. But the technical improvements in Analogue Productions' LPs can best be judged by others. As a puppy dog's tail to this article, I'll give you the dope so you can acquire them for yourself.

Have to make one more point of sine-ish paradox. As you may remember if you are 21 or over, the last years of the LP were decorated by a grand new recording feature, namely, DIGITAL. This was inaugurated far, far back by dauntless Denon, Japanese Columbia, which introduced a new type of recording that at first had me baffled digits? I knew nothing of digital audio at the time. Turned out to be 14-bit PCM digital, later upgraded to the present standards. But in time, digital recording jumped the gun, before CD, and became the rage. Nobody would buy an LP that was not marked DIGITAL in large letters. Of course, the LP itself was entirely analog, not a bit or a byte to be found on its vinyl! But the idea took off and sold. A great swing of the sine in one direction, culminating in the true digital disc, the CD.

So you now can easily understand this particular twist of a number of sine waves, going back. True, figuratively, the returned LP is in the minority, but (and this is a point) low volume is made up for by high dedication. Like a low current with high voltage. These new LP folks are fanatics.

The joke on them is that for semantic reasons and because of their creed, these people really can't reissue the very best of the old LPs, from the first digital era. Every LP cover said DIGITAL on it, as loudly as possible. Now it must say ANALOG. A pretty pickle, that. So we return to the '60s, when all was safely analog. And all-tube.

For more analog LPs, both reissues and oldie originals (also lots of CDs), write for Acoustic Sounds, Analogue Productions' catalog (P.O. Box 2043, Salina, Kans. 67402; $3 in the U.S., $5 for Canada). You'll find all the sines of the times in it.

(by: EDWARD TATNALL CANBY; adapted from Audio magazine, Jul. 1992)

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