Letters (Jul. 1996)

Covering Vinyl

Dear Editor:

The April issue’s “Jazz & Blues” section included a review of Terry Evans’s CD, Puttin’ It Down, released by AudioQuest. Why wasn’t there any mention that an LP version is also available?

Today’s tenuous vinyl “renaissance” includes state-of-the-art reissues of classical recordings and rock music as well as new rock/pop releases (from Bruce Springsteen, Green Day, et al.). These LPs are as much an improvement in quality and sound reproduction from previous LPs as present CDs are compared to the early atrocious-sounding ones. Mass-readership audio magazines, such as Stereo Review and Audio, typically have not reviewed new vinyl albums.

Vinyl album sales were prematurely killed off in the United States, starting in the mid-’80s, as part of the marketing strategy for CD—something that did not hap pen in Europe. is the recent vinyl renaissance likewise to be killed off, this time by mainstream audio magazines deliberately ignoring an alternative format?

Already, Reference Recordings and AudioQuest have stopped general release of their recordings on vinyl, the former citing a total absence of reviews of its classical and jazz vinyl releases by audio magazines. AUDIO is doing readers a disservice—those readers, that is, who have not been duped into believing that CDs provide the only legitimate listening experience.

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Editor’s Reply:

In the case of Puttin’ It Down, we didn’t know an LP version was available. Arid most labels send us only the CD version of a release for review, even if a vinyl edition is also available. Reviews should be relevant to any release format with respect to musical content, and though CD and vinyl releases would tend to sound somewhat different, they should be close enough in most cases for many of the comments on sonic character to apply substantially to the LP as well as the CD.

I don’t think the theory that the LP was purposely killed off holds much water, by the way. Sales of LPs had already started to decline before the Compact Disc was introduced. Nonetheless, record labels didn’t show much enthusiasm for CD in the beginning, and it was some time before the new discs stopped being a curiosity in record shops. Stocking policies of record stores pretty much followed the demand curves, which meant that eventually most didn’t want to bother with LPs anymore. They may have overshot the market a bit when they dumped vinyl altogether, but I see no reason to think any grand marketing conspiracy was involved.

—M.R.

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Rolling Your Own Can Be a Drag

Dear Editor:

The remarks about designing one’s own loudspeaker (“Fast Fore-Word,” May) reminded me of an experience I had that should serve as fair warning to anyone so inclined.

It was 1966, and I hadn’t yet quit my day time engineering job to go into the audio business full-time. Discos were just opening up, and I wanted to bring high-fidelity techniques into the commercial sound field. For some reason, no one was doing it. At around the same time, I was beginning to write equipment reviews, mostly of loud speakers and phono cartridges, for Audio. So I thought I knew something about speakers.

One day I came across a pair of terrific-sounding electrostatic tweeters and began playing around with them, together with some cone midranges and very large cone woofers. Eventually I came up with a tri-amplified loudspeaker system that sounded pretty good to me. All of my audiophile friends who auditioned the thing loved it. Then I invited two acquaintances, who were expert speaker designers in their own right, to audition the system. (I have omitted their names for their protection.) The demonstration consisted of playing two of these hybrids, which were placed in corners be hind an acoustically transparent curtain in my basement. The experts were so impressed that, at first, one of them wanted to pay me for the design so that he could market it. When I told him that it was just from playing around and that I had gotten lucky, he raved about how great the thing sounded and encouraged me to do something with it commercially. The other expert said the system sounded as good as anything he’d heard to date. I thanked them for their encouragement.

A few weeks later, I got a job to build a disco sound system in a small Manhattan club. Since I wanted hi-fi sound and not public address, I decided to use eight Acoustic Research AR-3a speakers, which were, at the time, considered to be good, compact, full-range hi-fi systems. They were to be powered by four McIntosh MC- 275 amplifiers, so each speaker system would have its own 75-watt amplification channel. The eight speakers were to be in stalled around the dance floor, near the ceiling. This was before subwoofers and tweeter arrays, mind you.

Before installing the speakers at the site, I thought it might be interesting to compare them with my home-brewed concoction that everyone had liked so much. I placed the AR speakers behind the curtain, next to my own systems. The Ails were in two four- speaker arrays, each with two speakers on top and two on the bottom. I used pink noise and a sound-level meter to adjust the amplifiers so that the ARs and my own speakers would sound equally loud. Even when I played them quietly, the ARs blew my systems away! Shortly afterward, I dismantled my own speakers, and no one heard them again.

Before designing loudspeakers, one needs to know that it’s much more of a science than one might suspect, and good science requires proper knowledge and tools (plus, an anechoic chamber helps). Our egos often interfere; we tend to think that our ears are as good as, if not better than, somebody else’s. But before your friends in spire you to go to the trouble of designing and building your own speakers, consider just going out and buying them. Then you can spend the time you’ve saved listening to good music. I’ve since taken my own advice and have never regretted it.

--Al Rosner; President, Rosner Custom Sound Long Island City, N.Y.

(adapted from Audio magazine, Jul. 1996)

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