Behind The Scenes (Aug. 1975)

EVEN AS THE SWALLOWS come back to Capistrano each year, a bit further South in California, the audio fraternity flocks to the annual Los Angeles convention of the Audio Engineering Society. This 51st convention of the AES was held May 13th through 16th in its usual place at the Los Angeles Hilton.

While the country in general and certain sectors of the hi-fi industry are still in the thrall of the recession, this seems not to be the case with the world of professional audio. The 51st convention was decidedly upbeat, with first day attendance breaking all previous AES records, overall attendance setting a new record, and the greatest number of manufacturers exhibiting products to date. While there was some cautionary hedging about business conditions from a few people, in general, the atmosphere was buoyant, confident, and optimistic.

However, it must be noted that while there was plenty of new equipment on display, there was nothing particularly outstanding or revolutionary. A good number of things could be classified as evolutionary updates. In other words, this convention gave us nothing on the order of the BASF Unisette, or high polymer piezoelectric films that were the highlights of recent conventions. Speaking of the Unisette, it appears that its production timetable has gone awry once again. The anticipated playback deck from Studer has yet to be seen, and similar decks from purportedly interested Japanese manufacturers have not appeared either. Insiders say cost is the problem, and with the inflation bloated prices of parts and supplies, this is easy to understand. I hope this can be overcome, and soon, for in this reporter's opinion, the Unisette has great potential and a definite place in the world of audio.

At this convention, as usual, when one walks into the main exhibit area, the eyes are assaulted by a vast panoply of professional products (how's that for alliteration!). Considering that there are 15 other rooms or areas, plus demo rooms on another floor, all stuffed with audio equipment, one hardly knows where to begin. It is impractical to cover everything...for one thing you're constantly bumping into people you know, and in no time at all, five or six people are holding a mini-seminar on some aspect of audio, meanwhile doing a damn good job of blocking the aisles. Then you meet those who suggest a brief hiatus from the show to partake of a refreshment. Lastly, it must be admitted that I bypass some products which are of little interest in my audio milieu. Thus, with apologies to those who may feel slighted, some random observations on audio products that caught my eye in my ramblings through the exhibit halls.

You can always count on Steve Temmer, of Gotham Audio, to come up with an exotic product. This time it was the Europa Film high-speed electroplating system for producing record mothers and stampers. The master lacquers are plated in two kettle-shaped containers, and people were kidding Steve that he had a fast food franchise for "broasted" chicken! With racks of ancillary equipment and interconnecting fancy plumbing, the system fairly reeks of precision and high technology. The unit uses 40 volt/400 ampere rectifiers (with a fuse nearly as thick as my wrist!), and deposit time for a 10-mil plating thickness is less than 30 minutes.

There is always a bewildering profusion of mixing consoles at any AES convention, and each year they grow more elaborate. There seems to be a growing trend towards automatic programmed mixdown, wherein once set, a particular mixdown can be repeated whenever desired. Consoles from Automated Processes and Quad Eight featured such facilities. As for so-called portable mixers (transportable would probably be more accurate), there were legions of them, in all sorts of configurations. The baby Neve unit, called Kelso, is particularly attractive and uses those super smooth conductive-plastic faders.

The Dolby stand featured the new CP100 Cinema Processor for the production of Dolby-encoded magnetic and optical sound tracks and-the new sensation-stereo optical tracks.

Dolby was hosting a demonstration film, incorporating encoded-stereo optical tracks, at the Doheny Plaza Theater, but unfortunately the theater was located in Beverly Hills, quite a haul from the Hilton in downtown L.A., so I did not get to the demo. Dolby has also gone into the noise production business, and Ray and Dagmar Dolby were proudly showing their first model, five-month-old Master Thomas Dolby.

Attracted by a blinding light at one booth, I found it was Crown International lighting up 600-watt bulbs with their M600, a mono power amplifier.

If you have a speaker with a 4-ohm impedance, connect it to this unit which will pump out a mere kilowatt! Amplifiers were much in evidence at the convention as witness a new 400watt/channel unit from Altec, and 300-watt/channel units from JBL and SAE. BGW was on hand with its "Senssurround" Earthquake amplifier, as well as lesser power units. Up on the fourth floor, Yamaha was getting plenty of attention demonstrating its new $1600 vertical FET amplifier, the B-1. Its companion accessory module, for comparing up to five pairs of speakers, should find favor with the high-end hi-fi shops.

At the Philips' booth and on demo on the fourth floor, the new AKG BX10 reverb unit was creating quite a stir. About one quarter the size of the BX20 unit I am currently using, it features the same boooiinggg--free reverb of the big unit and at less than half the price (approx. $1300.00). Magnificent professional tape machines were being displayed by such as Ampex, Scully, 3M, MCI, and Studer, in various formats up to 24 channels on 2-inch tape. There were no new models as far as I could see, but there were updatings and some new accessories. At Ampex, they were showing a new model of Frank Rush, the dean of field reps. Devoid of some 20 odd pounds and shorn of his Confederate cavalry officer's moustache, hardly recognized the man. Frank showed me what is called a "Search to Cue" device for the Ampex MM-1100. For use as an aid in mixdown and overdubbing, the unit can place a zero reset or cue point anywhere on a tape, in either the Stop, Fast Forward, or Rewind position. An hours, minutes, and seconds counter with an LED digital readout gives the position of the tape. Punch in the Cue button and the machine will search forward or backward until it reaches the preset cue position. Press the Play button simultaneously with the Cue button and it will find the cue spot, stop the transport, and go immediately into Play mode. The system is accurate to within plus or minus one half second.

I wish they would make such a gizmo for the Ampex 440, if only for the super-accurate counter function. Ah, well! Eventide Clock Works and Lexicon were showing the latest models of their digital delay systems. There have been various updates, not the least of which is an expansion of dynamic range beyond 90 dB. Cost has come down, but there is a way to go before these units are affordable for far-out experimenters in quadraphonic synthesis.

In the dbx room, they were demonstrating the latest direct-to-disc Sheffield record, #4, which had been encoded with the dbx system. With the master lacquer having a S/N ratio of over 80 dB, this might seem like overkill, but you'll have to judge for yourself. All I can say is that the record was totally noiseless and sounded sensational.

Now to the business of quadraphonic sound. Columbia was on hand in the Patio Room with the most advanced of their SQ decoders. They had gone to the trouble of bringing in sound-absorbing panels from a studio, and with the room acoustics fairly well tamed through this expedient, the sound of the Ben Bauer-designed Leslie DVX speakers was excellent. In a variety of pop and classical items, we heard fine quadraphonic imaging and sound localization, and this was unquestionably the best SQ demonstration heard at any of the hi-fi shows.

Sansui held sway on the fourth floor and, with four JBL monitor speakers, gave a good representation of the capabilities of QS. Most impressive was the performance of their latest quadraphonic synthesizer, which can do wondrous things with stereo records.

Nippon Columbia was demonstrating their latest UD4 hardware with a variety of recordings using this system.

The sound was clean and firmly localized and received some quite favorable comments.

Now to CD-4. JVC was showing their new Mark Three CD-4 system built around a phase-locked-loop modulator, which is said to give significant improvements in sum and difference frequency response, S/N ratio, dynamic range, and distortion. In a joint effort between JVC and RCA, a similar type of PLL CD-4 modulation system was introduced by RCA which they call the "Quadulator." John Eargle, President of the AES, presented a paper on the new JVC system, in their behalf, as did Greg Bogantz of RCA for their new Quadulator. There is no doubt that these new systems for CD-4 have made an audibly superior product. I have several experimental discs at home, and there is no question of the increase in quality over the same recordings made with previous systems. There is a great deal more to this development. I had the privilege of visiting the JVC Cutting Center in Los Angeles as the guest of John Eargle and will be giving you full details of my visit and what I learned about the new modulation system in an upcoming issue.

Finally, before I leave the subject of the 51st AES convention, I would be most remiss if I did not mention the absolutely sensational entertainment presented to us at the conclusion of the awards banquet. Two virtuoso performers on the ARP electronic music synthesizers, Tom Piggott and Mike Brigida, along with a very accomplished rock drummer, gave us a quad concert which was stunning.

The sound system was a giant Altec theater system in each corner driven by their new 400-watt amplifiers, augmented by no less than Gene Czerwinski's Cerwin Vega corner plugs as used in the movie Earthquake, driven by a mere 6000 watts. Crossover was at 30 Hertz through the new Crown VFX crossovers! The boys gave us a number of great tunes but the absolute end was MacArthur Park, which was the most sonically dynamic and exciting sound I have ever heard...at least as a sheer sound experience. The sight of the AES engineers and their wives roaring their approval and stomping and whistling for encores was something I won't soon forget.

(Audio magazine, Aug. 1975; Bert Whyte)

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