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The Calrec Soundfield Mike
Editor: I enjoyed Bill Sommerwerck's article about Ambisonics. I've been doing live re cording since last summer, taping concerts in the parks and churches of different cities--wherever I find a concert, I walk in.
I have improved my technique to the point where my recordings sound a lot bet ter than when I began, but in the search for even better results. I wonder if the Catree Soundfield mike might not be a worth while purchase. Where can I get additional information and prices about it?
Fred McCormick
Baldwin Park, CA
Calrec Soundfield microphone systems are marketed in the U.S. by Audio and Design, Inc., PO Box 786, Bremerton, WA 98310, but their cost ($5000 and up) is rather steep for an amateur recordist wbo uwuld probably not realize any financial return from his recordings.
Anyone interested in evaluating the sound of the ('alrec can bear it from bus records, most of which u.ere mastered, in Ambisonic surround sound, with that mike system.
Nice NYAL
Editor: I would like to comment on an audio company that not only makes a fabulous product, but also backs their equipment to the nth degree: New York Audio Labs.
Having finally conquered the dread disease upgrademia (the cure being Moscode). I have reached what I believe to be the pinnacle of sound. Contrary to Mr. Cordesman's belief-that the avid reader of your outstanding periodical must be told what he or she should or should not like--I believe in, and even take great pride in relying on, my own ears. I know he is merely trying to keep us abreast of the current audio marketplace, in itself a Herculean task, but the Moscode stuff is simply great.
Messrs Rosenberg and Abramson of NYAL are not only intelligent, humorous, and enlightening, they are gentlemen as well.
Recently I had a problem with my amp, and subsequently shipped it off to Croton-on Hudson for repair. Mr. Rosenberg, who had diagnosed the problem as a foreign body adhering to a circuit board-some kind of hair; pubic, or something like that-re turned the unit to me promptly, in perfect working order.
I can readily understand why their product is so outstanding. Audio firms such as NYAL should be applauded for their commitment to excellence (n la Raiders). Jack L. Graves St. Louis, MO It's bard to know of what Mr Graves com plains re AHC's review of the NYAL Moscode 600: AHC was at least as enthusiastic, though perhaps with a few footnotes.
And readers calling NYAL should ask for Rosenberg or Abrams, not Abramson.
D-W'S Gas Bag
Editor: In your review of the Dayton Wright System C loudspeaker, you refer to the SF6 gas (which fills the bag surrounding the electrostatic driver) as having 1.6 times the density of air. Actually, it has 5 times the density of air! While this increased density does give the driver something to work against, it also creates an impedance mis match between the SF6 and the air it inter faces with.
It should be noted that punctures at the top (as well as at the bottom)of the bag will cause gas to escape, even when the driver isn't working. SF6 diffuses 44% as fast as air, so patch leaks quick!
Daniel Coyle; Albuquerque, NM
Direct Drive CD
Editor: I currently own a Hafler 500 power amp and would like to drive it directly with a compact disc player. I neither need nor want balance, tone, loudness, etc. controls.
Of course, I do need a volume control.
Do you have any recommendations as to how this can be done? Any advice concerning manufacturers of such controls and how to wire them in will he greatly appreciated.
H. M. Schaefer; Baltimore, MD
There's a simple clumsy way or a more complicated and elegant way of doing this. The simple way is to buy a pair of in line passive volume controls such as the one shown in Figure 1. These are made by several manufacturers, and will connect right between the audio cables and the power amp, at the amplifier end of the cables. Use a value of 100,000 ohms, but make sure there are is at least 2 inches of
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Figure 1
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space between the amplifier inputs, to accommodate the adaptors.
Figure 2 shows a home-built passive control box containing a ganged volume pot and a balance control. All of the parts for this device can be obtained from any electronics supply house.
Detachable Headshells
Editor: As a reader of Stereophile for two years, I have yet to see any mention in your pages of the incompatibility of moving-coil cartridges and tonearms with removable headshells.
Several reputable dealers have told me that because of the low compliance of moving-coil cartridges, they should only be used in arms with non-detachable head shells. They claim that detachable head shells cannot be fastened to tonearms with a sufficiently rigid connection. If this is true, what can be said of your cartridge comparisons in which several different headshells were used and recommended? Why are so many high priced arms available with detachable headshells? Will a low-compliance cartridge sound better in an arm with a fixed headshell, all other factors equal?
Joseph O'Connell; Ann Arbor. MI
All other factors are never equal, but. Yes, low-compliance cartridges generally work best in arms with non-detachable head shells, for the reason mentioned. One of the unequal factors, though, is the integrity of the connection between headshell and tonearm: though no junction is always better than even a very good junction, sometimes other tonearm design characteristics overwhelm the problem of tone arm /headshell connection. In these cases, the detachable headshell arms can be superior Since low-compliance cartridges will also pummel the bejeezus out of record grooves, I (JGH) don't recommend using them even with non-detachable head shells. Low compliance was considered by some to be an acceptable tradeoff for the things that early MCs did welt but since high-compliance MCs of superior performance are PloW available, 1 no longer deem the law-compliance alternatives a viable alternative.
[ AHC differs in his opinion re low-compliance phono carts, - LA]
Ailing Rabco
Editor: I bought a Rabco SL-8 straight-line tracking arm second-hand recently, and, while it is generally in very good shape, it is not working as it should. Sometimes the arm raises by itself in the middle of a record; sometimes it fails to lower when it's sup posed to. Would you please tell me who is currently representing this old manufacturer? What should I do?
Carlos Freitas; Recife, Brazil
We don't know who might be able to service this for you, but some of our readers might. Can anyone help Mr Freitas?
Leaving Them On
Editor: Since I have no tubed components, I have been told to leave my equipment on 24 hours a day for sonic stability and longer life. Sound-wise I agree, but only my preamplifier needs to be left on. As for longer life, I hear that transistors wear out with thermal cycling. However, I have also heard that heat ages internal components (are transistors excluded here?). The power sup plies for my amplifier and turntable generate a fair amount of heat when idling, so I turn them off. Which units should be left on or off when not in use?
Larry Borysowich; Toronto, Ontario
In general, all tubed components should be turned off when not in use, solid-state preamps should be left on all the time, and solid-state power amps should be turned off between listen fests if their temperature rises too much above "warm" when left on.
If your power amps consume more than about 100 watts per channel on idle, turning them off when not in use will have a visible and salutory effect on your electric bill. An hour of warmup should haze them back in peak operating condition if they were used within the previous 48 hours. If you insist on instant superb sound, you'll just have to put up with the elevated electric bill, and it actually benefit the amplifier in the long run. Solid state devices age most from the shock of turn on and warm up.
All components should be unplugged from the wall when you're away for ex tended periods of time, or during thunder storms, as a precaution against lightning strikes, and to cover yourself in case the house catches fire from some other source.
Insurance adjusters sometimes look askance at claims filed for damage caused by faulty appliances; to them, your audio components are appliances.
More "Down With Flat"
Editor: In the good old days, which lasted until quite recently. HF response would be fairly flat on axis, but would fall more and more rapidly off-axis as frequency increased. The result was that the amount of high frequency power radiated into the listening room decreased with frequency, even though the on-axis frequency response was nearly flat.
Nowadays, with the dispersion problem "solved," the subjective quality of reproduced sound has been impaired, as you point out.
One wonders whether some undiscovered problem of psychoacoustics is involved. In science, most theories that have been around for more than twenty years have a hard time accounting for all the observed facts. Of course, it may be that we listen to reproduced music these days at levels much higher up on the Fletcher-Munson curve.
This would make the ear's response flatter, and the high frequencies more prominent.
But surely this isn't the whole answer.
Basically, we listen to recorded music for pleasure and for a sense of realism. If flat response is no longer a satisfying way of approaching these goals, then to hell with flat response! The idea served its purpose for a long time, as did the harmonic distortion fetish. But with THD commonly reduced to miniscule values, other factors dominate.
The great ideas of the '50s are no longer adequate to guide us in the '80s, no matter how "self-evident" they may seem. After all, not so many years ago, it was self-evident that the world was flat and that witches ought to be burnt. You will catch a lot of flack for blaspheming against one of the tin gods of audio, but be assured that at least a few of us agree with you.
Herbert Highstone
Oakland, CA
Overlooked Accuracy
Editor: I agree completely that the issue of tonal accuracy has been overlooked by many speaker manufacturers. If tonal accuracy is not the basis of design in an audiophile loudspeaker, then what is? I have come to the conclusion, as have others, that most of the so-called high-end speaker manufacturers build and sell systems that deliver more spectacular Hi-Fi, rather than music.
They put imaging, depth, width of sound stage, etc., ahead of all other considerations, and have trained their retailers to push these qualities on the consumer. The consumer buys the equipment, but soon tires of it be cause the Hi-Fi is spectacular, the music not.
KEF loudspeakers are perfect examples of this. They do all of those other things very nicely, but cannot deliver music that is tonally correct to any degree. That is why it took me more than a year of searching to find a speaker with a reasonable degree of tonal accuracy-the Klipsch Cornwall! Paul Klipsch has always considered midrange ac curacy to be of paramount importance in the design of his loudspeakers, and, although they're not perfect, they come as close as I have heard to the real thing: music. I would like to suggest to Mr. Holt that he obtain a new pair of these "old squawkers" and hook them up to a first class front end (I have Linn/Naim). He will find the "awfully strident and dirty high end" all but gone, and in its place a sound that will please his ears as much as it has pleased mine.
John Khnes; Kernersville. NC
'All but gone--just how much "all but"? Okay, we'll see what we can do about borrowing a pair of K-horns for a review; the requests have come from too many quarters. Don't be disappointed if they don't turn out to be our favorite speakers.
Open Letter
Editor: This is by way of an Open Letter to Record Companies on the subject of Compact Discs.
Before I get started, let me say that, for the most part, I am happy with compact discs, and I hope that you will accept what I have to say as constructive criticism.
1. Please retain the jewel box. If you absolutely feel it must be abandoned, at least retain the same size booklet and back panel sheet so that collectors such as myself can install the discs in our own separately purchased jewel boxes (which should be made available as empty cassette cases are now.)
2. Attempt to fill the discs to their 72-minute capacity. I really appreciated the extra songs on Howard Jones's Dream Into Action and Phil Collins's No Jacket Required. If additional songs aren't available, how about adding special extended mixes or instrumental versions? Many older LPs could be doubled up for reissue on a single CD. . . a great way to save costs while giving added value to the customer. You could price it some where between a single and a two-disc set.
They'd sell like crazy.
3. Always include full liner notes and lyrics in the inside booklet. For the premium price of a CD. buyers have a right to expect liner notes at least as good as the LP version.
4. Always list the tracks on the back panel where they can be readily referred to. Don't bury them in the booklet.
5. Include the SPARS code and total playing time on the back panel for comparison shoppers.
6. Use the CD's inherent indexing capability wherever possible, especially on "concept albums" where the songs flow into each other (Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here deserved indexing).
7. When re-releasing older recordings, please take extra pains to use the original master tape, without equalization or limiting. Consider remixing from the multitrack master if possible. Some olden poorly mixed LPs would really benefit from a quality remix geared to take advantage of a CD's dynamic range.
In general, keep in mind that the CD offers the record industry a chance to clear its reputation for producing shoddy merchandise. Most CD customers are willing to pay a premium for excellent sound quality and packaging befitting a product that can last 2 lifetime.
Brett Sher; Campbell, CA
Mary Who?
Editor: In "Getting the Notes Right" (Vol. 8, No. 7, p. 5), JGH got one of his own notes wrong. The vocalist (and real-life spouse of Paul Weston) on The Art of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards was not Mary Ford, but Jo Stafford. The late Mary Ford was married to Les Paul.
God! I finally caught JGH out on some thing. You made my day!
Arthur Barnes; Des Plaines, IL
For more good days, just watch these pages! Remarkably Terrible Performances
Editor: The thing that made the terrible performances on that record (The Art of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards) so remarkable is that they were deliberately terrible.
It is almost impossible for any musician to deliberately sing or play off-key. I remember, when the album first came out, that I and several other musicians were astonished that it could be done with such consistency throughout the album.
Jack Giberson; San Jose, CA
Editor: I remember that album well, and loved it more. But it was only after we had our laughs, and really began to listen, that we came to understand how truly difficult it must have been to make that album.
You have to he an accomplished musician in order to appreciate how hard it is to sing off-key like that. You have to have perfect pitch to pull it off, and there's only one other singer I know of who could have done as well: Ella Fitzgerald.
Bob Bergh; Garland, TX
Two Left Hands?
Editor: It was Jo Stafford, Paul Weston's wife, who "did" Darlene. That's part of what made the whole thing so funny, since Stafford was (perhaps) the most technically secure of the popular singers in the '50s. Les Paul's (then-) wife Mary Ford, though we loved her dearly, wasn't in the same class as Mrs. Weston.
I trust you noticed that on the glamorous cover, with the blonde Roxanne, the candelabra, and the grand piano, the (unseen) pianist has two left hands.
Incidentally, the record sold well enough to prompt a sequel : Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris.
Harry Pearson; Sea Cliff, NY
JGH Responds: I express my heartfelt appreciation to all you readers who gleefully pointed out my error You have to admit I was close, though: Mary Ford was married to a Paul; just the wrong Paul.
Would you believe me if I told you that the "error" was intentional, to see how many of you are on . mur toes? Well, don't - it wasn't (though it 's just the kind of thing I love to do, so watch out). Actually, before I wrote the piece, I spoke to someone at CBS records a it (probably a maintenance engineer), and was told "I think Darlene Edwards was Mary Ford, but don't quote me on that." I won't, I won't.
Publisher's Note: No recent piece of writing has generated as many letters as JGH's goof on Jonathan and Darlene Edwards; I wouldn't have believed it was so popular.
--
[based on a March 1986, Stereophile review article]
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