Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Reference Digital Music

My personal Audiophile Grail is to turn on my system and have it make me feel as if the performance is going on in my listening room; I hope that yours is much the same. Many reviewers use a reference list of music sources to consistently evaluate gear and you should too. As explained previously in my three part blog series on “How to Listen,” you can intimately hone your acoustic skills with those intimate sources. While critically listening to any system, keep in mind that what sounds “good” may in fact not sound “correct.” Be aware of the audiophile trap: finding a “WOW” addition to your system that indeed sounds spectacular but moves you away from its realism.

If you do not have a list of your own personal favorites, here is a list of my digital favorites and what strengths each piece reveals. I encourage you to use your ears and listen to everything as if for the first time. Enjoy!
Eva Cassidy: Live At Blues Alley (CD: Blix Street G2-10046)
Sometimes live recordings have singular attributes that make them useful in evaluating systems while also being sonically entertaining and Live At Blues Alley is just such an album. Although Eva's vocals are slightly veiled with an occasional touch of sibilance and an over-use of reverberation both added by the PA system, this minimalist instrumentation allows you to hear the soulful art that lurks within her intonations and hides in her interpretation. On my favorites list in order of preference is track 8 "Fields of Gold," track 9 “Autumn Leaves,” track 12 "What A Wonderful World," and track 5 "People Get Ready." This no-frills recording should sound good on modest systems and exemplify her breathtaking vocal mastery on more revealing systems. Eva’s slow, soothing voice is a fantastic source for testing the midrange smoothness and articulation accuracy of your rig. It is truly a tragedy that she can no longer be heard and seen performing live.

Cirque du Soleil Musique: Mystere Live a/in Las Vegas (CD: RCA Victor ‎– 09026-62596-2)
Another one of my favorite live albums is the drum performance on track 12, “Taiko,” from the 1996 Las Vegas show. Dozens of various-sized drums surround the stage each contributing in unison their personal touch on a tribute to transient response. Several members of the cast play a captivating rhythmic introduction that leads to the solo performance at the 2:26 mark. Adjust your volume level to the quietest portion of this solo passage (2:45) so that its level is comfortable enough for you to easily discern the nuances of the drum stick on the skin. Then replay the entire track at that level and be ready for a treat. While you may be tempted to listen louder, you may find the dynamic range more than what your system can sustain. On modest systems, the drums will sound muddy and indistinct and their positions in the sound stage grouped to one side. On refined systems you will hear the drum sticks tap the skins just before the full resonant note is heard and a clear distinct position within the sound stage including subtle hall reverberations.

Alex De Grassi: The Water Garden (Blue Coast Records DSD: Special Event 19)
A well-recorded solo acoustic guitar brings a richness and awe to any audio system regardless of its quality. But to appreciate the resonances of the guitar body, inner detailing of the strings, and near-sibilant sounds of fingers sliding along their length one must step up to a more refined system. It wasn’t until I replaced my tweeter’s crossover-network capacitors with Mundorf Supremes that I could fully appreciate the impact of these words. The clarity revealed in the fingering alone was worth the money and other unexpected side effects drew me into Alex’s fully-focused mind. In just over five minutes, your own mind is transformed from wherever you were into a relaxing, tranquil and near-meditative state that invites you to pause and pay attention. About 30 seconds into this piece Alex snaps the strings with his fingers adding an upper-octave boost to an otherwise purely midrange performance. Play this piece at a moderately high level and listen for the intricate high-frequency resonances this snap makes to the tonal balance of his guitar. Also notice that the room in which the recording is made is quite dead and these snaps reveal little as to the hint of its actual size.

Dire Straits: Brothers In Arms (Original CD: Vertigo ‎– 824 499-2)
When I first spun the vinyl version of this album way back in 1985, I instantly realized that Mark Knopfler and the gang had created something sonically special that would pass the test of time, despite its Red Book format. Very few studio-recorded albums have ever achieved this level of acoustic perfection and those that do make this list. There are so many favorite tracks that I really have a hard time telling you where to begin, but begin I must. If I were to choose just one track, it would have to be track 5 “Why Worry Now” because of its incredible timing and the synchronicity achieved between instruments. The real attention-grabber in this recording begins at about the 4:25 mark where a low-level background maraca that had been keeping time suddenly moves forward for one beat in the performance announcing a change to the music. Switching from a guitar-featured ensemble, Guy Clark on the keyboards takes the baton and transforms you to another acoustic level. At this transition point, listen to the character of the guitars fading slowly into the background on their sustained notes. Then at the 4:35 mark, Knopfler unimposingly adds a small low-level guitar rift that again dies into the silence. Playing this track at a very loud level you find yourself straining to listen deep into the noise floor of your system waiting for the note to completely fade from your ears. On a good system, these fading notes quickly pass and in a more refined system these notes linger far longer.

Eric Bibb: Diamond Days (Master CD: Telarc CD-83660)
When any musician not only has a mastery of an instrument’s abilities but also the ears to hear the nuances between their types, it catches my attention. Eric is one of these refined musicians. His style, while merging blues, Cajun, and Christian, consistently finds its way into my heart from the sincerity and emotion it invokes. From his Paris meeting with Mickey Baker, Eric learned to love blues guitar, tradition, and simplicity preferring to create memorable music with minimal instruments. Track 4, “So Glad,” he momentarily deviates from this tradition and invites a much bigger band to the party. Although this studio recording has other tracks much less noteworthy, this one accurately captures the sound of his guitar, drums, and the timbre of his unforgettable voice. The mix places Eric and his guitar above the others, as it should be, allowing you to hear his words instead of overpowering them with the production. Listen to how the band is masterfully mixed to enhance but not overpower his vocals just loud enough to appreciate them but quiet enough so as not to distract you from his words. Listen to the brush gently tapping on the snare drum. On a good system, you will clearly hear the sound of the drum but in a refined system you will hear individual wires tap at slightly different times creating a different initial sound to that of the decaying sound. There is a certain hollowness in the drum skin evident after the brush whisk lifts that is not apparent upon its first striking.

Norah Jones: Come Away With Me (DSD: )
When I discovered that Ravi Shankar (the accomplished East Indian musician) was the father of this talented pianist-vocalist, I admit I had to chuckle. It seemed so unlikely for someone raised in one tradition to fall in love with another but Norah did and ever since we have all benefited from her romance with blues and light jazz. Title track 5, “Come Away with Me,” starts with a soft-mallet striking cymbals building to a swell and then gradually decreasing in intensity. Listen to the unmistakable brass sound of this cymbal as it resonates from center to edge. On a good system, you will hear solid-metallic overtones that pleasantly soften over time. In a highly refined system, there is a fullness that swells even as the sounds fades. The full tremolo of the background organ also appears two-dimensional in good systems and very three-dimensional in highly refined systems.

Anna Netrebko: The Woman The Voice (DVD: Deutsche Grammophon B0003705-09)
While a DVD-video, this is opera’s answer to popular and rock music videos that also contains classic selections by the incredible Anna Netrebko. Her melodic voice transports you to that place where music makes you tingle, even when you are listening to a type of music that is not your absolute favorite style. It took me a while to warm up to opera but one day a friend said to me something that totally changed my mind, “Opera is the equivalent of movies for that era.” With a new perspective, I now enjoy everything about how amazing the human voice can be. Although the entire disc is my favorite, in track 2, La Boheme: Musetta Waltz, choreographer Vincent Patterson arranges Anna singing in a car but first a brief introduction of violins resounds in the far corners of the concert hall. Listen for the sound bouncing off of the walls creating a front-to-back depth to the soundstage that is well preserved in this recording. Extensions of her voice also reveal a similar presence creating a striking visual/audible contrast that may confuse your mind: how can an orchestra fit into the back seat of an automobile much less reverberation of this magnitude? Once you wrap yourself around this contradiction, sit back and enjoy her concise vocal control, especially in her effortless range of dynamics. The entire disc is a visual thrill (especially the stunning colors in track 5, Rusalka, which has moved me to tears) and gives you an insight into the mental fantasies of a few of the great operatic composers. Do yourself a favor and use the disc’s subtitle feature if you do not understand foreign languages. This disc reminds you why you enjoy going to a live performance.


There are many more tracks that I find interesting and revealing and one day will make it to this list. For now, these will get you started on your own list of favorites.

Yours for higher fidelity,
Philip Rastocny 

I do not use ads in this blog to help support my efforts. If you like what you are reading, please remember to reciprocate, My newest title is called Where, oh Where did the Star of Bethlehem Go? It’s an astronomer’s look at what this celestial object may have been, who the "Wise Men" were, and where they came from. Written in an investigative journalism style, it targets one star that has never been considered before and builds a solid case for its candidacy.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QFIAC3G

My other titles include:

·  Extreme Audio 1: House Wiring·  Build an Extreme Green Hot Water Solar Collector
·  Extreme Audio 2: Line Filtering·  The Extreme Green Guide to Wind Turbines
·  Extreme Audio 3: Chassis Leakage·  The Extreme Green Guide to Solar Electricity
·  Extreme Audio 4: Interconnect Cables·  Meditation for Geeks (and other left-brained people)
·  Extreme Audio 5: Speaker Wires·  Althea: A Story of Love
·  Extreme Green Guide to Improving Mileage·  Build an Extreme Green Raised Bed Garden
·  Extreme Green Organic Gardening·  Build an Extreme Green Rain Barrel
·  Extreme Green Organic Gardening 2012·  Build an Extreme Green Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder
·  Build an Extreme Green Composter·  Extreme Green Appliance Buying Guide

Copyright © 2015 by Philip Rastocny. All rights reserved.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

The Mies i100 Integrated Amplifier Pre-review



If you regularly read my blog you already know that I am highly critical when it comes to equipment. Basically, if it doesn’t have an exotic core power transformer inside, I do not bother listening seriously to it. Of course other quality considerations are also essential – like a well-regulated power supply, high-quality signal-path components, and well designed grounding – and finding these in even the highest-end gear is sometimes elusive.

The good news is that a Canadian startup company called Mies is launching a piece of budget-minded entry-level high-end gear (see https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2090572321/mies-i100-the-ultimate-amplifier-for-vinyl-lovers) that seems at the outset very interesting. From what I observe in the limited images on their site, I see a nicely designed piece of equipment with a high listenability potential. Called the i100, the Mies integrated amp will boast a compact design with not-so-compact features.



The Mies i100 Prototype

Despite its small footprint, Mies engineer Gunner Van Vliet has managed to squeeze a large toroidal power transformer into roughly 1/4th of the available space. Two reasonably-sized capacitors appear to smooth out the high-voltage section and two physically smaller but most likely equally-sized low-voltage capacitors snuggle up nearby. What this means is that for the money, a lot of attention is paid to making sure this amplifier is solid throughout its entire 40-watt power bandwidth.
Notice also the heat sink bank opposite the power supply with discrete transistors. These components make up the output stage and are coupled to high-current 5-way gold binding posts (my personal favorite).

Input switching is planned to support a high-level phono stage and two line-level inputs via gold-plated RCA jacks, plus a front-panel 3.5mm jack for your iPod or streaming media device. Also featured in this rear-panel configuration are full-bandwidth a preamp output RCA jacks and another pair of RCA jacks for your subwoofer amp making this an extremely flexible unit. In other words, you could use the i100 as a preamp and drive two external power amps via these two pair of output jacks, something to keep in mind as you grow your system.

I believe that this company has found a nitch in the market by offering these highly attractive features. An entry-level audiophile could purchase this unit and use it as an integrated amplifier. As funds permit, more amplifiers could find their way into this system driving larger speakers and subwoofers. By this time surely Mies will expand its product line and develop a more sophisticated preamp sporting possibly differential input/output connections. But that’s just a personal pipe dream and may have absolutely no bearing on what these folks at Planet of Sound have in mind. Mies already has a reputable audio track record with two all-tube amps, the m25a ($899 CAD) and m50a ($1,499 CAD). BTW, you can connect either one or both to the i100.


Mies m50a Stereo Power Amplifier

How can you get one? That’s the catch – you can’t. Today, it’s a sort of pay-it-forward approach where you invest in an unlistenable product hoping that what you see in the pictures of the prototype actually matches what the production unit delivers. At the current MSRP of $399 CAD, this is a reasonable risk to make and with an incentive of $100 CAD off that MSRP to the first 50 backers, it is down-right attractive.

If you are so moved, get in line with the tens of others, and sign up on their web site before March 13 or before the 50-limit number of backers is reached and save $100 CAD. Even at just under $400 CAD, this little unit could bring to be something to behold.



FAIR WARNING: Not hearing something and buying it strictly on visual impressions and word-of-mouth is risky. Know that I have not heard this unit myself and my comments are my personal, highly subjective impressions. It reminds me much of the old joke “Want to buy a bridge in Brooklyn?” If the production design follows the prototype pictures, the i100 could be a pretty darned decent unit. There is just no way to know for sure other than trusting these folks who say that the i100 will be a respectable sounding piece of audio gear.

I have been promised by the manufacturer, Planet of Sound, access to a first-generation production unit as soon as this company fulfills order commitments. I am waiting with baited breath for the arrival of this unit. Once it arrives (currently projected to be , I will review it and let you know my unbiased opinion.

Yours for higher fidelity,
Philip Rastocny 

I do not use ads in this blog to help support my efforts. If you like what you are reading, please remember to reciprocate, My newest title is called Where, oh Where did the Star of Bethlehem Go? It’s an astronomer’s look at what this celestial object may have been, who the "Wise Men" were, and where they came from. Written in an investigative journalism style, it targets one star that has never been considered before and builds a solid case for its candidacy.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QFIAC3G

My other titles include:


Copyright © 2015 by Philip Rastocny. All rights reserved.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

How to Listen - Part 3

In parts 1 and 2 of this series, you learned how to listen to the silence between notes and the attack created by an artist playing an instrument. You also learned that the Devil is in the details and that true artists bring out their individual styles by exploiting the assets of an instrument where others cannot. You learned that in the attack and decay of a note is where these subtleties lie and how to listen better for these highly audible clues. And you went to a friend's home and listened to a very familiar piece of music on their system and with your new ears tried to hear the differences that system revealed that yours did not, and vice versa.

You also took notes about the things you heard on your system and on your friend’s system and tried to understand which was “right” as compared to the real thing. This is why you need to attend live concerts so that you understand what the real thing is supposed to sound like, right? This is the difference between a system that sounds good and one that sounds right.

One of my pet peeves is people who compare electronic music across systems. What does a keyboard programmed with this contour actually sound like? Who really knows? Even when playing that same keyboard program into a different amplifier it too will sound different. What chance does your audio system – regardless of how well refined it is – have to accurately reproduce any electronic music?

On the other hand even within the same instruments there are minor variations in their characteristic sound. Take for example the well-known Fender Stratocaster played by musicians like Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, and many others including those playing in a venue nearby your home this weekend. Look at the different pickup designs below and think about how just that single difference influences the sound.






While it is obvious from the pickup layout that the Clapton model will sound very different from the Murray model, exactly how does it sound different? Can you tell the difference between these two instruments in any of these musician’s signature albums? One day you may but today just try to hear something – anything – that tells you that this Stratocaster sounds different from that one.

Complicating the sounds produced by non-acoustic instruments is the amplifiers used to create the final desired effect. Stevie Ray Vaughn playing a Clapton Stratocaster through a Fender EC Twinolux speaker/amp combo will sound very different compared to a separate Marshall EL34 amp and 1960B speaker.

Similar issues hold true for any non-electronic instrument, especially classical string models. The violin, while a simple design used by all instruments in this category, consists of a string that vibrates against a bridge that makes the body of the instrument resonate. How that body-bridge-string combination interacts determines how the notes of that instrument will sound. Much like different combinations of guitars and amplifiers will make a performance sound different, each of these elements make that acoustic instrument sound equally as different. And how an accomplished musician coaxes the sound from any instrument tells you not only about that musician’s technical ability to play that instrument but also the artistic interpretation by how he or she demonstrates her command over its virtues. While Itzhak Perlman prefers to play a Stradivarius and can bring you literally to tears, he can also play a cheap beginner’s violin and make it do the same. Why? Because he is Itzhak Perlman and understands how things should sound.

As you develop your listening ability, you will be able to discern any system’s attributes and its shortcomings. While it is easy to focus on what you do not like, listen instead to what you do. Nothing is ever perfect, especially in the audio world. For example, there are things I really like about the PAS amplifiers and things that I do not. But the things that they do far outweigh those minor flaws they have and like listening to a Stradivarius over a beginner violin, I prefer listening to its assets. Don’t get bogged down in a negative approach to the sound of any recording, performance, or piece of audio gear; in the end everything will disappoint you and fall short of perfection. Even the best artists make mistakes. Staying in a positive frame helps you enjoy the experience more so than focusing on flaws. Know that it sounds different as opposed to being good or bad.

So, when you listen, listen not only to the notes, not only to the attack and decay, but also how the artist coaxes life from an instrument that seizes your attention. One of the most copied pieces of popular music ever is The Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Played by practically anyone you know or ever heard of, this piece shows you how artists interpret the same music differently. Pop orchestras perform this piece in formal concert regularly as do solo starving artists in dingy nightclubs all around the country. Each time you hear it, even in an elevator lulling you to sleep on the way to your floor, you recognize the merits of these notes and the strengths of the accompanying vocals (if any). Each artist interprets that piece with their own style. So which is right? I have several favorite versions, each with their own unique interpretation as I would suspect that you do too. There is no “right” or “wrong,” just different.

However, understanding why you prefer once type of performance over another can give you an insight to your own personal biases. We all have biases, mine being toward unamplified live performances and my wife’s to chest-thumping bass. While these biases help you enjoy certain pieces of music, these same biases will keep you from enjoying a new musical experience until you learn how to let them go. For example, for the longest time I did not understand opera. People singing their hearts out in foreign languages saying the same things over and over again and then the star falling over dead at the end just was not my cup of tea. But the human voice is without a doubt the most perfect instrument you will ever hear.

What I needed was to abandon my biases and immerse myself in the performance, something much easier said than done. But all I needed was inspiration to change that bias and it came in the form of a casual comment from a friend. He said, and I quote, “Operas were the movies of the time.” That’s all it took and I started to become hooked. So now, I find that listening to opera is enjoyable and one I can even look forward to. A few years back, my wife bought Anna Netrebko’s DVD “The Woman – The Voice.” In this highly creative collaboration, opera is tastefully thrust into the realm of a pop music video.

Play track 2 – the “Quando men vo” selection from the Puccini opera “La Boheme” – and listen to the decaying hall echoes created by the string section just prior to Anna singing. She opens with a sustained vibrato that emphasizes the concert hall ambience bringing fullness to her voice that surpasses the best reverberation attempt artificially induced in any recording studio. Her voice emphasizes the emotion and power behind the melody intended by the composer and interpreted marvelously by the musicians accompanying her. Focusing on her rising and falling vibratos throughout each piece in this DVD helps you to succinctly define that emotion bringing even more meaning to this brilliant performance.

By now, you should have realized that there is more to music than you have been hearing and hopefully you are refining your ability to hear subtle details. Most of your effort will revolve around persistence and perseverance where finding one unique feature grabs your attention and you search for that same detail in other performances. As you build your repertoire of details you will meet others who can explain to you in their own words what they hear about a performance that will shed additional light on even more details to which you were unaware. And of course going to live performances and listening for characteristic sounds created by the combination of instruments and electronics is always a pleasant pastime, especially when modest libations and good friends are involved.

Abandon your biases and open your mind up to new possibilities in musical art. Focus on what you enjoy and overlook the flaws and human error. All venues hide artists and it is your task – if you wish to accept it – to find those exciting, new, and different artists that give you a tingling thrill that runs down the entire length of your spine. Until next time, listen carefully, take notes, and always enjoy your music!

Yours for higher fidelity,
Philip Rastocny

I do not use ads in this blog to help support my efforts. If you like what you are reading, please remember to reciprocate, My newest title is called Where, oh Where did the Star of Bethlehem Go? It’s an astronomer’s look at what this celestial object may have been, who the "Wise Men" were, and where they came from. Written in an investigative journalism style, it targets one star that has never been considered before and builds a solid case for its candidacy.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QFIAC3G

My other titles include:

·  Extreme Audio 1: House Wiring ·  Build an Extreme Green Hot Water Solar Collector
·  Extreme Audio 2: Line Filtering ·  The Extreme Green Guide to Wind Turbines
·  Extreme Audio 3: Chassis Leakage ·  The Extreme Green Guide to Solar Electricity
·  Extreme Audio 4: Interconnect Cables ·  Meditation for Geeks (and other left-brained people)
·  Extreme Audio 5: Speaker Wires ·  Althea: A Story of Love
·  Extreme Green Guide to Improving Mileage ·  Build an Extreme Green Raised Bed Garden
·  Extreme Green Organic Gardening ·  Build an Extreme Green Rain Barrel
·  Extreme Green Organic Gardening 2012 ·  Build an Extreme Green Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder
·  Build an Extreme Green Composter ·  Extreme Green Appliance Buying Guide

Copyright © 2015 by Philip Rastocny. All rights reserved.

How to Listen - Part 2

In part 1 of this series, you were given a homework assignment to go out and listen to unamplified music. If you have not already done so, I strongly suggest that you do this at least once in some venue of your choosing and musical preference before proceeding. Remember to take good notes about what you hear focusing primarily on your favorite instrument. In summary, it would be best to listen live and then read this posting as soon as possible with your acoustic memory in tact.
Now is the time for you to take those notes you made about what you heard at these performances and apply your experience to your personal listening habits. For this part, I will reference specific recordings that should help you to develop your “new” ears and fine tune them into those of gold (a.k.a. golden ears). It takes a lot of practice to develop golden ears and with a little perseverance, you too can claim these unusual ears as your own. So, let’s get started by listening to a 2006 Grammy nominated piano performance by the great Peter Kater.

In his album Fire, track 2 "Afterglow" begins with a very nice recording of Peter’s fingering finesse on the keys of a piano. The first few seconds of its opening is what I want you to acoustically scrutinize. Play this opening until you slow down enough in your audio feasting to hear the silence between the notes for it is in the silence that magical details of both instrument and artist hide.

Focus initially on the sound of each string resonating on the sound board rather than the sound of the note it plays. Start the track and see if you can hear the key hammer striking the string just before it begins to resonate. For example, you would normally listen to the melody created during the performance but now you shift your attention to the “attack” ability of your system (its ability to resolve quick musical transients). If your system has good attack, you will be able to clearly hear this hammer striking the string. If your system has excellent attack, you may even hear the felt of the hammer dampen the initial blow to that string.

One of my personal favorite guitarists is Eric Bibb. Eric not only plays music but is in love with his own ears and understands the sonic signatures of various guitars. His hand movements on an instrument coaxes sounds from it of which other artist cannot because of this intimacy. In his “Diamond Days” album on track 1 “Tall Cotton,” the song begins with the sound of an analog record needle dropping into the groove. Noise from the spinning disc and the dust in the grooves makes you suspect that you are listening to a vinyl album, something intentionally done in an attempt to convey to the listener his personal love of sound itself. But the melodic fingering of the strings prior to the harmonica joining in is where the real love of his instrument can be heard. Listen to how firmly he plucks the strings and how this firmness rises and fades at different notes. Listen to the different resonances not only when he changes from one string to the next but also one note to the next on the same string. The magic of musical art lies in its details and Eric is one of the masters of sonic details.

On the other end of the spectrum where silence is not valued but sonic subtleties are is Eddy Van Halen. Eddy constantly coaxed different sounds from electric guitars in an attempt to make them sound different. In his album “1984” track 4 “Top Jimmy” starts with a slow serenade of plucked strings with effects that emphasize the merits of that guitar. Listening to the way he alternately strums the string with a pick and his finger, moving up and down the neck tells you that he is trying to give you as a listener an experience he personally finds acoustically interesting. In other words, he is able to make a sound from a guitar that few others can imitate, especially at the same speed and the same amount of intricacy that he does.

So what did you hear? Take notes again about what you did and did not perceive. Try to slow down your mind and think only about one element of an instrument at a time. After you master that element, move onto the next. The trick is to know what to listen for and how to quickly identify that characteristic in all types of program material, not just this one.

If you have another – any other – solo-instrument recording with which you are already intimately familiar, you can scrutinize that solo instrument in the same manner. Listen to the moment just prior to the note itself and identify what sounds occur. For example, a saxophone may have the artist breathe just prior to pressing his/her lips to the reed. A guitar may have a faint squeak of a hand moving across the sound board or a finger deliberately resting on a plucked string. Fingers sliding on wire-wound guitar strings are easy for most systems to resolve but the better systems will reveal more of the character of that wire-wound string disclosing where on the length of that string the fingers slide (near the neck or closer to the bridge).

At the end of a note is the other sonic-rich content. Again solo recordings are best to use to hear these subtleties but small groups also can be very revealing. For example, any studio recording consists of individual tracks for each musician. In a highly refined system, you should be able to somewhat discern the size each of the rooms in which the artist was recorded. Some well-damped rooms will have their own characteristic dead sound and other larger studios will have a different sonic signature to that decay. An accomplished listener can hear a vocalist and listen through the artificial reverberation into the acoustic clues that hide at the end of the notes. This is called the decay portion of a note and it is where reverberant clues hide. Such subtle echoes tell you how long it takes for sound to bounce from one wall of that room to another, even when damped. Regardless of hearing the actual size of the room, you should at least be able to hear that the rooms were indeed different.

With highly-resolved playback systems, even dead small booths can give up their unique sonic signatures. Learning to listen for these subtleties will increase not only your awareness of a performance but also the limitations imposed by your own playback system. It is a good idea once you become intimately familiar with a performance to take that recording to a friend’s system and listen with the same level of scrutiny on it as you did yours. Again, take notes and compare what you heard on that system that you did not on yours.

Each time you do this, you will hear things that you overlooked before. Then, go back to your system and see if what you heard was also there and you just did not notice it before. Most of the time, these nuances are more forward in one system and more laid back in another. Which is correct is a matter of personal preference and the amount of coloration –if any – a system introduces in order to make that nuance come forward.

Similar subtle details are constantly going on in any live performance. Listen for these little attack/decay details and expand your awareness of music. Appreciate a musician’s interpretation not only on the merits you already know but also on the merits you have just learned. In the next part of this series, I will show you where such nuances crop up in common recordings so you can see if your system is refined enough to reveal these subtle details. Understand more clearly about a performance you like and one you dislike and learn more about who you really are deep down inside. Until next time, listen carefully to these live performances, take notes, and enjoy the music!

Yours for higher fidelity,
Philip Rastocny 

I do not use ads in this blog to help support my efforts. If you like what you are reading, please remember to reciprocate, My newest title is called Where, oh Where did the Star of Bethlehem Go? It’s an astronomer’s look at what this celestial object may have been, who the "Wise Men" were, and where they came from. Written in an investigative journalism style, it targets one star that has never been considered before and builds a solid case for its candidacy.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QFIAC3G

My other titles include:

·  Extreme Audio 1: House Wiring ·  Build an Extreme Green Hot Water Solar Collector
·  Extreme Audio 2: Line Filtering ·  The Extreme Green Guide to Wind Turbines
·  Extreme Audio 3: Chassis Leakage ·  The Extreme Green Guide to Solar Electricity
·  Extreme Audio 4: Interconnect Cables ·  Meditation for Geeks (and other left-brained people)
·  Extreme Audio 5: Speaker Wires ·  Althea: A Story of Love
·  Extreme Green Guide to Improving Mileage ·  Build an Extreme Green Raised Bed Garden
·  Extreme Green Organic Gardening ·  Build an Extreme Green Rain Barrel
·  Extreme Green Organic Gardening 2012 ·  Build an Extreme Green Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder
·  Build an Extreme Green Composter ·  Extreme Green Appliance Buying Guide

Copyright © 2015 by Philip Rastocny. All rights reserved.