Issue 16

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Subwoofery series for a Special Announcement!

In the past couple of weeks, as I voiced several systems around the country and conducted set-up classes at my RoomPlay Reference listening room here in the Atlanta area, I realized that I knew something vital to this series – in fact, I have always used it and taught it – but I had not communicated it in Copper! Sheesh!!! Brain fade? Anyway, we need to correct the omission before going further with our Subwoofery series.

First, a few excerpts from the previous issue in order to illustrate the point I am about to make related to the need for seamless blending of subs with full-range speakers (which always results in a far more musically engaging experience).

From Copper – Issue 14 –

“Subs – again, properly implemented – will always enhance the sense of space and especially the sense of presence of vocalists and instruments, whether recorded up close or well back on a stage.  The result?  A more engaging musical experience.

But it’s not just the sense of space or hearing low bass instruments the few times when they are actually present.  For example, I can play a recording of a guitar solo, and when the subs are on, it’s as if you could walk over and pluck the guitar strings!  Yet, you are not aware of the subs in any way as far as making a sound.  They increase the sense of tangibility of instruments and voices.

My experience (something like 800 systems successfully voiced) has shown that even the most expensive/exotic speakers – often which claim subterranean bass – still benefit from properly implemented subs.  In fact, I have never known this outcome to be untrue, no matter what is claimed or what the main loudspeaker costs.

It’s important to recount that when I have heard reports of how a pair of subs didn’t blend properly with a pair of full-range loudspeakers, when I heard that system, the reports were nearly always correct!  Sometimes I could fix the problem in a few minutes, sometimes a few hours. But it was always solved and more musical engagement was the outcome.”

There are several reasons that very smart audiophiles often miss the benefits of this topic:

Reason #1 –

This first point isn’t actually the one I wanted to make with this injection into our series, but it is vitally important. It’s really more of a rant. (insert angry emoji here).

Without exception, I have found that audiophiles rarely experience the full capabilities of their systems because they don’t really have a reference. So, even when their systems are sounding good to them, how do they know if there is more to be had from their investment? Do they know what to consider, and how to go about it? Are they really getting the full return for which they paid?

Show sound – and dealer sound (with a few exceptions) – can almost always be significantly bettered by most serious home audio systems. Therefore, if your sound approaches (but doesn’t exceed) that of the best you have heard at a show or at a dealer, it probably means that you have more work to do (the bad news) and more musical involvement to enjoy for years to come (the great news).

Reason #2 –

If you are fortunate enough to have a custom designed room, and you have been told where the system should go, but the designer did not come to your place and evaluate/tweak the results, in my experience, it is definitely under-performing its true potential. And even if he/she did come, that is no certain assurance that you have the performance for which you have paid (more on that later in this series). Sadly, the performance shortfall is often dramatic.

Here are quotes from two recent RoomPlay clients who had relatively expensive rooms that were designed – but never checked after the system installation – by the designer:

• “Dammit! I have lived with about 20% of the sound I could’ve had.”
• “I cannot believe how much more alive my system sounds!” FWIW – his wife heartily agreed.

We will address the above listed issues – and more – in this series. By “address”, I mean that we will show you how to get there. Our goal is for you to reach that higher level of musical engagement.

Reason #3 –

When I have heard systems with subs that did not blend well with the main speakers, there have been a number of culprits. Sometimes it was the one we are about to address, but usually there were several.

For years I have been astonished at the lack of cohesiveness and musicality from mains/sub systems, and for a reason that seems so obvious (that I forgot to mention it).  🙁

No matter how excellent the subs, no matter how much effort went into their placement, the results will never be satisfying if the following process (which is has nothing to do with working with the subs) isn’t performed.

The main speakers need to be voiced for the smoothest bass possible! A great sub install will have little or no chance of blending with main speakers that have problems in the 25-250 Hz area. Please understand – I am NOT saying that the main speakers are problematic in the bass. Most likely they are performing well. It’s the room/listening position/speaker position that is the culprit. When attention to this vital detail has been properly applied (plus two more issues we will explore as well), only then can we begin think about working with the subs.

We’ll look at this issue in more depth in the next Copper…

Having generated a few milli- or micro-volts by our humble little cartridge, we now have to equalize by applying the inverse of the RIAA curve that was applied when the record was mastered, and then amplify the signal enough to drive our main amplifier.

Electronically (or even just electrically) , a phono stage is  very difficult  to engineer properly, which helps explain a veritable cornucopia of designs out there. Tubes or transistors,  op amps, head amps, SUTs, passive or active… it is a mind-boggling array!

Take a modest MM / moving magnet cartridge, with a quoted output of 5mv: our main amplifier really would like to see a minimum of 500mv, so our phono stage has to add gain at 100 times, at the same time adding the necessary RIAA curve. To further complicate matters, that curve is so severe that  it can wipe out the gain of an entire stage of the design.

Most designs, tube or transistor, use active circuits which use negative feedback.  I don’t want to get too technical, but some basics can be covered.  The cartridge signal is amplified by a circuit having very high gain, this may be two or three tubes, several transistors, or one or two Integrated Circuits (which is must be remembered can contain 40+ transistors in each).

Part of the high output of the preamplifier circuit is returned (fed back)  to the input of the preamplifier, and at the same time a small network of capacitors and resistors adjusts the level of feedback selectively at the bass, mid and treble frequencies to apply the RIAA equalisation curve. Less feedback in the bass, very high feedback in the treble. Feedback can also help reduce levels of distortion, which is no bad thing. But as the feedback is different at the bass and treble frequencies (more gain need for the bass frequencies) the amount of distortion also changes with frequency, which is not a good thing.

Generally speaking, transistors (including ICs, or integrated circuits) are not as linear as tubes, nor do they have as much gain per device. That’s why transistors are usually used with feedback to help counter these issues. There is also an argument that using any feedback can ‘flatten’ the sound, or make it less real. In High End tube circles, especially those using big fat DHT (directly heated triode) amps, feedback is generally sneered at!

One of the first RIAA circuits every printed, one by RCA, is a classic example of a no-feedback circuit, and one that has been ‘reinvented, time and time again, although it always really stays the same.  It uses a single tube per channel, but a tube that is actually a kind of Siamese twin, with a shared glass bulb, but with two little individual halves inside.  One half of the tube amplifies, and then the signal is fed through a small bunch of capacitors and resistors, which selectively equalise and apply the RIAA curve. This is then amplified again by the final half of the tube. With no feedback applied, the distortion is around 5% per stage. In addition, maximum gain cannot be made from the tubes used, and the first half will overload more easily in the treble, because the RIAA equalisation is providing it with a very low load.

Adding more tubes, and using cathode followers or SRPP (series regulated push-pull) principles, can help with this last problem, but not  with the distortion. SRPP uses both ‘halves’ of the tube as one, thus twice as many tubes are needed. The ultimate configuration of this kind of circuit uses an LCR filter; instead of the small resistors and capacitors, a series of inductors, capacitors, and resistors are matched and sealed in what looks like a transformer. The use of inductors can be seen as a benefit over just using resistors, but the costs are enormous. The simple capacitors and resistors of the basic circuit could cost as little as a few cents, but LCR RIAA filters cost a good few hundred bucks. Kouichi “Nobu” Shishido published such a circuit in the November, 1996 issue of the Japanese magazine MJ Audio  Technology , which was reprinted in Sound Practices magazine and became a defacto circuit.

There are of course lots of hybrid designs, mixing  feedback stages  with all or part of the RIAA done passively; confusingly, there are also ‘hybrids’ mixing tubes with solid state elements in active gain stages.

Personally, I use a tube unit which utilizes feedback. It uses the same Siamese tube RCA used, but set for higher gain, with feedback in which I invoke the RIAA curve. I am not alone, as such a configuration has been used by Stewart Hegeman, Marantz, Hafler, Dynaco, Fisher, Scott, Audio Research (early!) Conrad Johnson, Luxman, Croft Acoustics, and many others. Carefully built, it’s an excellent basis for design.

People do get bogged down in specs. Being anal-retentive about the RIAA curve is pretty irrelevant, given the variations in EQ used in mastering actual records. The more electronics you feed something through, the worse it gets, generally speaking. Amplifiers DO NOT make things better, they add gain, but always subtract ‘something’; thus, the more amplifiers, the more is lost. Keeping a circuit simple can aid fidelity, but make it too crude, and it can be counterproductive, as it will tend to create more distortion.

All this is fine for MM cartridges, but what about moving coil? These have outputs one tenth to one fiftieth  that of a moving magnet. To increase gain, it is either necessary to add an extra active stage, use a transformer, or in the case of a real budget phono stage cheat, reduce the negative feedback to create more gain (as well as more noise and distortion!).

Phono stages already create more electrical noise than most other parts of your hi-fi system, but to boost the MC signal it becomes even harder. Using a tube as a kind of pre-pre-amp has been done many times, but they are nearly always noisy.  Using a select mix of FET and transistors is probably the best active compromise, and the use of a poor quality IC is best avoided.

Step up transformers can be one of the best ways of achieving gain; even these introduce distortion, and good ones are scary expensive.  To maintain bandwidth complex winding techniques are used, with high grades of wire. To stop the transformer picking up other unwanted signals (think 0.001v signal to 120.000V mains supply) mu-metal and extensive magnetic shielding is needed.

Personally, I prefer transformers over other step-up devices in a high-end set up. But down on a budget, the vast majority of phono stages are purely active. To be honest, this is probably a lot better than using poor-quality transformers.

There are so many phono stages on the market now. There are hundreds of the little (and not so little) blighters. If on a tight budget it’s impossible to avoid the IC-based ones. But look at the wall-wart power supply, make sure it’s at least 18V or more, and it will at least not overload. And as far as I’m concerned , try to upgrade to tube ASAP!

A band named Mountain, that in its most potent form lasted from 1970-1972, was the absolute and undeniable Father of Heavy Metal. I usually leave some room for argument, I like to do that. Plausible deniability. But not today. I will entertain suggestions for Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. But I will not encourage. Yer just wrong.

In 1970 I turned 16 and could work a regular job besides the slave labor of picking tobacco or delivering papers. This period was a revelation, a breaching of protocol between classes. As a high school freshman you could work at a drive-in theater with a guy who was a sophomore or even junior and become friends.   You know, like real Life. The same guy who 6 months earlier would beat you up if you offered him a free cheeseburger could become a fast buddy. There is nothing like the brotherhood forged by facing tyranny combined with the boredom at the base of the career ladder to bring out life’s little miracles, like discovering a person you’ve never known before has just as warped a sense of the comedy in the macabre.

Bruce was a guy from the next neighborhood over that was in a completely separate social stratum. He was a gearhead, hung out with gearheads, disdained anything non-gearhead and was 2 years older. I knew who he was. I’d seen him at school. Weird guy. Tall, lanky, walked like he was out of cigarettes and looked like he’d just said something to himself that pissed him off. Then one of my first real jobs was as a truck driver’s assistant for an airline caterer and Bruce was the lead guy who had to show me the ropes.

At first he was appropriately annoyed with this task. Teaching dweebs in delivering meals to an airplane was not why he had exited the womb. But when you spend a large amount of time carrying stuff and waiting on other stuff you have chances to get to know each other. Without delving too much into a midnight raid where a dead rat mysteriously appeared in a competing caterer’s meal carrier, conversation and coalition formed a friendship.

Bruce had a green convertible MG, a beautiful car and I told him so. He asked me if I’d like to take a ride some afternoon after work, cruise and listen to music. We lived in a small bedroom community surrounded by rural farm towns like Suffield. At one time there were so many cars filled with high schoolers smoking pot and drinking cans of Schlitz driving around Suffield they had to put up special warning signs for the locals. Dip in Road Ahead. On this day, he had a tape he had to show me on the new stereo system in his car. The system wouldn’t impress any audiophile, but suffice it to say it was AWESOME, because it was LOUD. That was all we really knew then.

Bruce popped the 8 track in (state of the art at the time), and a now iconic cowbell intro kicked into Mississippi Queen from Climbing!, Leslie West’s second Mountain album but first with Felix Pappalardi on bass and Corky Lang on drums. Turn it up.

That song grabbed your nuts right out of your pants, as long as you had it turned up loud enough. Whether or not you got it you still remember the song. Mountain’s sound was just so fat. Early on I heard rumors that West got that fat sound by playing notes with two fingers. He was incredibly emotive, and could do more with three notes than Clapton with 12. But I’ve watched him play on video and he does use two fingers to bend now and then but primarily plays single notes with one. Umm..he did have fat fingers. But that sound had more to do with Pappalardi.

Power rock trios had been done and had popular success, especially Cream. Led Zeppelin was a power rock trio with a vocalist. And because of that you can’t talk about revolutions in music, one thing leads to another. But these guys together, West’s best all time rhythm section, were coming out of black bottom earth. With only three guys in the real band you can’t point to a firm catalyst or a defining member, but Felix Pappalardi had created a bass bottom that along with Jack Bruce’s work created a new music. By the way, there was a connection between those two that was critical to both their success.

Felix was born in 1939, studied music in high school and then at the University of Michigan. At 25 he ended up in New York. 1964, the folk scene. Unable to find work as a conductor or arranger he fell into the world of folk performance. He did some touring, then arranging for folk artists, and soon Felix found a talent he didn’t know he had. After doing some producing for acts like Joan Baez, in 1967 he produced the first album by the Youngbloods. Next up, in the same year, he produced Disraeli Gears for Cream. He was the producer on two more albums for Cream, Wheels of Fire and Goodbye. Jack Bruce once said Pappalardi was the fourth member of the band during that period, much like George Martin with the Beatles and Eddie Kramer for Jimi Hendrix. Felix and his wife Gail wrote Strange Brew with Clapton. And there is no question Felix took a great deal from his time with Jack Bruce.

I remember I didn’t notice this, despite being an avid reader of liner notes, until Pappalardi hit it big with Mountain. Surely, the first thing I said when I heard Climbing! was ‘Who’s that guitar player?” but the close second was “Who is that on bass?” Then, going back and looking back at Cream liner notes, the name of Felix Pappalardi popped out at me.

When I started playing bass and ran into drummers who took me to the woodshed for being tentative and even insipid (I played the bass like a guy who wanted to play guitar, which I did), I took their advice and started listening to bass players in my favorite music. Certainly Pappalardi’s bass work on both Climbing! and Nantucket Sleighride (!!) formed a feel for holding the bottom down that stays with me to this day. In order to pull off a trio each player has to be able to stand alone and blend at the same time. There was so much true bottom fattidity (yes, that’s a word) here you could feel it from Mars.

This version of Mountain released Nantucket Sleighride (!!!), another classic, then a last album before breaking up in 1972. Drugs and hearing loss from touring with West left Pappalardi back in the producer’s chair. But drugs continued to plague and Felix never reached the same success. The drug problem seemed to permeate and perforate so many players from my generation, but truly it can be traced back to early heroin addictions in the 40’s and 50’s with fatalities throughout the history of music right to this day. There is a weird dynamic of creativity that creates a possibility of addiction in artists of all kinds, painters, writers, musicians and elephant trainers, and warrants study.

Corky Lang said in an interview in 2009 that Pappalardi’s early death was inevitable. “When you have guns, lots of guns, and drugs, and jealousy, frustration and depression, a disaster is going to happen. Then Felix met a girl he wanted to live with and made the mistake of telling his wife.”

On April 17, 1983 Gail Collins Pappalardi shot Felix once in the neck and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The speed at which lightning came and went during that period was amazing. I will forever feel privileged to have lived through it, even if I don’t remember all of it.

1. I mentioned this a few times so I’ll put a cut here. Enjoy. Felix on vocals. Turn it up.

By the way, for those of you unfamiliar with the wilds of whaling back in the day, look up what a Nantucket sleighride was. You’ll get a good feel for the life and times of Felix Pappalardi.

Every now and then a new company appears in the audio world, seemingly out of nowhere, with high aspirations and novel technology. Versa Dynamics was one such company, appearing in the late 1980’s with an outrageous and elegant state-of-the-art turntable system. The company may have been new to audio, but designer John Bicht had previously worked on phono playback systems for others, and on the mechanical and industrial designs of a bewildering array of disparate devices.

Bicht jumped feet-first into the world of design at age 16, when he sought to buy a Ferrari 250GT California for $5500 (it is to weep!) in Baltimore. Not having any money, he created several product designs and tried first to sell them, and then offered to trade them in exchange for the car. His offer was politely declined—and not to rub salt into the wound, but 2 California Spyders were recently sold for $17 million and $18 million….

His automotive obsession led Bicht into racing Formula Fords round the east coast, working as a race mechanic to fund his drives. In 1972 he moved to England, and became involved in the design and build of Formula Ford and Formula Atlantic racecars for DRL Engineering/Hawke. (A fascinating photo album of Bicht’s racing days can be found here:  http://www.vintagegarage.com/hbicht1.html )

Still in England, at one point, when I figured I would have to find auto mechanic schools to bring my knowledge up to date… “I stopped racing and sold the race car, and that left me with extra money every month,” said Bicht. “I decided I’d buy some hi-fi equipment… I bought some gear, wasn’t impressed, returned it, and was tipped off by the salesman that I should look at more interesting stuff, and started reading the magazines.”

While working for Ogle Design on projects ranging from crash-protection for Army Land Rovers to emergency doors for Hong Kong commuter trains, Bicht continued to look at available hi-fi products.

Less than impressed by existing tonearms, he decided that designing and building a pick-up arm “might be something I could do.” “Schooled” by “a real crazy type” British reviewer, Bicht analyzed tonearm structure and designed a unit which “took it as far as I could, eliminating vibration.”

Friendships with those in the field, including Allen Boothroyd and Bob Stuart at then-new Meridian, led Bicht to take his tonearm design to a number of manufacturers. He encountered Farad Azima, who had recently started “a tiny company called Mission Electronics”. Bicht sold the arm to Azima, who  manufactured and sold it as the Mission 774. The arm is still highly regarded; one recently sold online with matching 773 cartridge for 400 Euro.   http://www.vinylengine.com/library/mission/774-(original).shtml  

In 1979, Bicht returned to the US, and designed a belt-drive turntable for Azima, “which was the beginning of my research into suspension for record players….It was also the time when I became aware there was such a thing as constrained-layer damping, and I started to apply that. ” Mission ultimately rejected the design, and Bicht worked on a number of projects including the rebuild of a Ferrari engine and the design of a semiconductor-assembly machine which worked at the then-unheard-of rate of 10,000 units per hour.

In 1984, a new company was set up for production of robotics: Versa Dynamics. After a year and a half of development, funding fell through, and Bicht took on contract work, including the design of a high-speed parts counter.

During a visit back to England, reviewer Paul Messenger showed Bicht the latest-greatest turntable on the market. As usual, Bicht was unimpressed. Back stateside, a visit to Lyric HiFi in New York allowed him to examine the megabuck Goldmund turntable; again, he was unimpressed. “I tapped on it and bounced it, and said to myself, ‘I can do better than that.’”

In 1986, the Versa Dynamics name appeared in on the company’s first product, a record player which was oddly-named “Model 2.0”. “I guess I called it that because it was the second record-player I designed…but it did cause some confusion,” said Bicht.

 The Model 2.0 combined a linear-tracking arm riding on air bearings with an air bearing for the platter, and suction to firmly attach the LP to the platter. J. Gordon Holt reviewed the Model 2.0, and raved about the unit’s performance, but expressed concern about a few issues—and the price: “There is something vaguely disturbing about the idea of an $8000 turntable and arm combination. That’s more money than a lot of audiophiles have invested in records through the years.” http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/785/index.html#e85XegZJf7AmAZ4K.97

Support from those in the audio industry quickly generated interest in the 2.0. “Dan D’Agostino helped spread the word, and was very good to us, and  Richard Vandersteen was as well,” Bicht said. A simpler, less-expensive second model, the Model 1.0 (!!), appeared in due time.

After a few years of increasing costs, production was halted. “The problem was that the record players just cost too much to build.” While production of new units stopped, Bicht continued to develop improvements to both players and support units in the field, a practice which, impressively, continues to this day.  http://www.versalab.com/VERSA%20DYNAMICS.html  

From Versa Dynamics, Bicht spun off another company, Versalab. Bicht imported a CD player from Europe, and in order to get the players to pass certification for RF emissions, inserted a toroid into the power cord to reduce emissions. Bicht said, “I listened to the thing with and without the power cord—and I said, ‘oh, my…it SOUNDS better.’…I realized that you couldn’t get away from that RF noise—it was everywhere.”

The purchase of a $25,000 RF spectrum analyzer and “a massive amount of research on my part” led to development and sale of an RFI filter system in 1992, consisting of three elements: Rollers, Wood Blocks and Ground Blocks. Despite an enthusiastic review by Wes Phillips in Stereophile, the industry was unwilling to support the new products, viewing them as akin to other tweaks of the era, such as the Tice Magic Clock. Bicht said, “I’d moved out of this safe position of being a record player maker, where amplifier designers and speaker designers and cable people could like me and take care of me…I now was selling a device that would make their amplifiers and their cables and their speakers sound different…and they didn’t really like it.”

Bicht left the field of audio as a manufacturer (although, as noted, Versalab continues to support and update the Versa Dynamics players, thirty years after their manufacture). An avid photographer, he saw the need for a well-made print washer.  He said, “I get an interest in an area, like watches—and then I go to buy stuff and then think, ‘I wouldn’t buy that, it’s not good enough’. And then I think that there might be a market for it. That’s the same thing that happened with the [photographic] print washer we make. I was…setting up a darkroom and couldn’t believe the prices people were charging for print washers., and they were all glued-together acrylic….I just designed one for myself and put it on the market [in 1996].”

Bicht noted parallels between film photography and analog playback gear: at one point, sales of the print washer had dropped to zero, but have now returned to about half of the peak level, similar to the recent resurgence in vinyl. An enlargement-alignment device remains so popular that Versalab has difficulty keeping up with orders.

Recent products from Versalab include an espresso grinder and press, and a stone for sharpening watchmaker tools. Bicht’s interest in watches led to redesign a vintage Rolex and other watches, and he was dissatisfied with the tools available.

“Nobody listens to me when I say this, but all these products— as much as I dove into them to make them as good as they could possibly be—they were all done because I needed a way of making a living. Every one of these different things—espresso, whatever it is—I could put you to sleep by telling you the details that one ends up learning about this stuff.” John Bicht may have moved away from audio, but he continues to innovate and invent.

A summary of Bicht’s amazing career in design can be seen here:  http://www.versalab.com/BICHT.html

Current products from Versalab can be seen here: http://www.versalab.com/

This leads us to the second application for power supply capacitors, filtering. When placed from the DC rail to ground, capacitors filter by forming what is called a low pass filter.

A first order low pass filter commonly used in power supplies

Next, we must decide which capacitors to put in place of the originals. When selecting new capacitors, it’s important to note their max voltage rating, capacitance, type, and size. It’s fine to pick a capacitor that exceeds the voltage rating of the original capacitor. Regarding capacitance, I would advise not to pick a capacitor that has a higher value than the original capacitor. Adding excessive amounts of capacitance will increase the inrush current upon start up, which could damage the rectifier or blow the fuse.

Generally, you want to keep the same type of capacitor that the original manufacturer used. The only exception to this rule- in my opinion- is when it comes to plastic capacitors. Many designers use plastic capacitors to bypass large electrolytics in order to achieve better noise suppression at high frequency. Unlike electrolytics, plastic capacitors only come in lower values and are non-polarized.  Older types of plastic capacitors such as mylar are inferior compared to new polypropylene types that have lower parasitics and therefore have better high frequency filtering capabilities. For low values less than 1uF, I would recommend using metalized polypropylene offerings from companies such as Wima or Epcos.

Depending on the available space inside of the chassis, the size of a capacitor can also be a major factor. Locate the capacitor in your component and measure the circumference, height, and lead spacing. Due to the advancement in modern technology, you’ll notice that capacitors with the same voltage and microfarad ratings will be considerably smaller.  If the capacitors are chassis or PCB mount, it might be necessary that you find a similar size. The best route to take here is to look for a cap that has a higher voltage rating. It’s likely you’ll find the size you need.

Using the Audio Research example discussed earlier, C24 and C25 are both labeled as 500uF 15V capacitors. Since 500uF is not a common capacitor value, I would prefer to replace this capacitor with a 470uF 16V electrolytic capacitor. Now repeat this process for each remaining power supply capacitor. 

That about sums it up! Your vintage component is on its way to sounding as good as the day it was first plugged in. But there’s more work to be done. Start with getting your schematics and identifying the caps you need to purchase. In the next issue, we’ll take it a step further by talking about another type of capacitor that is also extremely important to replace; the coupling capacitor.

Warning!

I am sure you have heard the dangers of working on electronics.  My advice to you is to read up on how to be safe when working on equipment. While working inside of electronics, always treat everything like it has the potential to kill you. Make sure the AC cord is unplugged and discharge all power supply capacitors before you start working. This reinforces correct habits and may very well save your life.

If not clearly marked, always notate the correct polarities on the PCB before removing any electrolytic capacitors. If electrolytics are reversed, they could explode and cause severe injury. Please be cautious!

Below are links to information to learn about proper safety practices.

Safety links:

•         General Safety Information:

http://diyaudio.com/forums/showwiki.php?title=DIYSafety

•         How to discharge a capacitor:

                         http://www.learningaboutelectronics.com/Articles/How-to-discharge-a-capacitor

•         How to make a capacitor discharge tool:

                         https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Constructing+a+Capacitor+Discharge+Tool/2177

Links to popular capacitor venders:

•        www.mouser.com
•        www.digikey.com
•        http://www.partsconnexion.com/
•        https://www.parts-express.com/

Power amplifiers, whether standalone or built into a receiver, integrated, or even our mobile phones, drive our speakers and headphones so we hear sound.

Amplifiers produce Watts and, if you’ve ever wondered why the term Watt is always capitalized, it’s named after a rather famous historical character, James Watt, famous for his invention of the Watt steam engine in 1781 (this was no small invention. It fundamentally changed the world by ushering in the Industrial Revolution, in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world).

A Watt represents one Joule of energy per second (one amp of electricity passing through one Ohm for one second). But you don’t need to know all that to figure out how much power it takes to make your speakers come alive. It’s actually simpler than all that.

Let’s start with the basics

Most of us have read countless reviews of loudspeakers, which means we’re likely familiar with a common measurement called sensitivity or efficiency. This measurement is typically expressed is dB—and yup, there’s yet another capitalized letter. The dB or Decibel is named after Alexander Graham Bell of “hello Mr. Watson, can you hear me?” fame.

Let’s say your loudspeaker measures 90dB. So, what’s that mean? If you send one Watt into your speaker and place your ear one meter away (3 feet), you will hear 90dB of sound. To put that in perspective, a train whistle produces about 90dB when you’re a few hundred feet away, while a loud rock concert is about 115dB, a jet engine 140dB. Sustained sound pressure levels of 95 dB or higher can produce hearing damage, but not to worry. When’s the last time you were subjected to 24/7 sound pressure?

The thing about using wattage and dB as a guide to choosing proper amplification power is problematic, because the scales are not linear. It takes twice the power to get another 3dB of amplifier power, but even more to get another 3dB louder at the speaker.

Making sense of power

If you double the amplifier’s power, you’ll get an additional 3dB at the output of the power amplifier. But, amplifier power is not sound pressure power.

Amplifier power causes the speaker drivers to move back and forth, creating sound pressure waves that move the air and we hear music. Sound pressure is what we hear and microphones record. Sound pressure is what a sound pressure level (SPL) meter measures (in dBs). While the sound pressure is related to the amplifier’s power, doubling the amplifier’s power does not double the sound pressure. And, at the end of the day, all we’re really interested in is how much power do we need to make our speakers louder.

Right?

If we want to double sound pressure, we need 6dB more amplifier power, which requires four times the number of watts. And, if you’ll recall, the scales we use to convert sound pressure into amplifier power are not a straight line. Instead they follow a progressively larger exponential pattern.

Here’s an easy chart that explains what I am referring to.

Basically, you need one hundred times more power to get another 20dB in sound pressure. That means if it took one Watt to make 90dB, it’ll take one hundred watts to make 110dB (and 115dB is as loud as a rock concert).

Can too much power hurt my speakers?

A common misconception is that having too big of a power amplifier connected to your speakers will damage them. This is like believing a powerful car will always go faster than you want. Neither is true.

Yes, a large amplifier gives you the potential to release the blue smoke hidden in your woofers, just like a big engine in your car has the potential to get you busted for speeding. But neither means any of this will happen. Don’t turn your speakers up loud enough for your ears to bleed, and gentle on the accelerator pedal.

If you need something to worry about, try adding too small of an amplifier to your speakers. Too small of a power amp can clip the amplifier and fry your tweeter.

Bigger is better.

So, how much do I need?

Much depends on your listening habits and your speaker’s efficiency. If you like loud uncompressed music and your speakers are 90dB efficient, 200 Watts is likely plenty of power for you. If you only listen to light classical, jazz and don’t expect them to rock the house, 50 Watts is adequate.

Higher efficiency speakers, like horns, take very few Watts. That is because one Watt can produce 95dB of sound, which is already loud. Another 6dB of sound pressure will cost you four times more Watts—but still, we’re talking fewer than five Watts to produce more than 100dB of sound, and all of sixteen to thirty two Watts for rock concert levels.

In closing, it’s also instructive to recognize that most music isn’t constantly loud. Soft passages fall well below the 90dB levels. This means that for most listening, the average Watts used by your speakers is perhaps ten to twenty max.

If you want the best sound, go for more Watts – but never at the expense of sonic quality.

Not all Watts sound the same.

The rebirth of interest in LPs—vinyl records— has brought many newbies to the field, often with a rather iffy survival rate. Paul Epstein and wife Jill are no latecomers, having run Twist and Shout records for almost 30 years. The two were both English teachers when they stumbled upon the tax auction of a record store in 1988; they bought the assets and started out with a 2,000 square foot store.

A strong survivor in 2016, Twist and Shout is now 11,000 square feet of retail space housing over 200,000 records and 100,000 CDs, along with tons of books, DVDs, memorabilia and toys. They’re  located next to another survivor,  the 45-year-old  Tattered Cover bookstore on Denver’s funky Colfax Avenue, and in terms of size, Twist and Shout is now among the top 3% of independent record stores in the US.

I’d previously dropped a little money at Twist and  Shout, and so I was happy to speak with Paul Epstein on August 31st and discover where my money had gone. Paul is very plain-spoken when it comes to the music biz, so be prepared. Our conversation was just that, not a stiff interview— so expect it to stop and start and jump around a bit, like real conversations do.    C= Copper, P= Paul Epstein. —Ed.

C: You’re in an interesting position in that you’re in a field that on one level is kind of resurgent, but at the same time it seems like there’re record stores going out of business everywhere.

P: We are truly one of the last.

C: —So what’s the deal?

P: What’s the deal with records going away, or with us succeeding?

C: Clearly we’ve got this vinyl resurgence going on for the last couple years…

P:…It’s more than a couple years, we’re a decade into it now.

C: Right. Are the guys going out of business just johnny-come-latelys? That doesn’t seem to be the case to me.

P: I think it’s the model that’s broken—the model of buying new product and reselling it, that being the primary source of your income. If you don’t have the “other things”–and for us the other things are used, a steady stream of used, and the boutique items that we sell which are the toys, the shirts—if it wasn’t for those things, we’d be in the same trouble. It’s what killed Tower, it’s what killed Virgin,it’s what killed all of them. The basic model of buying and selling new product with that markup that they allow is unsustainable. I recognized this probably within the first decade of my career and made sure that a very healthy percentage of what we do is used [records] because that’s where the money is. That’s where the business is, and that’s why we’re still here,to be honest.—and selection. We have a large selection.

C: There are parallels to bookstores, of course…

P: Totally.

C: …in that bookstores have had their margins pretty much destroyed by Amazon and the ones that survive have better service, they’re NOT going to have a bigger selection, they’re just going to have a bigger selection you can LOOK at…

P: Correct. My mantra early on was “service, selection, and ambience”, and those are the three things we’ve worked on. That model, though, is the killer. There was a documentary recently on Tower…but it reminded me so clearly… A lot of people got all dewy about it, but I was like, “this is nauseating!”

This reminds me so much of why this industry went wrong. The idea that you are going to be able to—that a percentage of your income should come from soaking the industry for ill-gotten promotional [fees]…

C: Payola.

P: Yep, it was essentially payola. It was like, “how much money will you give me if I let you put something up in this window?” Okay, fine, but when your entire model becomes that, to the exclusion of actually selling music? That’s a big problem….

Early on we got on direct with the labels, but I immediately recognized—I kept a very healthy skepticism about being too close to the labels and letting them get a foothold in my store and doing what they said, and it has served me well.

C: I’m sure it has. I think any area where there’s an intersection of art and commerce is problematic…

P: Then ART better FUCKING WIN! [laughs]  Art had better win, or you’ve got no reason to be in business.

C: You started out as a teacher, did you not?

P: Correct. My wife and I were both teachers.

C: –And you just happened to see this place that was being foreclosed-upon?

P: Yep. I was a part-owner of another record store in Boulder before that, called Trade-a-Tape, but I got out of that and was teaching full-time, as was my wife. We were walking around one night in the Washington Park area [of Denver] and I said, “oh, gee, if I was ever going to have another record store,it would be like this one we’re coming up to.”

We get up there, and there’s a sign in the window: SEIZED: Tax Auction…[scheduled] on our first day of spring break! Serendipity, right? [laughs]

C: More than a coincidence.

In my last column, I wrote about how a SDM might be used to faithfully reconstruct an incoming signal, even if its output is constrained to an apparently hopelessly reduced bit depth.  We can do this if we can ensure that the Signal Transfer Function (STF) and Noise Transfer Function (NTF) have appropriate characteristics.  Today I will expand on how we can make that work.  I had originally planned to conclude with some personal remarks on the DSD-vs-PCM debate, but I will leave those for a complete post in the next issue.

We want the NTF and STF to be frequency dependent, but the Sigma stage I described is clearly not frequency dependent, and neither is the Delta stage, so it’s not at all apparent how that can come to pass.  Therefore we need to introduce some frequency dependence into the picture.  The way we do that is to augment the Sigma stage with a filter called the “Loop Filter”.  This is usually a low-pass filter, and its incorporation means that the NTF and STF now become frequency dependent.  If the “Transfer Function” of the Loop Filter (a deeply technical way of expressing its frequency response) is H(z), then the frequency response of the STF will be also given by H(z), and that of the NTF will be given by 1- H(z).  This is the basis of the simple Linear Model of SDM design.

Don’t worry if none of that means anything to you, because addressing these design issues takes us right to the bleeding edge of today’s digital audio technology.  The best approach to understanding the design of an SDM remains this Linear Model, where we treat the Quantization error introduced at the Quantizer stage as a noise source.  However, any model’s accuracy is – self-evidently – limited by its “limiting assumptions”.  In this case the limiting assumption is that the Quantization error can be adequately represented by a noise source.  According to the Linear Model, relatively simple SDMs should exhibit stunningly good performance, where in reality they do not.  In fact they fall very substantially short of the mark.  Clearly, a noise source is not as ideal a substitute for the Quantization error as we had hoped.  Unfortunately, though, we don’t yet have a better candidate available.

In the absence of a good guiding model, SDM designers stick to an empirical methodology based on trial and error.  The most successful approach is based on increasing the “order” of the modulator.  The simple SDM I described last time has a single Sigma stage, and is called a “first order” SDM.  If we simply add a second Sigma stage we get a “second order” SDM.  We can add as many Sigma stages as we like, and however many we add, that’s the “order” of the SDM.  The higher the “order” of the SDM, the better its performance ought to be.  I make that sound so much easier than it actually is, particularly when it comes to the task of fine-tuning the SDM’s NTF performance.

In practice, real-world SDM designs run into problems.  Lots of them.  First of these is overloads.  If the signal fed into the Quantizer overloads the Quantizer then the SDM will go unstable.  In effect, we are forcing the Quantizer into hard clipping.  In a SDM, because of the feedback, the result of such an overload will reverberate within the output of the SDM for a very considerable time.  Overloads become a progressively higher problem as the “order” of the SDM is increased, and ultimately impose an upper limit on the “order” of practical SDMs.

A second problem is that high order digital filters can themselves be unstable, not so much because of any inherent instability, but because of truncation and other precision errors in the processing and execution of the filter.  Proper filter design tools can identify and optimize for these errors, but can rarely make them go away entirely.  Unstable filters can cause all sorts of problems in SDMs, from the addition of noise and distortion to total malfunction.

A third problem is that SDMs are found to have any number of unexpected error or fault loops in which they can find themselves trapped, which are not yet adequately explained or predicted by any theoretical treatment.  These include phenomena known as “limit cycles”, “birdies”, “idle tones” and others.  They can be frustratingly difficult to detect – sometimes even to describe – let alone to design around.

Real-world high performance SDMs for DSD applications are typically between 5th and 10th order.  Below 5th order the performance is inadequate, and above 10th order they are rarely sufficiently stable.  The professional audio product “Weiss Saracon”, for example, offers a choice of SDM structures, having orders 6, 8, and 10.  Each SDM structure produces a DSD output file with subtly different sonic signatures, differences which many well-tuned audiophile ears can reliably detect.  And as with religion, the fact that there are several of them from which to choose is not sufficient to guarantee that one of them is correct!

These and other limitations mean that the best SDMs deliver a dynamic range of about ~120dB – better than the ~98dB of 16–bit PCM, but less than the ~146dB capacity of 24–bit PCM.  Distortion is also an issue, albeit usually a minor one.  Overall, the noise and distortion performance of the very best SDMs is more or less equivalent to those of the very best analog circuits currently used in preamplifiers and amplifiers.  In principle we ought to be able to achieve better than that, and in future we very well might, but right now you could argue that what we are getting is as good as we need.

Interestingly enough, one of those limitations can be readily made to go away.  The problem of overloads can be largely eliminated by using a multi-bit Quantizer.  This approach is used in almost all commercial ADCs which use an analog SDM in the input stage, configured to provide a 3–bit to 5–bit intermediate result.  This intermediate result is then converted in the digital domain to the desired output format, whether PCM or DSD.  Likewise, almost all commercial DACs employ a digital SDM in the input stage, configured to provide a 3–bit to 5–bit intermediate result which is then converted to analog using a simple R–2R ladder.  SDMs are therefore deeply involved at both ends of the PCM audio chain, though they mostly don’t use the 1–bit bit depth of DSD (or, for that matter, its 2.8MHz sample rate).  When you listen to PCM, you cannot escape the fact that you are listening to SDMs.

The key takeaway from the study of SDMs is that while their performance can indeed be extremely good, the current state-of-the-art does not permit us to design that performance on an a priori basis to a high degree of accuracy.  Instead, SDMs must be evaluated phenomenologically.  In other words we must carefully measure their characteristics – linearity, distortion, noise, dynamic range, etc.  In this regard, SDMs are very much like analog electronic devices such as amplifiers.  We can bring a lot of design intelligence to bear, but at the end of the day those designs cannot tell us all we need to know about their performance; the skill – and golden ears – of the designer tend to become the critical differentiating factors.
The conclusion of Richard’s examination of Sigma-Delta Modulators will appear in Copper #17–-Ed.

In Copper #7, I wrote about the passing of Richard Beers, the promoter of THE Show-Newport. In #8, I asked, “how many shows are too many?”

Consider this column the confluence of those two pieces.

The Newport show this year was managed by a tiny, capable, deceptively-tough young woman named Marine Presson. Given her first name, I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that she’s tough.

Marine parted company with Newport after this year’s show. Recently, it came to light that Newport ain’t gonna be Newport, anymore. By that, I mean that the show is going to be relocated—to Anaheim?— and moved to a slot later in the year. http://theshownewport.com/#more-info

Truth be told, Newport never was Newport: it was located in scenic Irvine (called “the most boring town in SoCal” by my son Will, who went to school in LA). Richard thought that “Newport Beach” sounded more appealing than “Irvine”, and who can dispute that? Seriously: the town sounds as though it was named after an elderly accountant, and the UC Irvine teams are the ANTEATERS, for goodness’ sake.

But I digress.

Given the work that my friend Richard put into the Newport show, and all the memories I have of past shows, the movement of THE Show causes a twinge or two. Moving the show so that it’s two weeks after CEDIA and two weeks before RMAF has created concerns for exhibitors and attendees alike. Friends in the biz have been, shall we say, forthright in expressing their dismay and disapproval. As we’re a (cough) family publication, I won’t use the adjectives, but the word “insane” popped up frequently.

Meanwhile—you knew there was gonna be a “meanwhile”, right?— a collective  called the Orion Group was not thrilled by the news of THE Show’s migration. In fairly short order, Ms. Presson was hired, a hotel was landed, and the time was set for the first week in June—Newport show time, in other words. http://www.laaudioshow.com/

The hotel chosen, the Sheraton Gateway LAX, is familiar to audio old-timers as Stereophile shows were held there back at the dawn of time. It’s known to have largish rooms with decent acoustics, just the thing for an audio show. It’s also apparently no longer on direct flight-paths, and recently underwent a $30M renovation. http://www.sheratonlax.com/

Just as important as the date and venue, the indefatigable Bob Levi and the gazillion-member LA & Orange County Audio Society (LAOCAS) are supporting the LA Audio Show—and if Bob and crew are with them, who can be against them?

I wish both shows luck, but it looks as though the LA Audio Show is in a better position to be the “new Newport”. Times are tough, and I can’t imagine that the scheduling of THE Show will win friends in the industry.

That’s show biz!

We have a hit. We’ve been hit. Both are true.

Everybody wants a hit record; everybody. It’s money, it’s acknowledgment, and it means more work, all those things.

The  Tuesday Night Music Club record sold about 12,000,000 copies worldwide. It made gobs and gobs of money. A&M, having wasted nearly $500,000 on Ms. Crow so far, were very reluctant to spend any more, and only gave up about $200,000 for the record we did. But it was justified. I say we believed our bullshit. Some of us truly felt that if A&M didn’t blow it in their marketing, that the album had at least 5 hits on the record.  And it looked like they were blowing it, at first — things started to go wrong very quickly. But nothing was going to stand in its, and their, way.

To begin with: three of us, — myself, Bill and Kevin — were booked to appear in the video for “Run, Baby, Run”. A wardrobe stylist called on a Tuesday and asked if I was comfortable in jeans and T-shirts. “Do you know any musicians?” I asked her.  When we went to meet the director the following day, he didn’t bother coming into the room; he just sent someone to take our pictures. We were told to leave Friday available. Afterwards, we went to meet Brian at a bar at the foot of my hill, and Bill asked, “Did that whole thing smell funny? They don’t put people who look like us in videos.”

Sure enough, the next afternoon, Thursday, we were told we wouldn’t be needed. This director, whoever he was, felt sure that the people who played that song must look just like the Allman Brothers on the cover of Live at Fillmore East. And he was hedging his chances by having actors booked to fake it. Wigs and costume were pulled from one of the wardrobe houses on Tuesday, just to make sure they could look the part. How do I know? Because my wife is a wardrobe stylist and she was in the place that the items were pulled from on Tuesday. (This was the first hint I had of the massive disrespect that was on the way; a sort of divide and conquer strategy.) And although all this was on the “artists’” dime, MTV refused to play the results.

The video “came out”, so to speak, and the album sales went nowhere. Meantime, I found out, about 6 weeks after it happened, that Sheryl called Bill and her manager to a meeting, fired the manager who had gotten her to this point, and yelled at Bill –– the day after the album was turned in to A&M. She reportedly said of the album, “This is all I have.”

I called Sheryl to ask what was going on, and she said, “Dan, you and I are too good friends to talk about this.” That was the last time I spoke to her with any substance. Since my allegiance was first to Bill and the album and second to my friend Sheryl, I suppose the conversation gave me cognitive dissonance.

A number of years later, an author named Richard Buskin came to interview me about the record and my perspective on Sheryl for a book he was writing[1]. I had learned to not talk to the press after being severely misquoted in the San Francisco Chronicle (in fact, the “quote” attributed to me was nothing I had said, it was a pure invention). But since Bill was willing to talk to the guy, I would too, and I’m glad I did — we became friends. Richard heard what Sheryl said to me that day very differently; maybe he had a perspective that’s taken me years to get. He suggested that it was her way of avoiding what would have been highly uncomfortable for both of us.

I was to find out in the coming months and years— well, given my talk with David Baerwald a couple weeks ago, I’m still finding out — about the, machinations, I guess we should call them, that Sheryl was put through to get those performances out of her on the album. And in hindsight, in context, once I knew everything that had been done, those two statements, to Bill at that meeting and to me when I called her, make some kind of sense.

I took the role of Sheryl’s defender in the process of making the record, which is an absurd position to be in, or to even find necessary – but I felt that it WAS necessary: to protect her from Baerwald’s aggression, and Bill’s seeming lack of concern regarding that. What can I say? It’s how my mother raised me. I wasn’t successful, not entirely, but at least she had an ally, while it lasted.

In hindsight, I had no clue what was going on. Maybe I was intentionally kept in the dark, and maybe I wasn’t. It’s easy to imagine Bill as the guy sitting back pulling strings, but I think he set some things in motion and that was all. The most he could do was record or not record what ensued and then do his best to shape the results. He definitely had a philosophy that “creative tension” gave you better results than otherwise.

A&M’s marketing department got the right ingredients together for the next video, “All I Wanna Do”, and the album began its ascendancy.  Bill’s philosophy was borne out. But we paid a price for our part of it — in how we related to each other, how each of us individually related to Sheryl, and how we related to other artists.

But that’s a tale for another day.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Sheryl-Crow-Fool-This-Game/dp/0823084329

Isaiah Berlin gave us foxes and hedgehogs. Classical Greece offered Apollo and Dionysius. Not to be outdone, Ned Rorem came up with his own slam-dunk binary oppositions, French/German. (Example: cats are French, dogs German. If you must know more, click here.)

This summer I’ve discovered a new pair of binaries. Whereas I am (apparently) a born Decorator, my spouse is an Organizer. She’s spent the last two months tearing the house apart, throwing away tons of stuff from our previous lives while carefully sorting what’s left into uniformly sized cardboard boxes, neatly stacked on our new basement shelves.

Every time I’m sent to Home Depot on an “organizing” errand, I come home not only with shelf dividers and duct tape but also with paint samples: hope springs eternal. My better half has promised me that, once everything is organized, we will indeed choose new, tastefully coordinated interior colors.

But let’s talk about music. Did you know that the entire universe of classical music can also be divided into Organizers and Decorators?

I’ve come across some terrific new recordings of cornerstone repertoire by Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven—prime Organizers one and all. Rachel Podger has released a complete Art of Fugue, performed one-on-a-part by her ensemble Brecon Baroque (Channel Classics CCS SA 38316). This is cause for rejoicing. First, her Art is available as a multichannel SACD, proof that Sacks et Cie. haven’t totally abandoned physical hi-res.

Second, it gives us one more chance to hear, understand, and enjoy some of the most skillfully organized music Bach ever wrote. These are fugues, contrapuntal works based on a single theme—unless, of course, they’re double fugues or triple fugues, etc., which can be based on two or three themes or counter-themes. Bach wrote them out without specifying instrumentation. You can play them on a solo keyboard or on any suitable combination of instruments. In other words, they can be Decorated in various ways, but not re-Organized. Design—expressed through pitch and rhythm—comes first, timbre second.

Contrapunctus 1 sets forth the essential fugue subject in as simple a manner (i.e., rectus) possible. One voice begins, others enter in imitation:

Eventually things get more complicated. Here’s a bit of Contrapunctus 7, in which the subject, still rectus, is decorated with added scale notes in the first entry, then decorated and inverted (melodically, up becomes down, etc.) in the second and third entries, then both inverted and augmented (played more slowly) in the fourth, lowest-sounding entry (0’14”).

You’ll soon hear many more alterations and decorations of the theme. That makes Bach’s Art not only phenomenally well organized but also pleasantly varied. Here’s some of the lively two-voice Canon alla Ottava:

Brecon Baroque’s performances are sensitive and intelligent; the recording glistens and whispers just when it should. John Butt’s liner notes are useful too, although he discusses the music in its order of appearance in the 1751 collection, whereas Podger has reorganized the movements to create a better listening sequence. Well, The Art of Fugue was never meant to be played straight through in any order. That’s still no excuse for making it so difficult to find and read notes on individual movements as one is listening.

Moving right along: Haydn wrote fugues too, and he helped invent modern sonata form, so he definitely rates as an Organizer. What’s nice about the newest Haydn series is that organizzatore principale Giovanni Antonini has reorganized its content along thematic lines rather than chronologically. That, and the supercharged performances by Antonini’s period group Il Giardino Armonico, makes this series and its individual sets very attractive. Vol. 3 (Alpha ALPHA672) uses the text of Haydn’s last solo vocal work, “Solo e pensoso,” as a point of departure. Antonini writes,

The textual incipit of the [Haydn] aria “Solo e pensoso” . . . has sent me back again to Haydn’s assertion . . . that his isolated situation [at the Esterházy court] had prompted him to be original in his music. . . . But it is above all the melancholic character found in the slow movements of the symphonies recorded here that somehow links them with the spirit of Petrarch’s sonnet. In all of them, the violins are directed to be played with mutes, a technical means of creating a stifled sound that evokes an introspective psychological situation.

We get Symphonies No. 42, 62, and 4, “Solo e pensoso,” and the overture to L’isola disabitata, an opera with a Robinson Crusoe plot. It all works to form an integrated program. Christian Moritz-Bauer’s booklet essay on “Haydn the Solitary” further ties the room together, as do the gorgeous photos.

And now how about some re-organized Schumann and Beethoven? You’ll hear the Schumann Cello Concerto and Beethoven’s Violin Sonata, “Kreutzer,” with fresh ears if you get Re: Imagined Schumann & Beethoven from Zuill Bailey and the Ying Quartet (Sono Luminus DSL-92204). Is it sacrilege to admit that I enjoyed their “Kreutzer”—originally for violin and piano and here transcribed, like the Schumann, for cello and string quartet—more than I’ve ever enjoyed the original? But the Schumann also gains in intimacy and warmth of expression:

Again, pitches and rhythms create structure, so they matter most. Like Bach’s Art, this music thrives on being re-decorated, because it’s organized.

And now let us now praise some famous Decorators. Who comes to mind? Ravel! His notorious Boléro is little more than 17 minutes’ worth of color changes, i.e., decoration, applied to a single melody repeated over an unchanging rhythm.

Ravel’s luscious Tzigane is also mainly decorative. A snapshot taken in a smoky gypsy tavern, its extended initial “improvisation” pointedly lacks all organization. Listen to the moment—nearly halfway through the piece—where the noodling solo violinist is finally joined by the orchestra:

Arabella Steinbacher is the gypsy here. It would be wrong to call her new album, Fantasies, Rhapsodies & Daydreams (Pentatone PTC5186536) a collection of encores or bon-bons. Even though they mostly emphasize color and spontaneity over structural rigor, these are substantial short works. The tonal beauty of Steinbacher’s playing, coupled with Pentatone’s customary engineering quality, should make this album irresistable even to Organizers.

And so to Liszt. Can a composer ever follow his decorative impulse to such a degree that he completely transforms its effect? Kirill Gerstein’s new recording of the Transcendental Études (Myrios MYR019) presents just such a case. Whereas filigree in Chopin adds mere grace, the “filigree” in these blockbuster études can completely overwhelm us (for samples, click on the catalog number above). We have been pushed into The Sublime. With perhaps the most difficult piano music ever produced by a Romantic, Liszt proved once and for all that nothing succeeds like excess. Extreme Decorating became a potent organizing force almost by itself.

I’ll have more to say about Liszt later this year. For now, his Études powerfully demonstrate the limitations of all binaries.