Copper

150 Musical Offerings

To celebrate the 150th issue of Copper I’m offering a list of 150 recommended recordings, most with hyperlinks to YouTube for instant listening gratification. Half of the entries are CDs and LPs I’ve...

The Two San Jose Festivals, 1969

It turns out that there were two festivals in San Jose, California on Memorial Day weekend in 1969. They both happened within one mile of each other. Neither festival was...

Deep Purple: Making Vibrant Music in 2021

Deep Purple is a band with very little left to prove. With more than 100 million records sold and a history that spans over fifty years, this is a band...

Where Were You When The Lights Went Out?

You probably wished you were hanging out with me…read on… Recently, as I was walking through an antique store in Geneva, New York, I came upon a box of old...

Bob Dylan – 1970 50th Anniversary Collection

In 1969, Beacon Books released a collection of essays called Rock and Roll Will Stand, edited by Greil Marcus. It’s mostly interesting or not scribblings by Marcus, America’s unmatched culture critic on...

John Mayall Part Two – The Turning Point

As mentioned in a previous column (Issue 130), John Mayall was traveling back and forth between England and America, where he became enamored with the Los Angeles lifestyle. In 1969 he...

The Big Move, Part Two

In Part One (Issue 131), J.I. Agnew wrote about the difficulties of moving an entire recording and mastering facility, complete with machine shop, grand piano, literal tons of equipment and...

Cable Design and the Speed of Sound, Part Three

In Part One of this series (Issue 130), Galen Gareis of ICONOCLAST cables and Belden Inc. began an extensive exploration into a critical but not often discussed aspect of cable...

Jorma Kaukonen: Playing Fur Peace

Jorma Kaukonen has been wowing live audiences for decades with his remarkable guitar skills and his unique take on American roots music, blues, Americana, and of course rock and roll....

Nicky Hopkins: An Unsung Musical Hero

Nicky Hopkins is hardly an unknown entity in the world of rock music. A stellar piano/keyboard player, even the most modest rock fan is likely familiar with his work. Think...

Three Excellent New Albums By Bands That Had Fl...

Mogwai – As The Love Continues Mogwai is a Scottish band that formed in 1995 in Glasgow; founding members Stuart Braithwaite and Dominic Aitchison first toyed with forming a band a few...

Tale of the Tape

John Seetoo saw this TEAC 4300 tape deck on a Brooklyn street corner, with a note that says, "COVID-19-free – needs a tune up." One person's trash is indeed another...

High-Performance Driver

The last ray of the setting sun catches Jimmie Johnson setting a new lap record during qualifying as he enters Turn #1 at nearly 185 mph. Phoenix International Raceway, Avondale,...

Talking With Andrew Hoffman of Audiophile Archi...

Audiophile Archive and Grading Services (AAGS) is a vinyl record-grading and archiving company. They clean, inspect and grade records, certify their grading and record a high-resolution digital audio backup, among other...

Issue 133

The DMM Dubplate, Vol. 1 and the Art of Pushing...

Parts One, Two and Three of this series appeared in Issue 147, Issue 148 and Issue 149. In listening to the direct-metal-mastered Stockfisch Records DMM Dubplate, Vol. 1, I almost couldn’t believe that the source was...

Dr. Patrick Gleeson: The Interview

Musician, Engineer, Producer, Professor of 18th Century English Literature?! You may not be familiar with the name Patrick Gleeson, but he has quite a résumé. He ditched a career as a college...

The Sound of Silence

A Conversation With Mark O’Brien of Rogue Audio

Rogue Audio manufactures a wide range of tube, solid-state and hybrid audio components including integrated amplifiers, preamplifiers, power amps, phono stages and headphone amps. Located in Brodheadsville, Pennsylvania, the company states...

Superposition: Getting Speaker Placement Right

In Issue 130, Russ noted that he’s been reappraising his audio system and went over some basic ideas about speaker setup. The series continues here. When placing your speakers in any given...

Analog vs. Digital: An Unending Debate

One of the most controversial topics in the audiophile universe is the digital versus analog debate. After the introduction of the compact disc in the early 1980s, the sales of...

Will A Perfect Audio System Ever Exist?

As a hard-core audiophile, I’ve spent the better part of my life working on improving my audio systems. I’ll admit – mostly because of selfishness. I want to hear music...

Cable Design and the Speed of Sound, Part Two

In Part One of this series (Issue 130), Galen Gareis of ICONOCLAST cables and Belden Inc. began an extensive exploration into a critical but not often discussed aspect of cable design: the velocity of propagation (Vp)...

Talking With Nason Tackett of Hear Technologies

When it comes to comparing audio equipment like speakers or headphones, it is difficult to avoid biased opinions from manufacturers and designers, since it is inevitable that each one has...

Chick Corea Returns to Forever

Armando Anthony Corea, known to the world as “Chick,” passed to the other side on February 9. We’ve been losing music icons in the last few years because of an...

An Overview of Audiophile Playback Software, Pa...

It’s a safe bet that many Copper readers are interested in getting involved with higher-quality audio streaming services and digital music servers if they’re not using them already. In this...

Is There a Thinking Cap?

I wonder if artificial intelligence is the natural result of human evolution. It’s not a unique thought; science fiction author John W. Campbell’s short story “The Last Evolution” looked at...

The Big Move, Part One

Ten years ago, I moved to a new building carrying a couple of truckloads of equipment, with which I was planning on building up a mastering studio, an electronics workshop...

A Time in Peter Tosh’s Jamaica

In speaking with Eppy, he mentioned that he was promoting a concert in Jamaica with the headliner Peter Tosh. A bunch of disc jockeys from Long Island’s FM station WBAI...

Islands In the Stream

In past articles I have referenced the differences between how my audio system sounds vs. the way my friend Ira’s sounds. My system is analog-based but also has great CD/SACD...

Max Roach: Bebop Pioneer

Born in North Carolina swamp country in either 1924 or 1925 (he wasn’t sure himself) and raised in Brooklyn, Max Roach listened to his mother sing gospel music and was...

Mary Chapin Carpenter: Let Her Into Your Heart

Winning five Grammy Awards is impressive enough, but when four of them are wins in consecutive years for Best Female Country Music Performance, that is a unique achievement. Mary Chapin...

Speaker Misplacement

In its day the Teac A-3340S was the machine for musicians recording at home or making demos. We hope the photo shoot didn't take too long...that thing is heavy! From...

Rave New World

Taken at the Electric Zoo festival, Randall's Island, New York, 2017. By Michael Vazquez @musicfestivalstreetphotography, copyright 2021. Canon EOS-1D X Mark II camera with Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS...

Double Duty

New Releases: One Disappointing, One Overproduc...

Steven Wilson – The Future Bites When Steven Wilson released his EP The B-Sides Collection late last year ahead of this new LP, The Future Bites, for me it was easily among the best...

Passions

Last month I made a single New Year’s resolution: to devote space in Copper to Bach’s two monumental Passion settings. These works are central masterpieces in Western art music, as important in...

Green River

“Take me back down where cool water flows…” A view of the Green River from the Cart Creek Bridge, located in the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area in northeastern Utah. Sony...

Lost in Translation

Pushbutton Paradise

Hi-Fi tone for $99.95, complete with colored vinyl! That’s about $970 in today’s dollars. Motorola ad, 1953.   An insanely rare Quarter Horse amplifier. Built from kit plans originally published...

Koss: the Granddaddy of Audiophile Headphones

As listening to music on headphones and earbuds has become ubiquitous, it is interesting to note that Koss Corporation (NASDAQ: KOSS) the company that invented and commercialized consumer stereo headphones in 1958,...

J.C. Bach: Not His Dad’s Baroque Music

In the music of Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782), the uncluttered elegance of the pre-classical style meets with a mind trained in the most elaborate and complex Baroque counterpoint. It’s an...

John Mayall: British Blues Pioneer

Let’s get the silly stuff out of the way first. John Mayall was born in 1933 near Manchester, England to parents of dubious distinction. His dad was a dedicated boozer...

The Story of a Vintage Piano, Part the Second

In Part One, J.I. Agnew began his search for the perfect piano for recording. He noted that finding a piano that would sound as much like real life in recordings was...

Third Time's the Charm

EveAnna Dauray Manley of Manley Labs, Part Two

In Part One (Issue 129), EveAnna talked about her early musical influences and career, the origin of Manley Laboratories and Vacuum Tube Logic (VTL), and she how she came to...

Cable Design and the Speed of Sound, Part One

As most audiophiles and readers of this magazine are aware, the subject of audio cables can be fraught with opinions, information, misinformation, heated discussions on forums and more. From time...

Stream-O-Nomics: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Aerosmith and their lead singer Steven Tyler sang for years about “dream(ing) until your dreams come true.” Quite prophetic, for sure, as for musical artists, success requires being a dreamer...