Copper


Four Solid Hits!

Issue 116TO BE DETERMINED

Sophia Portanet – Freier Geist Sofia Portanet is of Spanish and German descent, but she grew up in Paris, and she sings with perfect ease in both French and German. Although, the...

Set It Off

Issue 116AUDIO ANTHROPOLOGY

I wonder how many people blew the speaker. Thanks to our Ray Chelstowski for submitting this. Now that's a listening chair! From Audio, October 1962. I think I saw this...

Comfort and Adventure

Issue 116TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

Good: If I ever start making playlists again, or decide to re-organize my record collection, I could divide everything into just two piles, Comfort and Adventure. Lately I’ve been stuck...

Issue 116

Issue 116Opening Salvo

“Baby, there’s only two more days till tomorrow.” That’s from the Gary Wilson song, “I Wanna Take You On A Sea Cruise.” Gary, an outsider music legend, expresses what many of us...

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How Products Are Made, Part One: Initiation

Issue 115DEEP DIVE

We audio people often discuss products of all sorts, whether audio components, music media, accessories and so on, but do we really know much about how these are made and...

Nektar: Remember the Future

Issue 115TRUE-LIFE ROCK TALES

Richard Halem from Creative Management Associates calls and asks me for help. He has a group flying into JFK tomorrow and he wants me to escort them and their equipment...

After the Fire

Issue 115PARTING SHOT

Taken on the Mendocino coast of California, March 2008 with a Canon PowerShot A710 IS. This is an unprocessed color shot, not black and white.

Confessions of a Setup Man, Part Seven: You Can...

Issue 115FRANKLY SPEAKING

  When I was a few years out of college I had put together a pretty respectable stereo system, in large part thanks to the advice of my friend and The...

John Grado of Grado Labs, Part One

Issue 115THE COPPER INTERVIEW

Grado Labs was Founded in 1953 by Joseph Grado and has become synonymous with phonograph cartridge excellence and also, over the last 30 years, in the headphone market.  John Grado...

Mozart's Tito and Idomeneo

Issue 115TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

Earlier this month I watched the Met’s free streaming presentation of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito; these nightly broadcasts are a generous, welcome gift to a pandemic-bound world. Yet as I...

The Earth's Heartbeat: Native American Music

Issue 115FEATURED

All plants are our brothers and sisters,they talk to us and if we listen, we can hear them.If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come. – Arapaho nation literature[1]...

The Ordinary Beauty of Elbow, Part Two

AND OTHER ILLNESSESAUDIOIssue 115MUSIC

I had thought that the intervening time between Part One and Part Two of these pieces on the great Manchester band, Elbow, would bring about greater familiarity with their recent works, but...

Jelly Roll Morton: Early Master of Piano Jazz

Issue 115TRADING EIGHTS

If you love the up-tempo, jangly blues and stride piano of Fats Waller and Fletcher Henderson, don’t forget to give thanks to Jelly Roll Morton, who practically invented that sound....

Pat Benatar: Rock is Her Battlefield

Issue 115OFF THE CHARTS

Brooklyn-born Patricia Andrzejewski wanted to be an opera singer. Instead, she ended up as one of the most successful female rock stars of all time. She’d started singing lessons as...

Dion: Blues With Friends

Issue 114WAYNE'S WORDS

The first album I ever bought with my own money was Presenting Dion and the Belmonts (Laurie LLP 1002). In faded red ink from a rubber stamp, you can barely make out...

More Time with War: Lasting Impact

Issue 114TRUE-LIFE ROCK TALES

I am watching Midnight Blue on leased-access cable channel J. It is Saturday morning just past midnight and I am enjoying a shot of tequila in my apartment on 3rd Avenue in the...

They're Back!

Issue 114Opening Salvo

We are thrilled to announce the return of Patti, Louie and Nipper! While we’ve been digging the artistic covers over the last several issues, readers have missed Copper’s mascots (named...

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A Love Supreme

Issue 114PARTING SHOT

Members of the San Diego Music and Audio Guild visit a fellow member in Encinitas for music and scotch. The Marten Coltrane Supreme 2 speakers from Sweden stand almost 6...

Songs of Praise from Unlikely Artists, Part Three

Issue 114FEATURED

In Part One and Part Two of this series (Issues 112 and 113), I noted that throughout the history of American music, the influence of the Christian church has been...

The Strokes: Indie Rock from The Big Apple

Issue 114OFF THE CHARTS

Plenty of major groups have made their name in New York City, but not many are actually made up of New Yorkers. Four of The Strokes’ five members grew up...

Elusive Butterfly

Issue 114AUDIO ANTHROPOLOGY

That butterfly isn't giving up the sweet spot. From Audio, August 1959. Before smartphones, there were smart tape recorders. From Audio, August 1964. And the man from downstairs was right!...

A Stereo Journey

Issue 114EUREKA MOMENTS

I was a kid about seven when I refused to speak. A neighbor was the sales manager for RCA in Philly and as such, would get some of the earliest...

Mendelssohn Piano and Violin Concertos

Issue 114SOMETHING OLD / SOMETHING NEW

Felix Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847) was one of the great pianists and piano-music composers of his day. His parents sent him to first-rate music teachers in Berlin and Paris who...

Leland Sklar: The Bearded One

Issue 114MUSIC TO MY EARS

In the 1970s I was in a record shop in Hartford, Connecticut. I was a gigging (read, broke) musician. The great thing about record shops was you could go in,...

How Not To Fix Things (Especially Things That T...

Issue 114REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE

There are few things more frustrating than having trusted an expert to fix something, only to have it returned more broken than it was to begin with! The wrong choice...

Me and the Dead: The Rocky Road To Unlimited De...

Issue 114TWISTED SYSTEMS

My first book, Twisted Business will be published in the first quarter of 2021 through RosettaBooks. It is a business book/memoir. In it I go into detail about my life and the...

Tales of an Audio Forum Administrator, Part Four

Issue 114DEEP DIVE

The final installment in Rudy’s behind-the-scenes series on what it’s like to be an audio forum administrator…   “Why did you delete my post?” “Insulted me in this post.” “You...

Confessions of a Setup Man, Part Six: Sinister ...

Issue 114FRANKLY SPEAKING

What Goes Up, Must Come Down When I worked at The Absolute Sound as Harry Pearson’s setup man he had a strict rule: no shoes could be worn in his house. I...

Women Composers of Early Music

Issue 114FEATURED

If you ask people to name a famous classical music composer they’ll probably say Bach, Beethoven, Brahms or Mozart – all men. If you ask people to name a famous...

Three Great Records and a "Good" One

Issue 114TO BE DETERMINED

Norah Jones – Pick Me Up Off the Floor Norah Jones surprised a lot of people when she first burst onto the scene in 2002, sweeping most of the Grammy awards with...

Why Collect?

Issue 114TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

Part 1: Adventures in Time Travel Last week I unboxed a new vinyl-cleaning machine, plugged it in, flipped the on/off switches a few times. I knew the basics of LP...

Basic Hi-Fi-Manship

Issue 115AUDIO ANTHROPOLOGY

Who needed audio forums back then, with this kind of advice? And who else thinks this looks like the work of Don Martin, Mad’s Maddest Artist? From Audio, May 1954. You can’t go wrong...

The Rolling Stones in High(ish) Resolution

Issue 115TO BE DETERMINED

I’m focusing on several “high resolution” releases by the Rolling Stones from different periods of the band  that have just been made available for streaming playback on Qobuz and Tidal....

Italian Progressive Rock, Part Four

Issue 115FEATURED

In this final installment, I’ll introduce you to three more bands. Part one in this series focused on Premiata Forneria Marconi (“Award-Winning Marconi Bakery”), or PFM, the most well-known of the Italian rock...

Are 180-Gram Vinyl Records Really Better?

Issue 115REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE

Disk records have been around for a while, long before they reached their vinyl form. Since then, vinyl records have been available in different sizes and profiles. During the mass-manufacturing...

One Man’s McIntosh Mission

Issue 115EUREKA MOMENTS

My first stereo wasn’t as impressive as the effort it took to sell my parents on why buying it was such a good idea. I had received enough money in...

You Can’t Think of Everything

Issue 115Opening Salvo

Sometimes even the most perceptive of us can have a blind spot or a complete brain freeze. I’ve been editing Copper for more than eight months and hadn’t realized that, unlike every...

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Introducing Octave Records: Audiophile Sound, B...

Issue 113FRANKLY SPEAKING

Hope you don’t mind if I put on my proud-family-member hat here, to announce that PS Audio has just launched a new record label, Octave Records. As you might expect, Octave...

Vinyl and Absolute Polarity: Q&A, Part Two

Issue 113REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE

In Part One of this dialog between J.I. Agnew and reader/engineer Bob Lehman (Issue 112), they delved into the technical aspects of vinyl record manufacturing and absolute polarity. The dialog continues here....

There She Goes Again

Issue 113PARTING SHOT

Americana artist Bonnie Whitmore.

The Beautiful Ordinariness of Elbow, Part One

Issue 113MUSIC AUDIO AND OTHER ILLNESSES

Throw those windows wideOne day like this a year would set me right. …from “One Day Like This” In ye olden days of 30 years ago, as a writer I...

Peonies en Regalia

Issue 113Opening Salvo

This issue’s cover: Joni Mitchell (1943 –). Riding on the carousel of time along with the rest of us on the merry-go-round. Every year my wife plants peonies in the...

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Tangerine Dream

Issue 113AUDIO ANTHROPOLOGY

We don't know if this produced uncolored sound or not. From the Museum of the Hard to Believe...er, Audio, October 1977. That's one small and two large speakers. Got it?...

Songs of Praise from Unlikely Artists, Part Two

Issue 113FEATURED

In Part One of this series (Issue 112), I noted that throughout the history of American music, the influence of the Christian church has been well documented and apparent. While...

Steve Hoffman – Mastering Legend and Audio Rest...

Issue 113THE COPPER INTERVIEW

If you have listened to any popular music from the last 75 years or so that was remastered for CD, DSD, SACD or limited-edition vinyl, there are very good odds...

And it Feels Just Like...Starting Over

Issue 113TWISTED SYSTEMS

So, as I have written about and stated in numerous articles and interviews, my portal to music was laid down through a 4-inch speaker through a Blaupunkt tabletop radio around...