Copper


AT&T Cleared to Take Over Time Warner; Mixed Ne...

Issue 61INDUSTRY NEWS

While things are momentarily quiet in the audio biz itself, one monumental deal will likely change the landscape of media (including music) and business, forever. Federal District Judge Richard Leon cleared...

Our Annual Summer Edition

Issue 61TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

Sweet summer! Calendar-wise, it’s not quite here, but musically it’s already available, via new recordings of two seasonal favorites. Also on tap: a masterpiece for all seasons, freshened through the...

Hotel Tales

Issue 63MUSIC'AL NOTES

St James Club. I had come to LA on a sales trip. I was new to the business and still trundling door to door with my Revolver Turntable. Los Angeles...

Belmont Park

Issue 61MUSIC'AL NOTES

She was a head taller than everyone else, and moved like a real thoroughbred. If anyone truly belonged at Belmont, it was she. I once owned a racehorse. To be...

Escape

Issue 62MUSIC'AL NOTES

“Line up against that wall” said the Captain to my uncle Fred. “Platoon. Get ready, take aim…” Act One. On one of the numerous attempts to escape Germany in the...

Guitar Influences, Part 5: Mick Ronson

Issue 61TWISTED SYSTEMS

So now you are saying….”So how do you go from all these blues masters to Glam hero Mick Ronson?” Fair enough. As much as the Beatles were the “Big Bang”...

What's a Speaker? And What's a Driver?

Issue 61VINTAGE WHINE

You know how annoying it is when you’re surrounded by a group of surgeons or securities traders or physicists or whatEVer and you realize that their conversation is filled with...

Numerologist’s Delight

Issue 61Opening Salvo

Welcome to Copper #61! Someone, somewhere will undoubtedly be able to extract immense meaning from the numerological confection that is the date of this issue: 6/18/18. That person is not me. I...

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Queen in the '70s

Issue 61OFF THE CHARTS

Now that the first trailers have been released for Bohemian Rhapsody, a biopic about Freddie Mercury and the band Queen, the extraordinary song that the movie was named after is back to selling like...

Restoring a Historic Pipe Organ on a Budget

Issue 61FEATURED

[John Seetoo‘s interview with Kamel Boutros appeared in Copper #60. This article goes into the details of some of Boutros’ work at the historic Calvary Episcopal Church in New York–-Ed.] Calvary Episcopal Church was founded in...

Hollywood Nights

Issue 61HAND PICKED

[And now for something completely different: at the heart of each and every one of Christian’s columns will be audio from his radio show in which he dissects and analyzes...

Counting Butterflies

Issue 63FEATURED

I used to be a moderator of a now-defunct Indian bicycling forum called Bikeszone. BZ, as it was called, was the epicenter of the burgeoning recreational cycling movement in India....

You May See Me Tonight With an Illegal Tweak

Issue 61FEATURED

As I threatened to do in my last column , I wrote a long review on power conditioners and power cords. What I left out of that story though, because I ran out of...

The More Things Change....

Issue 60VINTAGE WHINE

Oh, you think you’re so smart, Mr. 21st Century Hi-Tech Man. You know all there is to know about your fancy-schmancy stereo gear, you’re an expert at marketing it on...

Structure Needs a Firm Foundation

AND OTHER ILLNESSESAUDIOIssue 60MUSIC

I’ve had a BHK Signature preamp for about a week-and-a-half, so it’s on the way towards  breaking in. The first big change came just short of a day. This isn’t...

Summer, Already?

Issue 60Opening Salvo

Welcome to Copper #60! Ye Olde Editor may still be all askew from jet-lag, but life goes on, and half the country is enveloped in a heat wave. I hope you can stay...

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Kamel Boutros

Issue 60THE COPPER INTERVIEW

Cairo-born Kamel Boutros is a modern New York City Renaissance Man. As an internationally acclaimed opera baritone, he has performed baritone roles in multiple seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York...

Guitar Influences, Part 4: Albert King

Issue 60TWISTED SYSTEMS

I woke up a couple of weeks ago and realized that I dreamed that Albert King called me to tell me he was coming over to jam. As Albert died...

Tomás Luis de Victoria

Issue 60SOMETHING OLD / SOMETHING NEW

Tomás Luis de Victoria (c. 1548-1611) is often referred to as “the most famous Spanish composer in Renaissance Rome” or the like. As that epithet suggests, he has been marginalized...

David Wilson: RIP

Issue 60THE AUDIO CYNIC

The first 60 issues of Copper have featured 6 Audio Cynic columns headed “RIP”. One in ten is far too many for my taste; sadly, given the demographics of our industry, I’m afraid that...

Me and Kenny Dalglish

Issue 62QUIBBLES AND BITS

I was born in Glasgow, Scotland.  At age 10 my family moved to Leeds, in England.  Three years later we moved to Leicester … my father and brother still live...

Letter from London

Issue 60TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

New York, May 22. I’ve had some of my favorite musical experiences here, beginning the first time I came forty years ago and popped down to the Village Vanguard on a...

Conversing With Choueiri: Part 2, Going to the ...

Issue 61THE COPPER INTERVIEW

In Part I of my conversation with Professor Edgar Choueiri, he laid out the basis of how we perceive a three-dimensional soundscape, and what the cues were that our ear/brain...

Conversing With Choueiri: Part 1, It's Not Rock...

Issue 60THE COPPER INTERVIEW

High-end audio is not rocket science … but don’t you ever wonder what would happen if a proper rocket scientist were to apply his expertise to the field? I know...

Claudia Schmidt

Issue 60... AND INDIE FOR ALL

It’s been almost 40 years since a brainy, clear-voiced multi-instrumentalist from Michigan released her first collection of folksy yet idiosyncratic songs. Claudia Schmidt’s 14th solo studio album – that number doesn’t...

Dispersion

Issue 61QUIBBLES AND BITS

“Knowledge increases by diffusion, and grows by dispersion” – Daniel J. Boorstin One thing that audiophiles regularly fail to grasp adequately is how a sound wave propagates away from a...

Sonos: Bad News and Less-Bad News

Issue 60INDUSTRY NEWS

Since its founding in 2002, Sonos has stood apart in many ways from other booming California tech companies. For starters, Sonos is headquartered in Santa Barbara— better-known for tourists than tech— and...

Surprise

Issue 66MUSIC'AL NOTES

I had been friendly with Roslyn for quite a few years. She was a stunning brunette with large flashing eyes and a figure that only young women are blessed with....

How I Dealt With My Recent Prostate Cancer Diag...

Issue 66TWISTED SYSTEMS

As you may have surmised, this is a very personal article. It’s about me. It’s also about how I deal with all things i.e. business, personal etc. I took off...

New Editor at Inner Fidelity/AudioStream; Pro-J...

Issue 59INDUSTRY NEWS

Industry News recently reported the sale of Stereophile and its associated magazines and websites. In the wake of the sale, a number of staffing changes occurred, with the departures of longtime Stereophile Music Editor Robert Baird, AudioStream Editor Michael Lavorgna,...

Munich and Everything After

Issue 59Opening Salvo

Welcome to Copper #59! Blame any errors in this issue on jet lag, following the Munich show. We've got a brief photo feature on the show here, and we have a video chock...

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Nagra

Issue 59VINTAGE WHINE

The history of Nagra begins, as is often the case in audio, with the tinkerings of one man. Stefan Kudelski was a Polish emigre’ whose family fled the Nazis and eventually landed...

"The Price is the Product"

Issue 59THE AUDIO CYNIC

Way back in 1999, the late Brian Cheney of VMPS loudspeakers wrote a piece called “The Price is the Product”. I was a little shocked to find it online on Audiophile Audition; frankly, I...

Electric Guest

Issue 59AND INDIE FOR ALL

When I first added Electric Guest to my schedule for this column, the duo was an indie band, and had been since forming in 2011. In the intervening weeks, the two musicians...

Guitar Influences, Part 3: Eric Clapton

Issue 59TWISTED SYSTEMS

As common as it is to read statements from rock n roll musicians that “When I saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, I knew I wanted to be...

Listening, Not Hearing

Issue 59MUSIC AUDIO AND OTHER ILLNESSES

A few days ago, I was lying on my couch, reading a book online from the Los Angeles Public Library (The Holy, by Daniel Quinn). On the hi-fi system played...

Why Messiaen (Still) Matters

Issue 59TOO MUCH TCHAIKOVSKY

This is not a Messiaen Year. It would be the 110th anniversary of his birth, but I haven’t heard of any celebrations coming up. Apparently we pretty much maxed out...

Hoagy Carmichael, Part 2

Issue 59MUSIC TO MY EARS

Back at IU Hoagy was going to class and stopped in at the old Book Nook and sat down at the piano.  He’d been thinking about melody, how there was...

A Tale of Two Shows

Issue 58THE AUDIO CYNIC

It was the best of times… Scrap that. I’ve written about my friend and mentor Richard Beers several times, starting ‘way back in Copper #7. While I despise the lingua franca of biz-speak, it would...

Issue 58

Issue 58Opening Salvo

Welcome to Copper #58! Every May I wonder how the phrase "May Day" became a distress call. Now I know---and it's a disappointingly mundane explanation. Sometimes everyday life is so...everyday. Our friend Rudy Radelic brings...

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Why Doesn't My System Sound Better? Part 2

AND OTHER ILLNESSESAUDIOIssue 58MUSIC

About half a year ago, in Copper #45, I wrote a bit about my system, and the seemingly neurotic doubts it aroused in me. Well, OK — not seemingly. I wouldn’t be...

Rikki Farr, Part 3

Issue 58THE COPPER INTERVIEW

[Copper‘s Dan Schwartz had a lengthy conversation with concert promoter/raconteur Rikki Farr at his office at Riva Audio.  Part 1 appeared in Copper #56; Part 2, in Copper #57. This is the third and final installment of Dan...

SME Buys Garrard; Shure Kills Cartridges; Gibso...

Issue 58INDUSTRY NEWS

SME Limited Acquires the Garrard Audio Brand 1st May 2018 – Steyning, England – SME, the British engineering and specialist Hi-Fi company, has acquired the rights to the Garrard audio brand from...