On Music
GOODMAN, JOHN
ON MUSIC By John Goodman Sound and Spiel at the Hi-Fi Show Three years ago I vowed I had attended my last High Fidelity Show, having found it mostly a bore and an imposition on my aural good...
...Attendance at them was fair??after all, most people still came to ogle that $600 Marantz fm tuner or talk specs about the new ar amplifier— and the Institute did bring together some distinguished panelists...
...There was, surprisingly, not too much talk at this show about integrated circuits or video tape recording??subjects that have occupied hi-fi fans of late??but there seemed to be lots of interest in the new electronic crossover networks...
...The device, developed and touted particularly by Sony and CM...
...So, while some of the speakers and manufacturers' exhibits were worthwhile, many of the individual efforts suffered from the same kind of unimaginative presentation we have seen in previous years...
...This sort of agitated surrounding does wonders for the salesman's temperament...
...Though the show's "Decorating with Sound" theme looked like an obvious ploy to draw the women, it was in fact more relevant to this central issue than a good deal of the vapid talk in the symposia, where the tendency was to concentrate on the technical or anecdotal...
...One of the trends is the recent proliferation of budget-priced disc recordings, so far chiefly confined to classical music...
...Um, you're selling your new stereo receiver at a pretty low price...
...you can raise the volume to concert hall level...
...These discussions were concerned with component equipment, design and decor, and the problems of recording...
...For the first time," they say, "scientifically designed headphone drivers function together with the human ear as a system to produce sound equaled only by the most expensive studio loudspeaker systems...
...The layout of the exhibits did not change, which is to say that one wandered through two floors and over 100 displays of equipment set up in rooms or suites taken by the manufacturers...
...This year, drawn back by the masochism that afflicts all hi-fi nuts, I had to admit the show was better...
...But their black-light oartoon with sales pitch—"Here's Auntie Skate, folks...
...Listen, some guys sat down and busted their ass for two years...
...And yet, since we obviously do judge records and live performances by different esthetic criteria, which shall determine the other...
...His attitude, of course, was a throwback to the days 15-20 years ago when "audiophiles" were real cultists and scorned the sonically ignorant public-at-large...
...She's standard on every Dual...
...Inside these dens it was hot, crowded, and it was loud...
...Since the acoustics were impossible and since it was high fidelity, everyone turned up the gain...
...klh Man: "What's that...
...The complete Sony system produced to my ear the best sound of anything in the show...
...What made all the irritation and confusion bearable was the typical American satisfaction in seeing "the very latest model" perform, and the sense of watching the industry as a whole (a very considerable one today) develop trends and techniques that promise to revolutionize our music listening habits...
...Did your engineers make some kind of breakthrough...
...Members of both the jazz and classical panels did mention the possibility of records replacing concerts and live performances (an old problem for jazz...
...Labels like Nonesuch have provided the impetus to greatly expand the Baroque catalog...
...Besides being an outstanding buy, the btr exemplifies the efforts of a few manufacturers to achieve really superior sound at a great reduction in price...
...The sponsoring group, Institute of High Fidelity, Inc., had added a series of 15 symposia to the New York exhibition, which ran from September 21-24 at the Statler Hilton...
...I talked with one gentleman at klh whose condescension struggled mightily with his contempt...
...Goodman : "Excuse me, what are some of the differences between your new Model Five and the Model Six that I have...
...external noise is largely blocked out...
...I can't vouch for the technical accuracy of the blurb, but the sound of the K-60 is perfectly clean and transparent...
...In the ultimate setup the electronic crossover and its associated equipment do make a significant difference...
...Using the ceramic generator principle other makers have scorned, Grado engineered a cartridge that is absolutely comparable in sound to those in the $40-50 range...
...Unfortunately, they were not always willing or able to tell us very much...
...Lansing Sound used interesting light effects and spatial arrangements...
...Regrettably, matters of this kind were not discussed in the seminars...
...Another breakthrough of this kind (pace klh) came from akg, the company that makes some of the world's best microphones...
...Goodman: "Yes...
...Most of those I talked with successfully combined sound and spiel under some pretty trying circumstances...
...Much of the new equipment was simple, functional, and handsome??like the Jim Lansing speakers and amplifiers??but you could still find something as rococo as Empire's Grenadier speakers??gross, fluted, marble-topped cylinders...
...Their sound quality not only equals that of the best loudspeakers, but the experience of stereo headphone listening is radically different...
...The usual approach, however, was to cart in equipment, throw up a platform with drapes, and station salesmen and piles of brochures about the room...
...At the other end of the economic scale Grado offered the Model btr stereo pickup cartridge for only $9.95...
...klh Man: "Everything...
...As people come to demand the purest sound at the lowest cost, fine headsets will probably gain in popularity...
...This year, for the first time, the High Fidelity Show provided a forum where such questions might be raised...
...An awareness of the buyer's needs and wishes has also percolated down to the equipment designers in the last five years, though not so often to the sales and marketing people who work out the displays for these shows...
...Only a few of the exhibits reflected a similar concern for decor, the show's announced theme...
...a similar development is taking place in contemporary and electronic music, some of which is being developed specifically for stereo recording...
...And after being subjected to three or four program sources at once, you tried to grope your way back to the hall...
...This is significant, as panelist Martin Bookspan pointed out, despite the fact that as a recorded commodity, classical is not so important now as it was 10-15 years ago...
...and you can achieve the most private musical experience...
...The point is that high quality, long-playing tape reproduction is becoming available, not only for cars but for portable machines with all kinds of uses...
...Exhibits like Fisher's and Scott's were always so jammed that you couldn't have cared less about the decor...
...Laboratories, provides a separate power amplifier channel for each speaker...
...Pickering had a "Rube Goldberg Room," spoofing the hi-fi industry in general with such stuff as an outsize control panel fitted with bathroom handles, speakers containing dogs for woofers, birds for tweeters, etc...
...They have had to master both technical material and general information, as well as the ability to present it to a large neophyte audience...
...at $39.50 it surpasses any headsets I have used, some of which sell at twice the price...
...This means that for typical three-way speaker systems, you would need sue amplifier channels for stereo and plenty of money to pay the tab...
...At one point in the classical symposium, after agonizing over a definition of standard repertoire, Israel Horowitz of Decca Records resigned himself to the observation: "1 suppose we could say that there are some standard pieces more standard than others...
...Yet the relationship of audio technology to human need and response is what high fidelity is all about...
...it presented an elaborate demonstration every hour (as did several of the exhibitors...
...The phrase "high fidelity" is meaningless until we at least provisionally answer the question, "fidelity to what...
...United Audio (Dual automatic turntables) had a turntable revolving eccentrically while playing a record inside a plastic globe...
...They have been advertising this in the trade magazines for "Only $2574.50 (Only...
...Not many of the salesmen and exhibitors can afford to deal with their public this way today, or to indulge in wholly technical talk...
...Four interesting if not always enlightening sessions (pompously called "musicology seminars") were devoted to the last subject...
...Channel separation is greater...
...ON MUSIC By John Goodman Sound and Spiel at the Hi-Fi Show Three years ago I vowed I had attended my last High Fidelity Show, having found it mostly a bore and an imposition on my aural good will...
...a new one for serious music), but it was all very brief and inconclusive...
...In fact, the technical displays were more effective than the attempts of some companies to be cute or to exploit different media, such as film-strips...
...If and when it really begins to look for the answers, both in discussion and display, no threat of boredom, potential deafness, or contingent trampling will keep the music lovers away...
...and calling it a bargain for the audio perfectionist...
...Whether the cassette or the loop-type cartridge will ultimately be adopted industry-wide is anybody's guess, and the whole situation is rather like the war between the lps and 45s in the late 1940s...
...They introduced their so-called "humanized" stereo headphones (Models K-20 and K-60), developed from rather elaborate physiological and mathematical research...
...The trend to tape cartridges is also responsible for much current comment and controversy...
...Quite literally, you tune in and drop out...
...All your 'breakthroughs' are cooked up by advertising men...
...As far as super-systems go, they aren't kidding...
...understanding this relationship can have practical, direct results??as the akg people apparently recognized...
...was nauseating...
Vol. 50 • October 1967 • No. 20
