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| Letters -- March 2003 New blues March 21, 2003 To Ross Mantle, I've been in the market for a digital front-end and as such have read many articles about transports, DACs and CD players. One transport I've eyed is the Accustic Arts Drive I you reviewed. I did not buy the AA transport, but a friend of mine did. I was very interested in the Sonny Boy Williamson CD you used in your evaluation. I purchased it and am enjoying it very much. I'm a fan of acoustic blues, so I was pleased to find a high-quality recording. My reference/favorites are Muddy Waters remastered Folk Singer (I am curious to hear, but have not pulled the trigger on the Mobile Fidelity gold remaster), Lightnin' Hopkins' Goin' Away XRCD2 and Big Bill Broonzy's Trouble in Mind from Smithsonian Folkways. Other recordings come and go, but those three are favorites of mine. I have a CD collection, and, in my mind at least, a simple but ultra audio system. I run Merlin VSMs with Atma-Sphere M60 Mk 2 amps. My front-end after much debate is a Wadia 860. It's been on the shelf at a local dealer for years. I use Nordost Quattro-Fil interconnects and Cardas Golden Reference speaker cables. Thanks for your review and for turning me on to a new CD. Chris Mathes From the engineer March 13, 2003 To Ross Mantle, I just read your review of some equipment in the Jan. 15, 2003 issue of Ultra Audio. I just wanted to say thanks for the kind words about the Densil Pinnock and Bill Coon CD [Mona Lisa [Verve ERCD 6671]] that I engineered once upon a time. One of the nice things about working on that project was the amount of time the artists and the producer allowed me to achieve the imaging characteristics I wanted. Also, they were happy to let em do a completely different mix for every tune - so it was a lot of fun. Cheers, Geoff Martin, Ph.D. I'm very glad to hear from the man who engineered that fine-sounding disc. I often get the impression that imaging characteristics are not a prime consideration in the studio. The positioning of studio monitors, which usually involves the speakers being bolted to the wall somewhere near the ceiling of the control room, would seem to preclude it. I'm glad to hear that there was a conscious effort behind something that I thought usually happens by accident. I certainly enjoy all the work you put into the recording every time I spin it....Ross Mantle Just a couple of comments about your response.... The soffit-mounted loudspeakers that are typically seen in recording-studio control rooms are not usually used for mixing, which is typically where image locations are decided. More often, these are used as a magnifying glass for hearing problems during tracking. The mixing is more often done on smaller loudspeakers sitting on or (better yet) just behind the console meter bridge. This is to give the engineer a better idea of the timbral balance that people will have in their homes. Of course, we frequently switch up to the big speakers just to check how they'll represent the mix, but when we do, we take into account the fact that the images will be higher than usual. This effect can be easily ignored once you're used to working with the system. Most pop engineers are quite concerned about image placement during the mix; however, this is typically done using a simple pan pot, so you only have amplitude differences between the two (or five) channels. Most classical recordings use spaced omnidirectional microphones, which result in interchannel time differences and, to a lesser extent, interchannel-amplitude differences to control panning. Classical engineers typically are concerned with imaging, but do not necessarily look for pin-point accuracy. You don't really have this in real life in a concert hall, so there's no reason to have it in loudspeaker reproduction. (In spite of this argument, I'll be the last person to suggest that loudspeaker reproduction should, in any way, be compared to real-life listening. I firmly believe that people who think that the intention of a stereo system is to create a you-are-there environment are nuts. The intention of watching a movie is not to think that you're having a conversation with the actors -- it's to watch the story.) Jazz engineers usually fall somewhere in between. The bad ones treat their recordings as pop productions; the good ones draw from pop and classical techniques. Check out some of Jim Anderson's work as a good example of a good jazz recording. Geoff Martin, Ph.D. Isolation products March 10, 2003 Thanks very much for the well-written reviews. You guys do high-end audio a real service. I'm wondering if you'll be reviewing any racks or isolation products. I have an interest in these now, and they seem to be overlooked, or covered poorly, elsewhere. Dan Hickey We have a review of Silent Running Audio's Tremor / less line coming up.
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