AUDIO INSIDER

“Holy crap!” I said, “This is the best I have ever heard a drumkit.”

It is always difficult to have to reject the hard work of anyone but, in the long run, it’s critical to maintain standards. While auditioning a candidate recording we made of a wonderful musician for Octave, I had the unfortunate task of saying no. No, it’s not good enough. No, it serves neither the music […]

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AUDIO INSIDER

Transparent sound occurs when the sonic clutter between instruments and voices disappears.

The dictionary defines the word paradox as a statement or proposition that, despite sound reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory. Such is the nature of audio transparency. Invisible sound. A seeming paradox. On the one hand, we can never hope to see sound. So the idea that some sound appears […]

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AUDIO INSIDER

HiFi snobs

I really dislike labels as they apply to people. I have spent much of my adult life working hard at removing them from my lexicon. Labels encourage us to place complex people in simplistic organized little boxes. That hardly allows for diversity or nuance. Yet, today’s crowd seems ever more eager to assign labels to […]

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AUDIO INSIDER

Class H amplifiers are different. Their amp circuitry is rather common but their power supplies are variable: only a little voltage for small audio signals and jumping to big voltage outputs as the music gets louder.

Power amplifiers come in classes determined by their design. Their classifications are listed by simple letters of the alphabet, but underlying that simplicity is a whole lot of complexity. For example, amp classes as determined by their bias and turn-on cycle include A, AB, B, and C. The differences in this class of amps is […]

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AUDIO INSIDER

The acoustic pattern that is created is somewhat of a figure 8.

It is fascinating to me the myriad of seemingly endless variations designers apply to sound reproduction equipment. Take the rarely seen today bipole loudspeaker. The last mass-produced version I remember was by the Canadian company, Mirage. Let’s start with a smidge of reference. Most loudspeakers are monopoles: sound comes out of one plane of the […]

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Video Frame Rate – how a fortunate technological accident is on the verge of being ‘corrected’ (Part 5)

Overview: What could this possibly have to do with a music web site? Guest contributor Ray Purchase explains: Live Music Needs High Frame Rate But the worst film-effect travesty of all, I suggest, is its use for live music. Programmes such as From the Basement and Live from Abbey Road are made in film-effect video […]

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