Tecnotrafo is back... the rebirth from the ashes of an historic italian audio transformers manufacturer...

... behind the labour of love of the re-birth is my pal Lorenzo Sironi, a passionate music and audio lover and an avid collector of classic theatre and cinema speakers, Cinemeccanica and Prevost being a true obsession and a specialty.

I carefully followed Lorenzo's steps and acquiring and restoring/updating the old machines and materials warehouse in Cinisello Balsamo, (very) near to Milan.

He's young and extremely motivated, humble enough to learn every day and anxious to prove this elusive, rarefied audio world his class, not with hypes and chatting, BUT with his products - i.e. carefully hand wound one by one audio transformers.

I visited Lorenzo's workshop a couple of days ago, on my way to Switzerland.

Memorabilia...

 One stage line preamp... with the 845 mono blocks, Telefunken M15 and Cinemeccanica HUGE horns, will be the workshop sound system.

The sought-after, seldom seen Philips 367 used in the line stage...

Ye olde plant and employees... such an heritage!

... yes... the metal tables and the chairs are the same in the pictures...

The old windings machines... 

 Paper isolation, old stock

Copper wires, old stock

E cores layers... 

 C-cores...

C-core, 0,1 mm thickness layers...

Lorenzo Sironi near the historic pictures of the old manufacture... tradition and innovation, ears and heart. 

Lorenzo Sironi and his partner, Fabio Mezzadra.

Double C-core, 0,1 mm layers... 

0,1 mm nickel pack...

The oven...

... and the resin bath.

Cinemeccanica's M horn and driver...

The industrial view from office desk at Tecnotrafo... 

Impressive, uh? Cinemeccanica's sought after beasts...

The Icar caps in Cinemeccanica's bass horns crossover

Cinemeccanica's wings hinge... cute.

The Cinemeccanica's at Venice Biennale del Cinema, ready to P.A. the HUGE Piazza San Marco...

(1972)

An 845 beast mono block using Tecnotrafo's irons... some Telefunken M15 in the foreground...

I wish to Lorenzo the VERY best... keeping high quality and no-compromising in mind.


... upcoming projects?

Feeding old, trusty customers...

... and a lot more... in the agenda, a mouth watering Western Electric 618B replicas... I'll be the beta-tester and will be able to compare it directly with the real thing - i.e. my own cherished WE 618B;-)

Contact Lorenzo at www.tecnotrafo.it with your requests... 0,05 mm nickel layers? Bee-wax impregnated trannies? Whatever?

Just ask him.

Stay tuned.

SPU # 1 Spherical

Back in Ortofon's catalog, a nice price SPU, 2 ohm impedance and yeah! using a spherical diamond tip...

EUR 595 and no hassle!

Bravo to Ortofon... and welcome back to smoothness.

Disk of the Day - Gomez - Bring it On (1998), featuring Fidelity Research AS 1

What a disk, pals... Nirvana, Beatles, Beach Boys, Moby Grape... USA & UK, fuzz, acoustic and gut strings guitars... choirs à la Fab Four and a deep, gravel/smooth lead voice à la Ben Harper... without forgetting a recording truly 2die4!

I undusted the mighty gizmo from a shelf in my studio: the Fidelity Research AS-1 passive-preamp shines in truly seldom heard way... the smaller system sounds wonderful, indeed.

The AS-1, so unforgiving and sharp as a razor, is a world class piece of gear: it stunningly fights au pair on podium vs. Luxman AT-3000, slightly more rounded, smooth and forgiving and vs. Silver Rock's harmonically so rich and natural character.

The Fidelity Research's is embarrassingly good and i-n-c-r-e-d-i-b-l-y quick and three-dimensional and detailing like anyone else - i.e. on Arvo Pärt's Alina on ECM, on track 4 the ambulance siren is so audible you can follow for loooong seconds, while on AT-3000 you barely hear it... same for other noises, like the airplane you can hear at the end of the piece... to do not quote the musician's breathing and snorting or the piano felts mute on strings!

A cutie... yet, such a wolf in a sheep skin.

A winner!

... but back to Gomez;-)... I suggest everyone into... good music to dig this humble, little disk.

Satisfaction guaranteed!

EMI Abbey Road's Studers' and REDD.37 mixer for sale!

Studer C 37, Studer J 37 and REDD.37 mixer which were used by EMI to record The Beatles and many others... now the property of Lenny Kravitz, it's for sale as a package... a JUICY one;-) 

Anyone?

Earthquake

My deepest condolences for the victims of recent earthquake in Center Italy.

... and sincere empathy and nearness to everyone suffering losses of family, friends and belongings.

Rudy Van Gelder passed away... a lesser world it is, today.

Rudy Van Gelder, an audio engineer whose work with Miles Davis, John Coltrane and numerous other musicians helped define the sound of jazz on record, died on Thursday at his home, which doubled as his studio, in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.


He was 91 and worked at his home wooden dome-ceiling studio 'til the very last day of his long and fruitful life..

His death was confirmed by his assistant, Maureen Sickler.

Mr. Van Gelder, as he took pains to explain to interviewers, was an engineer and not a producer. He was not in charge of the sessions he recorded; he did not hire the musicians or play any role in choosing the repertoire. But he had the final say in what the records sounded like, and he was, in the view of countless producers, musicians and listeners, better at that than anyone.

The many albums he engineered for Blue Note, Prestige, Impulse and other labels in the 1950s and ’60s included acknowledged classics like Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” Davis’s “Walkin’,” Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage,” Sonny Rollins’s “Saxophone Colossus” and Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father.”

R.I.P. Mr. Van Gelder and thanks for taking care of our ears for aaaaall these years.

Vinylgue - seaweed-based "vinyl" new formula for our beloved discs

Vinylgue: the first green vinyl from algae manufactured in Britain

Thanking Nicanor Haon and Jaap Pees

This is a world first, it's made in France and no,you cannot really eat it ... Audiophile gourmets, it will take a manufacturer recovers edible vinyl Artisanal plant vinyls M Com'Musique based Ogères (Ille et Vilaine) completed its prototype of a Breton vinyl made from algae. An alternative to the use of plastics.

After much research initiated before the opening of its factory, M Com'Musique pressed and listened to his first vinylgue, a black furrow produced from a raw material in the Algopack society. The latter manufactures plastics materials properties from alternative materials to petroleum as waste and natural fibers including algae.

Small beads of algae instead of the polymers:

It is these algae, added a bit of plastic that caught the attention of M Com'Musique, and can be provided in small beads such as polymers traditionally used to make discs. "We see that the heater is a little more fibrous" explained one of the creators of M Com'Musique reached by telephone. It will therefore further enhance the base material in order to have the same sound results than traditional vinyl and adapt the rigidity of the groove to take care of needles phonos cells. These additional research and possible changes in the production process will require fundraising by the company to enable to start production in 2018 vinylgue.

vinyl master engraving

M Com'Musique going half speed ...

Alongside his research on vinylgue, M Com'Musique is preparing to relaunch the prized half-speed engraving. The process, already existing, is to burn twice as slowly the master disc lacquer used to make the mold vinyl pressing. It to store twice as much information and thus provide a better return to listening. As the name suggests, the process takes twice as long, but in the factory, the result is there.

... And launches albums sharing service for artists

M Com'Musique also offers on its website a service called "Split my vinyls" that allows artists who do not have enough music to fill a full LP filling an online form. An algorithm is then responsible for contacting the artists whose recordings periods coincide and to allow them to release a record in common.

I apologize for even worst English than usual... it's Google-translated from French;-)

"The" Saturday Disk - Meredith Monk - Songs of Ascension (ECM 2011)

Thanking my recent re-ordering of my CDs, I gave a listen to a disk I didn't played for many years, now...

I love, truly, sincerely, desperately love Meredith Monk's music, since in early '80s I was introduced to her music thanking my old mentor and maestro Lorenzo Zen: he played one day for me MM's "Dolmen Music"...

I truly felt I never heard such a beauty... piano, voices and sparingly used percussions by the late Collin Walcott...

I followed her on every disc she made onward and also searched the previous, older stuff...

Back in early '90, while in NYC, I also was lucky enough to attend to a loft concert... Meredith, Robert Een with Nurit Tilles on piano...

Blowed away by the experience, I was even more - if possible - deeply in love.

Book of Days was my Desert Island disk for years and still it is... this music is perfect for Pina Bausch or Carolyn Carson's modern dancing and choreographies... very kinetic and physical kind of music, indeed.

Yesterday, on the smaller system (the Cabasses', Partridge 300B, Luxman AT3000 and Studer A730) I listened to Songs of Ascension, dating 2011, on ECM, of course.

The disk is pretty different from the previous, more various in textures and instrumentarium... a strings quartet and a large chorus and a percussions array are used, while the voices are so ancient and timeless to make you wonder, after a while deeply soaked in this music, if Meredith is terrestrial or...

A short piece, titled "Mapping", is particularly hitting unplucked strings of mine: the voices are dueting in a seldom heard way... pan-potting from left to right channels, while an intermezzo of Chinese-like weird percussions, cymbals and small drums, are rock-steady centered... impressive.

Amazing music.

Atlantis-hinting, to my romantic ears;-)

Seriously: Mrs. Monk is able to make the Todd Reynolds String Quartet sounding like a spirited 3,000 B.C. or 3,000 A.C. version of Mozart or Haydn.

Painful, naked beauty!

The sonics are EXTREMELY faithful and right.

Dynamics, subtleties like the entering faders of mixer or various ambient noises, breathes and the like are very audible and transparent sound and imaging are top class.

Not new, yet being such a timeless music and disk, I strongly suggest everyone still unaware of Meredith Monk's art to take a chance and enjoy this music.

You won't regret... just tune-in your ears and soul and loose yourself in such a sonic blissful vision.

An extract from Stereo Times' Archives - The Hobby

From the goldmine of Stereo Times' Archives, a well written, straight and extremely no-frills short essay about audio and music listening at home... an essay by Constantine Soo (published on Jan. 16th, 2002):

Constantine Soo

"The Hobby

Are we in this hobby simply for the recreation of a live event in our homes? The complexity of our hobby can be likened to an instance where you choose a restaurant not solely based on how much you like the food, but on balance of your appreciation of how good the food tastes, the menu pricing and the atmosphere in which you dine. Yet other aspects of this restaurant may well come into play: friendliness of waiters and waitresses, interior decors, location or its reputation.

Audio is as multi-facet a hobby as any other and will carry different meanings to different people.

While enticing sound recreation is the purpose for the existence of all audio equipment, they sometimes are like objects of art or obsessions that can quietly take on different meanings and purposes. Don't sneeze at those who collect a variety of equipment from the most expensive and exotic to whatever interests him, or that audiophile at the other end of the spectrum who changes his system every month. It is ok as long as they can afford to do so.

We may envy those among us who possess the financial freedom in acquiring astronomically priced gear, and pull out our hair in the face of knowing that their system could sound a whole lot better had they been equally diligent in acquiring some fundamental audio knowledge. Still, we shouldn't be overly critical of others.

Every audiophile takes his/her approach to sound reproduction very seriously with the investment of both money and time, although the soundness of the individual's approach can sometimes be debated.

In addition, everyone deserves a chance to learn, unless of course that person is your spouse.

The pursuit of better sound in our hobby is certainly an endless one, and thank goodness for that; but if you constantly compare your system to others' for better sound, you may lose sight of what you accomplished and be prompted to make hasty changes. Soon, you could find this hobby much less rewarding than it could've been.

I do believe that all of us tend to go in natural cycles, pursing one kind of sound for sometime before trying something else. That's part of the fun until you get really serious and extreme. In that regard, we just need to cherish what we have and be open-minded about others' experiences.

Audio is an expensive, as well as spiritual and materialistic, hobby, and in its pursuit, let us hope that we are becoming better persons and living longer. Amen."

Amen for such a nice piece, as it suggest the balance and sober approach to our marvellous passion.


Thanks to Mr. Soo for his writing.

WJAAS - “The music melts into the air of the room” or the next audio step: your very own, personal utility pole!

After spending zillions on cables, tubes, amps and all the ancillaries we audiophiles are too often described by the others as idiotphiles, some wealthy hardcore Japanese audio lovers choose the next level of refinement to get the very best from their expensive, sometimes hideously expensive audio combos: a personal utility pole and mains transformer, well worth USD 40,000.00 labour, parts and hassle with local electric company and neighbors and wives, of course..

Read the interesting article from The Wall Street Journal... thanking my pal Tom Santosusso for sharing... and WSJ, of course.

Anyone wishing to experience “the music melting into the air of the room”?

The audio maid

... ordering discs and CDs and cleaning my tiny studio is a - proudly and unashamedly said - someway seldom made activity for yours truly... not talking about living in a garbage-filled environment, but about tasting the ineffable sense of freedom given when doing or not doing something in a wife-free place;-)

Undusting my audio gears... well, it's something not on top of my priorities... I usually ask people visiting to possibly do not touch horns or gears to do not make dust even more visible...

... but when I'm in the maid-mode;-)...

Everything after my spic & span "turbillon" is shiny and brand new... or so...

Also, like this afternoon, making some order among the disks, is always a surprisingly rewarding activity... records I didn't see in eons re-surface and its a joy simply handling them, like I freshly purchased them... leave alone listening to them!


Such a pleasure.

Silly me...

I found a disk which I consider one of my most precious ones... dance music from the roaring '20s, a Robert Crumb's illustrated and edited CD, from his own wonderful 78s collection.

I all the times remains surprised by the fantastic recording quality... a strange kind of quality - i.e. bandwith limited - from 78s, yes, but sound is so zest and quick.

Listening to this (sweet, indeed... so innocent sounding to my ears) music made my up and down from the ladder, ordering the disks, a pleasure... I danced for about one hour feeling untired and full of enthusiasm... ahhh, the power of music!

A maid from the '20s;-)))

I'm so vintage-minded that I almost feel a pain thinking about the darker and darker times we're into.