An hard rain gonna fall...

XXX-rated horror toons

... brrr...

Ears and hearing - the recording art compendium links

A goldmine to be explored by any music lover and recording art scholar!

Enjoy!

The Tape Eraser

Never owned one since one week ago... an useful, humble studio tool.

Good for small and larger reels.

... ahem: the reel spindle is my own design, as the original wasn't so well-conceived;-)

Nice Swiss-made gizmo, using an HUGE open-gap transformer, capable of the IMPRESSIVE magnetic flux, strong enough to erase a full tape-reel in few seconds/turns ... thanking a friend for the gift. 

A very musical clam

I love giving nicknames to things: my black car is “Scarbi”, my oldest motorbike is “La motina”, my vintage city bike is the “Umbertodeidel36”, my turntable is the “Garrardzilla” and my speakers are the “Gotorama”.

The recently acquired Audio Consulting’s Meteor AVC passive preamp?

It’s the “Clam”;-)

Looking at its quiet, unassuming beauty, the unique beauty of hand shaped and polished shell-like rounded case, it strongly reminded me of a clam-shell.

Funny.

I was away for my daily job for some days and when back home, I immediately turned ON the 300B amps, Meridian disk player and… nothing more, as the Meteor… aehm, The Clam is passive, so;-) always ON.

I played some disks I well know, a late evening relaxed listening, indeed.

Susanna Abbuehl’s April on ECM - I already wrote about this wonderful disk:, female voice, percussions, clarinet, piano… while I was listening to it, I realized something I already noticed during the very first listening sessions, some days ago.

The cymbals sound isn’t only the shimmering, high pitched sound normally associated with brass cymbals: when hitted with a felt mallet, they also produce a lower tone, like a gong, some octaves lower than the higher sound.

This sound went, most of the times, lost… with the Partridge’s 300B and Meteor, everything is well retrived and made enjoyable.

A friend asked about this preamp: but does it really makes the difference?

YES! ... definitely yes, folks!

All the times I change the passive preamp for my upcoming survey, I immediately hear, pros & cons, what the preamp adds or subtracts, in terms of harmonic blossoming, detailing and ambient retrival capabilities.

Overall sweetness or edginess are also an issue and the best performer must be balanced on this feature, so important, paramount for a true-to-life grand-result.

Everyone is well aware of something like – I like this piece of gear, yet to be fussy and picky ohhh, how I’d wish it to have a tad more warmness of XY and a bit of detail more as YJKX!

Well, that’s exactly what’s going on with my passive AVCs survey: the Luxman AT 3000 is sweet, detailed without exaggerating; the Fidelity Research AS 1 is an audio surgeon, extremely sharp, razor-like, speedy and unforgiving, but superb sounding, indeed.

The Silver Rock is both sweet and sharp… perfect?

The Meteor is both sweet, sharp and with an authority and such a beefy, rich, thick (when needed) and eerie (when asked for) to make me exclaiming: found it!

It’s the ideal passive, the fabled, seldom found “wire with gain”…

In Meteor’s very case, it’s a silver-wire with a gain;-)

I listened also to Keith Jarrett’s Paris Concert on ECM… the noises from the audience, the KJ’s pedal work and puffing and humming and feet tapping are like heard anew, for the first time.

This improved retrival ability gives more music and a sense of cohesiveness, effortless and complete immersion in musical event.

The Cabasses’ sound louder and cleaner, not edgy or shouting.

… and yes;-) on Jonathan Faralli’s percussion disk I use for final resolution test, the bowels growling on Salvatore Sciarrino’s piece is extremely audible, embarrassingly so!

The Clam… aehm, the Meteor is the ideal, cost-no-object line preamp for the discerned music lover and scholar. 

A true statement.

While I strongly felt I was reaching the very peak of musical satisfaction on many parameters, just swapping randomly, choosing from my small array of world-class preamps, I now really feel I reached my ears limit.

So, to my friend Roberto, asking if the Clam makes the difference, I reply: yes, again.

Everything is crystal-clear to me and to my ears.

Thanking Dr. Serge Schmidlin for his no-frill - almost poetic, yet so well technically grounded - approach.

Audio Consulting Meteor Toroidal AVC or the passive line-stage preamps survey - the final challenge?

I spent again some very pleasant hours with Dr. Serge Schmidlin of Audio Consulting fame...

His conversation is always so interesting, he's always witty, curious and well informed.

Only difference from the other times we were together in Munchen or at his Commugny, Switzerland buen retiro, yesterday we were at my place, in beautiful Veneto, Italy, few kilometres from Venice.

Good food, good wine, good company and chatting... we ended completing the good... list listening to some good;-) master tapes played on the mighty (freshly restored, up-to-specs by master technician Giorgio Foschi) Telefunken M15A on my Gotorama...

... and surprise-surprise, from a small carrier-bag, an egg-shaped thing appeared: a Meteor toroidal top of the line all silver AVCs passive preamp!

This sought after, seldom seen, masterfully built piece of gear is made out of two American walnut shells with a Macassar ebony centre "ring" and the exotic hand wound toroidal silver wire toroidal is impregnated, better incapsulated, in natural bee-wax.

Nothing more, nothing less...

This is an expensive - someone could say hideously expensive - piece of gear... yet, I can fully understand Serge's approach: it is not about avidity, as quality, hand-made quality costs, but this wouldn't be enough to explain everything.

A comparison comes to my mind: who would dare saying anything rude about a luthier job and his masterpieces cost?

Think about an acoustic pre-WW1 Martin or a Bottelli classical guitars... they both are about 600 grams selected woods assembly whose cost is almost negligible!

Why these beauties cost nowadays 5-digits sums?

... because if you place same raw woods on a table surface, they're not sounding, they're not giving music!

So, isn't it correct, appropriate, right to give a value, a money-related one, I mean to all the above immaterial added-value?

A luthier precisely tailors woods, details and bespoke care to meet the musician needs... Audio Consulting does the very same, adding the magic to silver wire, nickel cores and woods making them able - like a stellar quality musical instrument - to play music.

Give to all this a price-tag! You can only buy it or don't buy it... love or hate it!

It's my strong, sincere opinion you simply cannot appreciate the lacking of colorstions, the overall sense of beauty, something so pleasantly easy and true to life.

Just after a couple hours listening sessions, music and nuances are blossoming at every minute passing.

Impressive.

I'm only now beginning my journey in tasting the Meteor: the preamps survey will include a truly challenging tournament, where Luxman AT 3000 will be judged vs. Fidelity Research AS 1 vs. Audio Consulting Silver Rock vs. Audio Consulting Meteor vs. Thomas Mayer 4 chassis vs. Le Solstice vs. Marantz 7C, so also adding to the trial three conventional (or so) preamps I have handy for good measure and personal enjoyment.

Stay tuned.

Musings?

Disk of the Month - Shackleton with Ernesto Tomasini - Devotional Songs (Honest Jon's Records - 2016)

Epic, thrilling, devotional, deep, ancient and new...

Dig it!

Disk of the Day - Coils - The Ape of Naples (2005)

Lovely, l o v e l y music...

... and cover art.

They remind me some Current 93's stuff with a falsetto Tom Waits' singing (Swordfishtrombones' style).

Get it!

Disc of the Day - UB40 - Tyler (45 rpm 12")

A nice, ska/reggae disc from the '80s... superbly and fresh sounding... reportedly recorded on a tube Revox G36.

Love it!

Tapes, tapes, tapes...

... I found myself transformed into a tapes-junkie, folks!

The sound of these old relics makes my heartbeat faster and my mouth watering.

... just change the above R. Crumb's "records" with "tapes";-)

Gimme more!

The Rolling Stones' trivia - Their Satanic Majesties Request 3D

... not the most perfect of The Rolling Stones' albums, yet its 3D cover made it an instant sought-after collector item.

After recently getting a 19 cm/s pre-recorded original tape on a 18 cm diam. plastic reel, whose box sports the VERY same 3D lenticular plastic gimmick as the vinyl 1st pressing in my possession.

Strange, I told myself...

I checked Wikipedia on the matter and found this:

"The original cover design called for the lenticular image to take up the entire front cover,^[20] but finding this to be prohibitively expensive it was decided to reduce the size of the photo and surround it with the blue-and-white graphic design."

Put side-by-side, the tape and the vinyl plaque are the very same, so, apparently Decca/London spent an arm and a leg for this 3D plaque and decided to do not go over-budget using the same size on the 30 cm sized cover and making a clouds/sky frame to fix the 3D smallish size.

Tapes were quite expensive in the hey days also if not as expensive as they are now... this very pre-recorded tape is fetching USD 200+ price-tags... the reel to reel sold poorly, so when they weren't more in demand, out of stock, deleted, etc. Decca possibly stopped to make the 3Ds and the 2nd vinyl disc reissues had the color cover-art replaced by a cheaper pix of the 3D itself.

Such an innocent satisfaction sort-of correcting the always great, useful and supportive Wikipedia.

Yeah!