Sound

In the beginning of recorded sound, there was mono. One speaker, period.

Mono speakers were plopped wherever it was convenient, and that was that. Consumer audio remained strictly mono until the late 1950s with the introduction of stereo tape and LPs. Now you needed two speakers.

Home theater upped the ante to 5.1 channel surround sound--five speakers, plus a subwoofer--and setup hassles were getting tricky. Dolby's Web site offers very specific requirements for the placement of the front left, center, right speakers, and the side surround speakers. 6.1 and 7.1 systems add rear surround speakers.

It's one thing to look at a diagram, but your room probably doesn't look like the diagram. Reality sets in, so very few 5.1, 6.1, or 7.1 system buyers get remotely close to the recommended speaker placements.

I've seen countless 5.1 home theater in a box systems in real people's homes with all five satellite speakers clumped in a row under or over the TV. Some buyers spread the speakers out across their entertainment furniture, still with all the speakers in front, near the TV. Obviously, those people don't want to string wires across the room. I don't blame them.

On one hand it'll sound "fine," but the envelopment the film sound mixers worked so hard to achieve will be lost. Don't worry, the Dolby Police won't arrest you for improper placement and the certain destruction of the filmmaker's intent.

If you have all of your speakers sitting in a pile, but I've made you a little curious, temporarily move the surround speakers out into the room. Put 'em on something to get them off the floor: A chair, bookcase, furniture, and so on. Play a few big action flicks and see what's up with surround. It might surprise you and just maybe you'll be inspired enough to make the effort to find permanent, around the room locations for the surround speakers. Hey, in 5.1 it's only two skinny wires.… Read more

Legend has it that on December 4, 1877, Thomas Edison was the first person to record and play back the human voice. Maybe not.

The Video Interchange site notes that "a possibility exists that Edison himself, in fact, might not have been the very first person to have recorded and played back the human voice. This was most likely made by his two key assistants: Charles Batchelor, his chief assistant, and John Kruesi, his head machinist."

You can see Edison's machine on the Video Interchange Web site. And while you're there, check out a few of the fascinating but obscure audio formats on display.

Video Interchange offers transfer services for a vast range of ancient and recent audio formats. For example, Video Interchange can transfer 78 rpm records to CD.

… Read more

You'll get no argument from me that $107,000 seems like a lot of money for a pair of speakers.

But the YG Acoustics Anat Reference II Professional is a lot of speaker. Stereophile magazine's Wes Phillips delved deep into the flagship speaker's build and sound quality in his review. It was a tough assignment, but somebody had to do it.

While $107,000 is definitely out of my price range, that doesn't mean there's not a market, albeit a very small market, for products that advance the state of the art. Great, but who buys these things?

Answer: rich people. You probably know some of their names. Rock icon Bruce Springsteen just signed a new $110,000,000 contract. The Boss could and should buy these things (maybe he'd make better-sounding records). And the last time I checked, Tom Cruise is still getting upward of $20 million to appear in a movie. A pair of YG Acoustics Anat Reference II Professionals would be a nice start for his home theater.

In addition, sports superstars are still signing megamillion contracts, and big-business CEOs are still eating at fancy restaurants. Even now, the rich aren't hurting; luxury markets are holding steady.

The Anat Reference II Professional is a three-piece modular loudspeaker. It is, shall we say, on the statuesque side of large; the Reference Main Module sits atop the Studio passive subwoofer, which, in turn, rests upon the Professional powered subwoofer. Each three-module array weighs 440 pounds.

Most of each module is made of aircraft-grade aluminum; the front baffles are a machined "ballistic grade" alloy of aluminum and titanium. The speakers are shipped in six custom aluminum flight cases.… Read more

Dolby has a new surround format: Pro Logic IIz.

Here we go again. Another new format with more speakers, but this time, the "surround" speakers are in the front of the room, three or four feet above the left-and right-main speakers. These height channels are designed to provide a greater sense of envelopment than previous generations of Dolby or DTS surround.

Pro Logic IIz incorporates all of the features and capabilities of Pro Logic IIx.

"Expanding on established Dolby Pro Logic II matrix-decoding innovations, Dolby Pro Logic IIz identifies and decodes spatial cues that occur naturally in all content--stereo and 5.1 broadcast, music CDs, DVDs, 5.1 and 7.1 Blu-ray Discs, and video games," the Dolby site further explains. "Dolby Pro Logic IIz processes low-level, uncorrelated information--such as ambiance and some amorphous effects like rain or wind--and directs it to the front height speakers."

You don't have to buy new, specially encoded discs to experience Pro Logic IIz, but do you really want to buy another pair of speakers, wall-mount them, and run a pair of speaker wires up your wall, to the sides of your TV?

Dolby doesn't require the height speakers to be identical to the main-left or -right speakers. Some Pro Logic IIz systems will use a total of nine speakers (five front, four rear), plus one or more subwoofers.

Onkyo's TX-SR607 ($599 MSRP) is the first receiver to feature Pro Logic IIz; the company will soon offer additional models equipped with the new Dolby processor, to be announced later this year.

Then again, Yamaha's higher-end receivers have had height, aka "Presence," channels for years. Those extra speakers supplement the sound from the front speakers with ambient effects produced by Yamaha's proprietary Cinema DSP, which provides various multichannel configurations up to 11 channels. Obviously, Dolby's Pro Logic IIz uses different technology, though the end result may be similar. … Read more

I'm not sure why, but there's a never-ending stream of articles cheering on vinyl's comeback. I guess if it's a slow news day, editors can't resist plugging in yet another story about booming LP sales, and they always claim something along the lines of "Kids are digging the grooves, they've seen the light, and now crave analog sound!"

Puh-leeze!

Don't get me wrong; I wish it were true. Maybe in some alternative universe, vinyl is flying off the shelves, and kids are ditching their iPods and buying turntables.

Back here on the Earth we know and love, 2008 sales of LPs were up 89 percent, from 990,000 in '07 to 1.88 million in '08. That's hardly a boom, now that CD sales are in the hundreds of millions. The best-selling LP of 2008 was Radiohead's "In Rainbows," which sold a piddling 28,800 platters. Second-place honors went to another British band, The Beatles, which sold 16,500 "Abbey Road" LPs. If those numbers are accurate, and Radiohead's Thom Yorke and company were trying to live off LP sales, they'd have to get day jobs.

So sure, there's more and more new and reissue vinyl, and that's great, but only a teensy-weensy number of people buy new vinyl. Most of my vinyl-loving buddies regularly score free records on the street, or pay a buck or two for used vinyl to play on their megabucks high-end turntables. Again, no problem there, but it's not the same as a true vinyl resurgence. That's just media hype.

I love vinyl because it looks cool and sounds great. I own around 4,000 LPs. And I'm hoping that the vinyl revival keeps growing. But the market for physical media--CDs and LPs--has nowhere to go but down. More than anything else, people want cheap or free music, playable anywhere they want. … Read more

We're getting close to the day when a major artist or group releases a download-only album. Maybe it'll be the next Rolling Stones or Sufjan Stevens album. That'll be a dark day.

Just last week, I went to my local record store to pick up "Hemispheres," the new release of Bill Frisell and Jim Hall, a jazz guitar duo. I left the store empty-handed.

Next, I checked on Amazon.com. It stocked the album in MP3 format only. Great, but I refuse to pay $17.98 for a crappy-sounding MP3.

Next, I checked the record … Read more

Devore Fidelity, founded by president and chief designer John DeVore in 2000, builds state-of-the-art speakers in the Brooklyn borough of New York.

DeVore is one of the few speaker designers I've met who worked as a high-end audio salesman, so he can draw upon first-hand knowledge of what buyers really want. He's also listened to the very best stuff out there, and learned that components that measure well and sound impressive at first don't always sound great over the long run.

I've known John for a long time, and when he first decided to get into … Read more

Mastering engineers, like Alan Silverman of Arf! Mastering, make music sound better.

Of course, by the time the mastering engineer gets to hear the music, it's already been recorded, mixed, and fussed over by at least one recording engineer, record producer, and the band for weeks, months or even years.

The mastering engineer brings a fresh set of ears to the project and (hopefully) the necessary skill set to eke out the very best from the music. Silverman has mastered music by Norah Jones, Keith Richards, Dolly Parton, and Rufus Wainwright.

When I visited Silverman a few weeks ago, he was finishing work on Medeski, Martin, and Wood's upcoming CD, "Radiolarians 2." I'm a big fan of MM&W's free-form funk jazz, and these guys always make great-sounding recordings. It figures Silverman is involved with the upcoming CD.

I heard from friends that Silverman's newly updated playback system is not only super accurate, it sounds like an audiophile system. That sort of truth and beauty are a rare combination so I brought along some of my reference recordings and was thrilled by the sound. Silverman uses Revel Ultima Studio2 speakers and a McIntosh MC252 power amplifier.

Of course, in the real world just a handful of people are listening over a system like that. So for Silverman, "It's about how the music 'translates.'" A great mastering engineer knows how to make the music sound the best it can over all sorts of systems, played back in differing environments: headphones, car audio, plastic computer speakers, and high-end audio systems.

That's why Silverman hopes he will soon be doing multiple versions of a recording: a highly compressed mix for iPod or car, an uncompressed CD quality version for home listening, and a high-resolution one for audiophiles.

But now that so many bands are recording themselves mastering engineers play an even more crucial role in making the most of the music. When I asked if recordings ever come in that are so awful Silverman turns them away, he said "No, not at all, although in rare cases one of the best things you can do for client is advise them to do a remix. In general, though it's easier to make a poor recording sound better than improve a recording that's already really great. With those you worry if you're really making them better or just different. In those cases sometimes even the smallest tweaks add extra dimension and life to the music." Toby Wright, 3Doors Down's producer, uses Silverman and raved about his work: "So much better, it's silly."… Read more

The Audiophiliac's primary mission is turning readers on to high-quality audio products and great music, but today, it's more about super lo-fi.

Google's YouTube has loads of wacky videos on how to make cheap speakers. Check out my favorite so far, "How to Create a High-Def Speaker for Under a Buck," right. It doesn't work, but it's the most entertaining.

After that, watch "Attempting to Make a Homemade Speaker for Under a Buck." It's a response to that first one.

If you really want to give speaker building a try, … Read more