And as a fee bonus: how fascinating it would be able to (almost) do a direct comparison between reality and recording.

What’s this about choral singing?

Barbershop is a worldwide phenomenon, begun in the US of course, where men sing in four part harmony. A particular, narrow range of distinctive chords is what separates them from other part singing.

Most men would sing “Lead.” That’s how you sing the tune in the bathroom. Easy. Above that there’s the Tenor, whose undies. are too tight. At the bottom is the Bass. It’s the foundation. All ‘real’ men think they sing bass, and can growl down there if they try, but it doesn’t project beyond their shoes. Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett sing in the comfort range of most men’s voices, or Lead. Below that is the Baritone (called “Barri”) and when he’s getting it right, nobody hears him. Beautiful invisible filling-in.

Actually, that’s the secret of most choral singing, blending. People say “I couldn’t be a choir singer, I don’t have a good voice.” But that’s not how it works. The BeeGees (aka Heeby Jeebies) coalesce. They don’t want people to stick out. If you can blend with the person next to you, that’s ideal. NOTE: Unless they’re singing a different part, then it’s harder. Much. To sing properly, you have to listen hard. Surveys have made a fascinating correlation: communities where people sing together say that they have a better quality of life. Some find Barbershop fascinating and admirable, but nailing “Down by the Old Mill Stream” can be less satisfying than the broader choral repertoire. In barbershop, the fraternal camaraderie is such that you can be anywhere in the world, and get a group going. Everyone knows all the songs.

How do you learn to sing parts? The hard thing is to unlearn the “tune” and you get that by repetition. The best way is to take away a cassette of your part (CD-R nowadays?) prepared by the leader and play it in the car, singing. At traffic lights, people hear you sing “Bye bye Blackbird” and it’s not even in tune. At practice, a piano might thump out your line, and with your section, you try to nail it, to get it into your head while the ones with the easy parts laugh. Darned lead, always putting you off. . Reading the dots is a bit of a reminder too, but they try to get you away from relying on it, to be able to read the conductor’s face and hands.

They get together en masse, but will also split into fours. Women do their own same thing and there’s a CD of “the Sweet Adelines” in shops around town. To get into one of those choruses you need to be able to sing in tune (and before laughing, check yourself by singing “Happy Birthday” out loud as a test.) Most people don’t go up or down the full step, ending up somewhere different from where they should. While practising, the conductor blows a starting note on a pitchpipe, kind of a mouth-organ with just one octave of notes. At the finish, he’ll blow the desired finishing note and the degree of wander from it can be a worry. Or not, and there’s jubilation.

Hearing the full chorus of the Melbournaires in rehearsal, it would be difficult not to be impressed; first the spine-tingling chords, then the “mucking about” with the tempo and dynamics, also the precision of a group in full voice. There’s power there, man! Finally for bonus points, choreography brings contact with the audience, and coaches teach hand and feet movements until they get them off Pat. Pat is one of the best.

Problem: As the meeting approached we were told that David’s quartet from The Melbournaires couldn’t make it. But they could recommend another group, “Bon Acchord, they’re on the Net” On the telephone that’s easy, but try to find them when you don’t know the spelling. Good fun. Bingo! “Would you be prepared to sing for us?” “Sure.” And they agreed to letting us record the event. Phew. Standard practice for arranging General Meetings.

Bring on Bon Acchord

The night arrives, with some trepidation. Will it be refreshing to listen to live music for a change? Yes. Wow!. What a surprise. Stagecraft. Precision. Stunning chords. Most of us were sitting on the front of our seats catching every nuance. What was the best? “Bye bye blackbird” was perhaps the most rewarding (and difficult?). Afterwards, they explained, that piece wasn’t traditional Barbershop. There’s Barbershop and there’s A Cappella (‘from the Chapel’ ) which is also unaccompanied part singing. The second diverges more widely from the traditional and recognisable barbershop harmonies. Anyway, the program, which included “I still call Australia home” done barbershop-wise, the expected oldies, as well as plenty of amiable patter and clever repartee and general bonhomie was a delight to all. Not least the singers, who said, “when you go for a chord and it ‘locks’ and sounds just right, that’s what it’s all about. Ant that night they had more locks than Pentridge.

A Cappella

Perhaps the best known group singing that style would be Manhattan Transfer, and one of their best is “Vocalese” in which they do vocal versions of famous jazz pieces. Then there are the Hi-Lo’s who were top of the pops in the fifties and still devastatingly exciting. They’ll knock your ears off. It’s like classical string quartet music, or like Charlie Parker. His thing was to get more good musical events concentrated into every bar. Check out the Hi-Lo’s on the Net (sorry about the errant apostrophe-but try finding them on the Net without) and more recently, Singers Unlimited. Then there’s a local group with a delicious name, The Banana Blenders (from Queensland, of course). Like everything, there’s an e-newsletter from John Neal, a merchandiser who sells only A Cappella music: called Primarily A Cappella at harmony@singers.com or: e-mail to “Online Buyer’s Club” obc-l@majordomo.singers.com to subscribe, or as they say, Check out our web site at http://www.singers.com

Not quite ALL about recording digitally

A bonus for the night was an attempt to record the group, and even perhaps hear a playback of the result over a hifi system. But we know Murphy.

With Doug’s microphone-audaciously homebuilt-hopefully catching it all in his pocket-sized MiniDisk recorder, and Lucas perched over his infernal IBM machine we had middling-high hopes for something half-decent to come out of the evening. Lucas was taking the same line feed and making a file direct into his computer. “Direct-To-Disk.” Bold. Fruitless, alas. After saving 100 Megabytes of musical information (but before the end,) Windows flashed the extremely user un-friendly “Blue screen of death.” His machine said “enough” as it couldn’t keep up with the Analogue to Digital conversion and writing it to memory. Everything was lost, sad to say, but would Digital Doug come through with the bits?

Doug Digs Digital

He sure did. “I have here in my hand a tiny disc (a MiniDisk) which has captured very bit of tonight’s performance. Anybody want to hear it?” Y-E-S! Was it any good? YES!! And you could see on the faces of Bon Acchord how impressed they were. Bravo! Digital Doug. Dynamics preserved, no overloading, no under-recording (which loses bit-resolution) and most wonderfully surprising, accurate tonality.

A party piece of Barry H at one past GM was to play the voice of Gordon Holt reading into twenty different professional microphones. And how different those microphones sounded. Which makes Doug’s result a real blast. And the December disk was just a prototype. Doug works on the digits at home, doing a frequency correction for the response deviations in his microphone. Then he ran off a CD for the fellows at Bon Acchord, which is a most polite thing to do and you can bet they’re thrilled by it. You want to hear how good? Then come along to the next GM and hear it thru top gear including the mighty Yamaha NS-1000 monitors.

Picky people say that MiniDisk can’t be any good. It’s a lossy medium. To get so much data onto a small disk, over 80% (yikes!) of the music is discarded “If something is happening loud, the soft bits below it are inaudible.” .Sure, and if you’d like to give me most of your money, you won’t notice any loss. DAT on the other hand keeps the whole lot, so it must sound far better, no? And a crummy cassette will be the ummm pits. Well blow me down, the psychoacousticians know a thing or two MiniDisk, DAT and a <good> cassette all sound in the same league. Not as good as Lucas or Barry or Jim’s venerable Revox G-36 valve tape recorders though. Ain’t technology wonderful.

Cards ain’t cards

Doug’s digital conversion takes place in his MiniDisk recorder. (aha! That’s where the religious experience happened.) Lucas uses a Sound Blaster Live! card, which some people whose ears I trust say is plenty good enough. However…though they’ve improved through the generations as sound processors, they’re not used by professionals for the ADC (Analogue to Digital Conversion) process.. If you want an argument, first go to Arny Kruger’s graphs at. www.pcavtech.com It’s his very audio-professional web site with technical reviews of over 50 PC sound cards. What stands out is differences in distortion, and in noise. Of course the noisiest place in the universe is inside a computer. Radio Frequency Interference is notoriously high, and to demonstrate it, listen to an AM radio as it approaches the nasty noise generator. How noisome is the noise? How long is a piece of interconnect? Obviating that can be done by having a stand-alone Analogue to Digital processor doing its job separated from the computer. That’s Honours stuff.

Burn baby, burn*

Writing (burning) one-off CDs is a common practise now among people with a computer nowadays, and isn’t that your grandmother? The commonest is to copy from one music CD to another-perhaps to make a compilation of one’s favourite tracks for in-car listening. The copyright police would look pretty silly gaoling you for that. Plenty more go to live rock concerts with a MiniDisk recorder and a microphone hidden under their coat, and get pretty knowledgeable about microphones. The third practise is to dub a favourite out-of-print vinyl LP to CD, once again for personal use only. This type is the trickiest, as it isn’t simply a digital-digital process, so interests we audiophiles. For ongoing tuition, one can follow the CD-R newsgroups discussions, from cdr@nt.navpoint.com.

Obviously then one should buy an $800 Philips CDR-870 or Panasonic all in one CD-writing box? Sorry, no, assembling your own computer-based audiophile system gives audibly better results. The guys on the Analogue Addicts # Internet discussion group have spoken. The technical word for those easy-peasy boxes is “crappy.” Oh, and they need to be fed blank CDs that have been pre-formatted for recording music on them. They cost more. You’re a pirate, so poor Michael Jackson must benefit.

Cheaper cards (the device that slots into a computer to do the digital conversion) add distortion and background noise. How intolerable it is of course depends on the rest of your system. Noise becomes troublesome with musos, who build up layers while composing on the keyboard to computer. How much worse are the cheap ones? Depends on who you ask, which is like how do you evaluate a movie review. You have to estimate the opinion / ears of the reviewer. “I can’t hear any difference between expensive gear and what I have, so it’s all a scam” is the universal cry of those with inferior equipment, we cognoscenti smirk ;-) . I do get the feeling that the sort of people who I’d trust, say it’s well worth spending a bit.

And the name that keeps coming up is not Creative Systems, the Sound Blaster people, but Turtle Beach. See www.voyestra.com & www.aventec.com They’re derived from pro sound, not from games & effects. Sound Blasters are there to add reverb and thunder and gunshots, and to have libraries of midi sounds like Mantovani’s string orchestra. My purpose was exactly as yours, to dub from LP to CD, and I came to the Turtle Beach Montego II card, which I got for $A170 locally, quite a lot less than the main Oz distributor (Moore Music) wanted, but more than the US price. However I became discouraged when two US companies couldn’t care about my order. Pity, as they were quoting $USfar less, + post. I got good help from somebody who knows sound, computers and service. and his price was W-A-Y below Moore Music, who have an expensive reputation in the musos trade. Graeme Spratling is the man, at Jet Stream Computing, 2 Wingrove St, Alphington, 9429.3779.

It will make an interesting Equipment experience, comparing it with say Doug T’s Sound Blaster, at some $100 less. Stir: Doug thinks digits is digits, but we know better don’t we? Hehehe.

One other point: SCSI is better. It’s a way of connecting computer components and it allows a more secure data stream to the written CD, with less risk of creating “coasters.” What proportion of them get wrecked thru data over-run? Not many really if you record at 2x. And SCSI costs more. Use Adaptek or Nero programs as editors, Cool Edit Pro to take out clicks and pops (else perfect noise forever) and watch out for the huge dynamic range of vinyl while recording. Those peaks will bite yer bum.

The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) by Andy McFadden at http://www.fadden.com tells ALL about writing CDs. And just for a start, not all CD-burners sound the same. Surprised?

Peter A

At the November general meeting we again had the pleasure of Bev and Ian Hooper of Rockian presenting their latest CD’s with the support of local equipment manufacturers Redgum Electronics and Osborn Loudspeakers.

First up Ian treated us to a comparison between quality CDs and stereo sound from the Chesky Records 96kHz/24Bit DVD Superaudio disc releases.

Chesky Records have recently introduced the world’s first commercial releases of 96Khz/24Bit Superaudio DVD. Utilising the 24 Bit capability the DVD soundtrack, Chesky Records are releasing DVD discs that enable the listener to enjoy a superbly recorded 96Khz/24Bit stereo soundtrack which accurately conveys every little nuance of the performance. These recordings were originally recorded in the 96Khz/24Bit format and have been transferred to the DVD discs at the same superior standard.

Even with the difficult acoustics of the Willis Room to my ears the sound of these new discs was smooth and sweet with better sound staging and imaging than the normal 16 Bit versions.

We then heard a new re release from the popular Sheffield Labs Label and some of the latest recordings from labels like DMP, Dorian Recordings and Chesky Records.

Ian played a wide variety of discs including the following new releases as posted on the excellent Rockian Web page:

DORIAN RECORDINGS xCD-90277 - OF KNIGHTS AND CASTLES:- Burning River Brass.
DORIAN RECORDINGS DOR-90279 - THE MAD BUCKGOAT: Ancient Music of Ireland - The Baltimore Consort.
DORIAN RECORDINGS DOR-93186 - THE LITTLE BARLEY-CORNE: Winter Revels from the Renaissance - The Toronto Consort.
DORIAN RECORDINGS DOR-93190 - BALLADS OF THE SEPHARDIC JEWS - Sarband.
CHESKY RECORDS CD 190 - THE UNKNOWN PIAZZOLLA - Allison Brewster Franzetti, piano.
DORIAN RECORDINGS DOR-90272 - DANSE ROYALE: Music of the Baroque French Court and Theatre - Chatham Baroque.
DORIAN RECORDINGS DOR-90274 - THE VICTORY OF SANTIAGO: Voices of Renaissance Spain - The Concord Ensemble.
DORIAN RECORDINGS DOR-90275 - DOWN CAME AN ANGEL: Music for Christmas - Jacqueline Schwab, Piano.
DORIAN RECORDINGS DOR-93183 2CD set - J.S.BACH; CHRISTMAS ORATORIO - Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Bach Festival Orc., Greg Funfgeld
DORIAN RECORDINGS DOR-93187 - SHVEDOV: Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom - Slavyanka, Men’s Russian Chorus, Aleksei Shipovalnikov.
CHESKY RECORDS JD 186 TROPICANA NIGHTS - Paquito D’Rivera
DMP CD-526 & MAS CD-805 dts - SACRED FEAST - Gaudeamus, Paul Halley, Director.

Ian M

On Wednesday 20th October at the Willis we were treated to Graeme Huon’s presentation of the future of multi channel sound and some of the new technologies that Whise have developed to overcome the technical difficulties involved in delivering these new sound formats. Later in the evening we saw a rare video interview with famous Australian audio engineer Neville Theile.

As it turns out Whise have just returned from a whirl wind tour of the USA delivering their message to the THX market while riding on the leading edge of technical innovation in electro acoustic engineering and design.

Still hot on his heals from the USA trip Graeme delivered to us a well prepared, logical and concise presentation on a range of key topics covering the history of recorded sound, 5.1 multi channel sound and beyond, bass envelopment and concert spatialisation so as to illustrate how Whise fit into the big picture with their new PAM technology.

According to Whise we are in the midst of an on going 10 year product market life cycle where new ideas are first generated, the technologies to make it happen are then developed and finally consumer education and market take up. For this reason the idea of say THX and 5.1 has been around for a while (since the late 80’s) but most of us are only just getting around to buy it. As audiophiles and a key user group in this field we need to be not only aware and literate of the latest advances in audio but also mindful of the settling in time required for the industry music chain to get it right so as not to pass off the advances as gimmicks in the early stages.

Graeme went on to highlight the importance of bass envelopment and concert spatialisation which is terminology used to associate low frequency information and the effects of the acoustic environment with the listeners perception of where the sound is coming from in space. Without getting lost in endless audio techno jargon…. what this means is the more the listener is surrounded by an even array of sound sources the higher the level of realism in terms of recreating the original acoustic perceptions.

All this creates a reason for innovation and Whise have been busy partnering with key players in the multi channel sound industry such as the THM Corporation (for Tomlinson. M Holman) people to develop what is now known as WhiseTHM 10.2. If most of you are familiar with 5.1, that is three front full range speakers, two rear full range speakers and a dedicated (ELF) subwoofer, then the Whise THM 10.2 is the next step.

Effectively 10.2 extends the THX envelop to include the addition full range speakers for height so you now have upper and lower front left and right, centre and the same for the rear plus stereo subwoofers! Until recently technical limitations stopped the correct decoding and control of the various signal paths but Whise and the THM folks have come up the electronic black box to make it all work and recently conducted the Whise THM 10.2 demonstration in Las Vegas.

The feedback from those present at the demonstration fully substantiates the requirement for the addition speakers according to Graeme. This is good news for speaker and amp manufacturers like Whise, but I suspect bad if your running out of floor space like me or the WAF factor to consider.

Given the need for additional subwoofers and full range loudspeakers Whise have done some very thorough research into low frequency reproduction and have come up with new design tool dubbed Parametric Acoustic Modelling (PAM) which is a new milestone (developed by Graeme Huon and Greg Cambrell) along side the tried and proven Thiele-Small loudspeakers enclose design techniques. The benefits of PAM include 4 to 5 dB higher efficiency, lower distortion, precise control of frequency response, control of frequency response independent of group delay and the ability to make group delay very low according to Whise.

As PAM requires a very technical explanation as to its inner workings Graeme has indicated that he is more than happy to deliver a dedicated presentation for us on this topic some time in the new year.

To create low frequencies to THX specification requires enormous dynamic headroom and the Whise subwoofers incorporate a specially tooled heavy duty bass driver made by Melbourne loudspeaker manufacturer Loranz. Some of the specifications for these drivers include less than 1% low frequency distortion (normally about 10% for bass drivers), a 2 inch throw, a 600 watt voice coil and magnetic flux control rings on the pole piece.

We then heard a three way active loudspeaker from Whise incorporating PAM design modelling. Playing a variety of program material my impression was of one of solidarity and punch with zero overhang and an awe inspiring neutrality which makes them great for all kinds of music and of course THX. Running straight from a CD player some listeners may have been unnerved by the clarity and impact of these boxes which when compared to the accustomed warmth of the traditional valve sound could be interpreted as slightly clinical (but that is often the price for accuracy).

Even with the speakers atop one metre tables so as to get good projection down to the rear sets the bass went low and clean with plenty of muscle in reserve. Because these speakers incorporate their own amps, a total of three 60 watt units per box and an active crossover, there are no power losses as with passive networks, the crossovers between the drivers are smoother and in theory there is much lower intermodulation distortion.

Towards the end of the evening we settled down to view a video interview with famous Australian audio engineer Neville Thiele. In the interview Theile spoke with an insight, depth and perspective on the science of audio which made me realise that the work we had just witnessed of Graeme Huon and Greg Cambrell of Whise Precision Audio was in fact the next major milestone leading on from Theile’s original design techniques.

Our thanks to Graeme Huone and his team at Whise Precision Audio for a fascinating presentation of their technologies and products. We wish him well in his efforts to market these fine technologies to the multi channel sound industry.

By Ian M.

On Wednesday 15^th September at the Willis Room we were treated to Ian Robinson’s presentation of Redgum Audio products. Ian is an inspired and accomplished speaker, and he provided a fascinating story of the evolution of his HiFi business and the development of Redgum amplifiers. He also demonstrated each of his products, proving to any doubting MAC members that Solid State - and in particular Mosfet - designs can be sonically excellent and full of energy.

He began by explaining that he had started out 25 years ago as a retailer, at various times had produced loudspeakers and only quite recently had moved solely into amp manufacture. Ian’s retail business started in Brighton, moving after a couple of years to Hawthorn, and the business spent a great deal of time on repair, seeing the whole range of amplifier problems from the seventies, eighties and nineties.

Ian warmed to the topic of amplifier design by explaining that he had seen many silly, avoidable mistakes in consumer hi-fi amplifiers over the years, and had mused long and hard over ‘a better mousetrap’. Realising that the mass production techniques of Japanese brands was almost impossible to best, he resolved that if he ever one day branched into amplifier manufacture he would be forced to compete not on price, but on quality and reliability.

In the early nineties, when the Redgum designs were prototyped, Ian spent considerable effort on the stability issues of conventional mosfet amplifiers and eventually hit on swapping the gate/source capacitors over from the N type devices to the P type. This was a serendipitous discovery, and flies in the face of convention, but works very well with all Redgum amps displaying high slew rates and unconditional stability - even into heavily capacitive loads.

Ian had been appalled with how easy it was to destroy the output stages of modern hi-fi amplifiers, and marvelled at the complexity of the protection circuits which were often ineffective anyway. He resolved to devise a better way, and after careful discussion with his transformer manufacturer was able to specify a transformer which delivered a limited, sustained current in the event of a short circuit which would not destroy the output devices. All Redgum amplifiers can withstand short circuited outputs at full power - a valuable feature too often ignored on much more expensive amplifiers.

The Redgum RGCD2 is a high quality CD player featuring a uniquely serviceable and upgradeable replacement drive. This enables the transport, including the laser, to be replaced by a readily obtainable transport from a Personal Computer CD-ROM - at very low cost. The quality of the design automatically compensates any deficiencies in the transport with clever electronics, and according to Ian there are absolutely no penalties.

This is a novel approach to the manufacture of a HiFi CD player, but by way of confirmation the sonics of the complete system gave nothing away to ultra-expensive players.

Ian informed us that the Digital to Analogue Convertor (DAC) uses the high quality Burr-Brown PCM1710U Dual 20 bit Digital to Analogue chip with audiophile grade support components. This is configured for 8 times over-sampling, a digital filter, multilevel Delta-Sigma DAC, and an analogue low pass filter. The player achieves 92db THD+Noise and 98db Dynamic range with 110db signal to noise ratio. The digital circuitry was designed by Jon De Sensi of MusicLabs, another Melbourne company. Cabinet finish is solid redgum wood front panel, textured black steel chassis & cover. The audio output uses gold RCA connectors at the rear.

All Redgum amplifiers are visually distinctive with a redgum front panel, a lockable key switch (a useful feature for those who jealously guard their hi-fis!). An unusual feature is the dual mono volume controls using high quality, conductive plastic potentiometers.

The REDGUM RGi60 is a 60W x 2 integrated power amplifier/passive preamp capable of 60 + 60 Watt RMS into 8ohms continuous sine wave at the onset of clipping with less than 0.009% THD at all levels below clipping.

The Redgum 175w monoblocks include a passive preamp and produce a power Output of 175 + 175 Watt RMS into 8ohms continuous sine wave at the onset of clipping with less than 0.009% THD at all levels below clipping. This amplifier also uses a super quiet fan on its purpose-designed heatsink.

The Redgum RGS38I floor standing Loudspeaker features an attractive red gum wood veneer and a bass reflex, twin rear ported design. The 2-way, three driver system, employs a 25mm soft dome tweeter, and two 165mm polypropylene woofer/midranges with a combined frequency range of 28hz-20khz and a sensitivity of 94db/W/m, and a nominal impedance of 6 ohms. The crossover point is 2.8kHz woofer to tweeter and suggested amplifier power in the range 50 to 200Wrms. These speakers include BI-wiring as standard and five way gold binding post. The crossover uses polypropylene capacitors, air-cored inductors, wire wound resistors and a lead shot Chamber.

The Redgum equipment performed very well throughout the evening easily filling the Willis room with sound at high levels. At lower levels, which would be extremely loud for the average listening room, the equipment showed no hint of strain - a difficult feat in a revealing venue. At very high, almost deafening levels there were occasional hints of overload, but the amplifier was clearly working to maximum output and the overall performance must be judged excellent.

Initially Ian demonstrated a Chinese percussion sound track especially chosen for its ‘difficulty’. We were amazed with the authority and bass impact of the amplifiers and speakers, and wondered how such impact could be produced by such drivers of such modest dimension. At times light fittings could be heard resonating as the Willis Room approached low frequency saturation point. I was struck by the life which emanated from the speakers; this system had strong vigour. There was no sense of ‘flatness’, so common a problem with most Solid State systems I have heard.

A broad variety of program material was played throughout the evening, covering most of the musical genres. If asked to sum up the sound I would say that the amplifiers are very truthful, with perhaps a hint of dryness in the top end. The midrange is well balanced, and the bass astonishing. On very heavy passages, far above normal listening levels, there is almost imperceptible intermodulation, but this system is overall very detailed and clean. The immediacy or attack on steep wave forms was impressive while the amps maintained a sense of utter clarity on whatever we played indicating immense control and transparency. There was some depth in the sound stage - a credible achievement for a mosfet amplifier in my experience - but the real strength lay in the portrayal of instrumentation detail as though everything was close miked.

The overall impression was of outstanding value for money, and system versatility suitable for both hi-fi and home theatre, with the happy combination of detail and attack required for both.

Our thanks to Ian Robinson of Redgum Amplifiers for a fine demonstration, a fascinating talk, and an excellent opportunity to assess these fine Australian Audio products. We wish him well exporting these fine products.