Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Tess Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the King of Vinyl himself, Michael Kremer,
Speaker 1: also Audio Equipment Viewer Extraordinaire. Michael. Good to have you.
Speaker 1: Great to be here with you, Bob, really great. Okay,
Speaker 1: first question is we're reading all about these issues of
Speaker 1: vinyl production. You know, plants being burned up, shutting down.
Speaker 1: Is there an issue with vinyl production? Well, the big
Speaker 1: issue was supposedly when the Apollo lacquer fire happened. So
Speaker 1: Apollo is it was the major supplier. We thought of lacquers.
Speaker 1: Lacquers are needed to make records. So you take a
Speaker 1: lacquer and you put it on a lathe and the
Speaker 1: lacquer gets cut and the grooves are in the lacquer.
Speaker 1: Then that gets plated and it turns into a stamper
Speaker 1: and you make records. So there was a company called
Speaker 1: Transco that was right near me in Elizabeth, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: like in the early nineties, and I went to visit
Speaker 1: them and saw they make lacquers. Then Apollo in California
Speaker 1: bought trans Go and put the two plants in one
Speaker 1: plant in California, and I said at the time, what
Speaker 1: if there is an earthquake, What if something happens, then
Speaker 1: you lose everything. So they didn't have an earthquake. But
Speaker 1: what happened was there was a huge fire there and
Speaker 1: it burnt the place almost to the ground. And everybody
Speaker 1: wondered where the lacquer is gonna come from? And that's
Speaker 1: gonna stop the whole industry from making records. But in
Speaker 1: the meantime, there was a Japanese company that was making
Speaker 1: laquers and they were making more than we thought, and
Speaker 1: so they stepped up to the plate and there was
Speaker 1: no problem with laquers. The big problem today is not
Speaker 1: enough pressing plants, not enough capacity, because the record business,
Speaker 1: the vinyl business has just gone gangbusters this year. It's
Speaker 1: been it's amazing what's happened this year? Okay, so to
Speaker 1: what degree does the means of production lagged the demand? Uh,
Speaker 1: there's not enough presses and so UH for example, Verve
Speaker 1: and UH and Acoustics Sounds got together and did a
Speaker 1: whole reissue series of great records on the Impulse and
Speaker 1: and Verve record label. So they ordered X number of
Speaker 1: records of let's say, John Coltrane's a love supreme and ballots.
Speaker 1: That was one month's output. They put two records out
Speaker 1: a month, so they pressed up X number of copies.
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to say how many they were, but
Speaker 1: there were a lot, a lot more than I thought. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those sold out almost immediately, and so Verve asked for
Speaker 1: another pressing and they couldn't press them because they had
Speaker 1: other commitments. The guy that owns the pressing plant, which
Speaker 1: is q RP in Salina, Kansas, um he said he
Speaker 1: could press doors and beatles seven and keep the praise going.
Speaker 1: But he can't do that, of course, because there are
Speaker 1: orders for other things. So the problem now is there
Speaker 1: are a lot of big pressing plants, but they're they're
Speaker 1: completely booked. So how many pressing plants are there in
Speaker 1: the world. Well, there's a number of really big ones.
Speaker 1: Uh So this record industry in the Netherland. In the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, well probably the early nineties, Sony decided
Speaker 1: this is a this is an elephant for pressing plant.
Speaker 1: Were records are going away, we have this huge plant.
Speaker 1: The infrastructure of a record pressing planet includes giant boilers,
Speaker 1: the heat water piping presses that are big, heavy things.
Speaker 1: And they said we've got to get rid of this
Speaker 1: place and the cost of disassembling everything and probably more
Speaker 1: than what the building costs. So a guy I know
Speaker 1: came along and said to Sony, I'll tell you what,
Speaker 1: let's work out a fair market value for the real
Speaker 1: estate and the building. I'll take care of getting all
Speaker 1: the rest of this junk out of here. And Sony
Speaker 1: figured they had a sucker on the line and they
Speaker 1: made the deal with him, and that guy, Taan Vermillion,
Speaker 1: now owns a free pressing plant in Harlem, the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the biggest in the world. So
Speaker 1: they press a huge number of records there every year.
Speaker 1: So that's a big one. There's a u RP in Nashville,
Speaker 1: they press a lot of records. There's MPO in France.
Speaker 1: There's um so, there's a There's a dozen plants, and
Speaker 1: then a lot of small ones that have opened up.
Speaker 1: You know. Jack White, a third man, has a pressing
Speaker 1: plant in Detroit, so he's got six or seven presses.
Speaker 1: There's Furnace in Virginia. He just opened a big, big plant. Uh.
Speaker 1: This q RP in Salina, Kansas. There's r t I
Speaker 1: in California, so there I'm finding out about new pressing
Speaker 1: plants all the time. I get emails from people saying
Speaker 1: they're pressing records. So I did a survey of of
Speaker 1: pressing plants and asked them how many records they pressed
Speaker 1: last year. I didn't get the participation that I desired
Speaker 1: this year for some reason. But from the pressing plants
Speaker 1: that did respond, fifty million LPs were pressed from those plants,
Speaker 1: and so my my estimate is over a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty million records were pressed easily last year. Okay, you
Speaker 1: talk about the number of presses. You say they have
Speaker 1: six presses. How many records can six presses produce? Well, again,
Speaker 1: it depends on the on the type of press It
Speaker 1: is because some of the presses work faster on the others.
Speaker 1: Some of them work slower than others. A pressing cycle
Speaker 1: should be a couple of minutes, so you know, do
Speaker 1: the math. A couple of minutes to press a record.
Speaker 1: You keep the pressed running eight hours a day. Um,
Speaker 1: some presses, some presses are running running three three shifts
Speaker 1: eight hours a day. You know, so three shifts, eight
Speaker 1: hour shifts, that's twenty four hours. You can you can
Speaker 1: do the math. I'm ath lexics. Don't expect me to
Speaker 1: do the math and add that up for you. I
Speaker 1: can't do it. Just to be clear, I've been to
Speaker 1: a pressing plant Rainbow Records. It used to be in
Speaker 1: Santa Monica. When you talk about a minute, it didn't
Speaker 1: seem like it was a minute just to make one record.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about the whole process? You're literally saying
Speaker 1: a minute to make both sides. Well, it's both sides
Speaker 1: get pressed at the same time. So so what happens
Speaker 1: is a biscuit goes in a molten biscuit, the press
Speaker 1: comes down, it stays close for at least a minute,
Speaker 1: at least a minute, then it opens up. Then the
Speaker 1: record gets moved off the press. Then it goes to
Speaker 1: a machine that slices the flash away from a on
Speaker 1: the record, and then that record goes into a bin
Speaker 1: or slides down a thing into into a pile of records.
Speaker 1: It's over a minute. Let's go back to the heyday
Speaker 1: of vinyl. There was a big issue whether it was
Speaker 1: virgin vinyl re grind uh. Some labels like Atlantic were
Speaker 1: known for having especially poor pressings. Then we had our
Speaker 1: c A with the dina Flex record to what degree
Speaker 1: is the issue of purity still in the mix, and
Speaker 1: to what degree does thickness affect the ultimate recording. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, records got bad in the seventies when there
Speaker 1: was an oil crisis, if you remember, and so they
Speaker 1: were melting down whatever was plastic that could melt, you know,
Speaker 1: big pens, whatever they could melt to make into a record.
Speaker 1: So a lot of bad records. But it's not fair
Speaker 1: to go after Atlantic because Atlantic pressed records at Presswell
Speaker 1: at Monarch. Atlantic was one of the only labels that
Speaker 1: would tell you where the record you're buying is pressed
Speaker 1: that so you could buy a led Zeppelin record press
Speaker 1: that Monarch or a press Well. And there were connoisseurs
Speaker 1: today of press Well records or Monarch records of different
Speaker 1: pressing plans. But at any rate, most today our virgin vinyl.
Speaker 1: But there are some presses that believe that some of
Speaker 1: the regrind should be used it makes a better record.
Speaker 1: But what they do is if their record is badly pressed,
Speaker 1: they don't throw it away. They take the record and
Speaker 1: they put it in a machine that pops out the
Speaker 1: label that was created, and they grind it up and
Speaker 1: use it again. And that's still considered you know, to me,
Speaker 1: that's still virgin vinyl. Essentially, it's not it's not really
Speaker 1: used vinyl. Okay, Now, is anybody making new pressing machines. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are a number of new pressing machines. So there's
Speaker 1: a company in Canada making new presses. There's a company
Speaker 1: in Germany making new presses too. Lex Alpha was one
Speaker 1: of the big modern presses of the end of the
Speaker 1: vinyl era. You know, in the eighties they started making
Speaker 1: these really efficient quick presses, lightweight, and then they went
Speaker 1: out of business. And then uh Of, one of the
Speaker 1: developers started getting requests that started, like in the nineties,
Speaker 1: getting requests for parts and will you maybe make a
Speaker 1: new press, and so he organized the company. He got
Speaker 1: the blueprints because they didn't exist, they were on paper,
Speaker 1: the blueprints. He got the blueprints and started making presses again.
Speaker 1: And those are not called Phoenix Alpha. So there are
Speaker 1: many many new presses you can buy, and there are
Speaker 1: small pressing plans opening up all over the place. Of
Speaker 1: this one in Austin, Texas, there's one that just opened
Speaker 1: in Asheville, North Carolina. A single press. It's like it's
Speaker 1: a boutique press. So local bands can go in there
Speaker 1: and get their albums pressed on vinyl. And these places
Speaker 1: are all really busy right now. Everything everybody's booked up solid.
Speaker 1: How about lathes to actually cut the lacquers, Well, that's
Speaker 1: that's an issue. Uh. There are no new lathes being made,
Speaker 1: but right now there are a sufficient number around uh,
Speaker 1: so that's not a problem. The problem is actually the
Speaker 1: cutting style. That's a difficult thing. There's not too many
Speaker 1: people in ad to make those. So the entire infrastructure
Speaker 1: of record pressing, from the beginning to the end, there
Speaker 1: are hitches in the line. But so far right now
Speaker 1: everything's everything's fine, everything's coming along. Just find plenty of laquers,
Speaker 1: plenty of PVC, uh, plenty of presses. They're very, very busy.
Speaker 1: And the ones that have room to from more presses,
Speaker 1: they're hesitant to to buy new presses and start pressing
Speaker 1: because they think that maybe this whole thing is is
Speaker 1: going to go away at some point. But I don't
Speaker 1: see it happening now, Bob. I think this is this
Speaker 1: is here to stay and growing. Okay, little backfield. How
Speaker 1: much does the press cost? It's pretty expensive. I don't
Speaker 1: know the exact amount because I haven't I haven't looked
Speaker 1: to buy one, but it's it's hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars and maybe close to a million. It could be okay.
Speaker 1: At the end of the tenure of Vinyl, there were
Speaker 1: big debates whether the Neuman lathe although the standard was
Speaker 1: actually you know, not good, and there were other things.
Speaker 1: What's your view on the different competition in lathes. Well,
Speaker 1: at this point, you know, the Annyman SX seventy four
Speaker 1: is pretty much the the industry standard. Unfortunately, that was
Speaker 1: developed in nineteen four and that is what most places use,
Speaker 1: the Annoyment SX seventy four, and there was the final
Speaker 1: one they made, was the SX eight. And there are
Speaker 1: other you know, there are other cutting systems. There's a
Speaker 1: the older Scully machines, That's what Rudy van Gelder had,
Speaker 1: That's what Bernie Grunman uses. He's got a Skully lathe,
Speaker 1: which is actually the device you know, plays the lack
Speaker 1: of spins the disc and cut her head moves on it,
Speaker 1: but he uses a Hayko cut her head. The Annoyment
Speaker 1: is pretty much the standard, and nobody complains about Annoyman's.
Speaker 1: And then of course there's d M M. The direct
Speaker 1: metal master, which is which was developed by by Tell
Speaker 1: Deck in the at the end of the vinyl era.
Speaker 1: And so when another thing that happens, when lacquers started,
Speaker 1: people were worried that lacers were gonna go away. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a pickup in business of direct metal master
Speaker 1: that doesn't require any lack er and plants like g
Speaker 1: Z Media, which I left out of my discussion of
Speaker 1: the biggest plants. That's one of the biggest in the
Speaker 1: Czech Republic that I visited them. That's a huge place.
Speaker 1: They make their own PVC, they rebuild their own presses. Uh,
Speaker 1: they have many many um direct metal master cutting lathes
Speaker 1: to cut from. They even make their own copper discs.
Speaker 1: They're like completely self sufficient. That's an amazing place. Okay,
Speaker 1: I certainly remember the direct metal mastering. But for those
Speaker 1: who are unaware, can you explain that in the difference
Speaker 1: between like a traditional annoyment lathe. Sure, so traditional lathe
Speaker 1: cuts on a lacquer. So, a lacquer is an aluminum
Speaker 1: disc that's coded with what's essentially paint. It's it's a lacquer,
Speaker 1: and it dries and then it gets put on a
Speaker 1: lathe and the cutting head cuts in cuts the grooves
Speaker 1: into the lacquer, and then the lacquer gets played. It's
Speaker 1: silver plated, and then it makes eventually makes a stamper
Speaker 1: and your presser record with with the d MM. The
Speaker 1: the plate is copper. It's a it's a piece of copper,
Speaker 1: and it gets cut directly into the copper, so there
Speaker 1: isn't an intermediate step of making something metal. It starts
Speaker 1: out as metal and so it makes it. It also
Speaker 1: makes them more direct and a more precise cut because
Speaker 1: the metal can be cut more precisely. Some people don't
Speaker 1: like that sound. I've got a Wilco album that they
Speaker 1: sent me. They cut it a d M M and
Speaker 1: they cut lacquer and they said, what do you which
Speaker 1: do you like better? And they sound different. And over
Speaker 1: time the d m M has gotten better because the
Speaker 1: people doing the cutting have have understood its qualities and
Speaker 1: have made it sound less harsh and better sounding. Okay,
Speaker 1: I heard there was a scarcity and d M M machines.
Speaker 1: Is that true? At one point? And this is you know,
Speaker 1: I can say this now, but one of the things
Speaker 1: I said entire vinyl business were the scientologists. Do you
Speaker 1: know that story? No, I don't I remember. Once I
Speaker 1: got my knockam F eighty two fixed. For those who
Speaker 1: really remember, that was the ultimate you could set some
Speaker 1: tones whatever, And all these people wanted to buy it
Speaker 1: from me, and they all turned out to scientology. She
Speaker 1: had asked a number of questions before they ultimately revealed that.
Speaker 1: But I do not know about the scientologists in this era.
Speaker 1: All right, this is such a great story, and it's
Speaker 1: absolutely true. And when I tell it to you, you're
Speaker 1: gonna say, I don't believe you, but it's true. So
Speaker 1: the scientologists decided that the best way to store information,
Speaker 1: including L. Ron Hubbard speeches, was not digitally but analog.
Speaker 1: So they brought up a whole bunch of D M
Speaker 1: M lathes, and they also had regular lathes, and they
Speaker 1: brought up a lot and they they saved a lot
Speaker 1: of lades that otherwise would have been scrapped, and they
Speaker 1: cut L. Ron Hubbard's speeches to either D M M
Speaker 1: or lacquer. And then they bought up they bought a
Speaker 1: plating plant at R T I, which is one of
Speaker 1: the premier pressing plants in America in Camrio, California. They
Speaker 1: spent the money and built a plating facility, which is
Speaker 1: where you played the laquer to make stampers. They invented
Speaker 1: a system whereby once the lacquer was plated with silver,
Speaker 1: they covered it with an aluminum foil covering hermetically sealed
Speaker 1: with a tab on the end. And to play back
Speaker 1: the lacquer, the plated lacquer you peel back like a
Speaker 1: pop top can and you put it on a turntable.
Speaker 1: The turntables had solar panels to power in case there
Speaker 1: was no electricity where the world's exploded, where we're done,
Speaker 1: and solar panels and cartridges with no elastomer in it.
Speaker 1: Cartridges to play back record. It has a springy thing
Speaker 1: and there's a piece of rubber in there that makes
Speaker 1: it springky, and that's how you play back records. The
Speaker 1: cartridges they developed have no elastomer so that it wouldn't
Speaker 1: deteriorate over time. So this is all stored in the
Speaker 1: Mojabi desert in a in a vault someplace in the ground.
Speaker 1: And in the future, Bob, some future civilization will dig
Speaker 1: up and discover this place. They will unfold the doors,
Speaker 1: they will find these turntables, they will find this whole
Speaker 1: stash of plated lacquers and and d M M plated
Speaker 1: records covered with this aluminum. They will peel it back.
Speaker 1: It also has hieroglyphic sione to show you peel back.
Speaker 1: Put on this turntable, put the solar rate towards the sun,
Speaker 1: lower the styles into the group, and l Ron Hubbard
Speaker 1: will play. And so in the future it will be
Speaker 1: discovered that the most important person in our civilization was
Speaker 1: l Ron Hubbard. That may end up being true, Okay,
Speaker 1: and then to what degree does this affect DMM availability? Um,
Speaker 1: there are many many places that have record industry in UH.
Speaker 1: In Harlem in the Netherlands has a has a number
Speaker 1: of d MM lathes. Uh. When I I visited there,
Speaker 1: and when I visited Optimal in Germany. That's another present
Speaker 1: plant that I forgot to mention. That's a big one.
Speaker 1: They used to just only make c D and DVD
Speaker 1: duplication and books and they just got into vinyl in
Speaker 1: the nineties, and boy, that was the right move for them,
Speaker 1: because now they're absolutely backed up with whatever comes their way. Uh.
Speaker 1: They've got a number, They've got a whole house full
Speaker 1: of lathes, and many of them are d MM and
Speaker 1: they make their own copper plates also, So there really
Speaker 1: isn't a problem with with getting the records cut. The
Speaker 1: big problem is getting them pressed. Okay, let's just assume
Speaker 1: that production equals demand. How big can this vinyl market become? Um, Well,
Speaker 1: as long as there are oppresses that could continue to
Speaker 1: be built, and there are you know, three or four
Speaker 1: companies that will make them, and as long as people
Speaker 1: are willing to invest the money to buy the presses,
Speaker 1: and as long as there's the continued demand which is succeeded. Listen,
Speaker 1: when this whole thing started, when vinyl was going away,
Speaker 1: and I'd go to Tower Records, and I would see
Speaker 1: all the beautiful record racks disappearing, and they were just
Speaker 1: all the CDs on those long boxes and everything. I
Speaker 1: just couldn't believe it. So I wonder, my my tear
Speaker 1: about saving vinyl. But I never thought it would come
Speaker 1: back the way it's come back. I just wanted the
Speaker 1: infrastructure to be to remain. You know, I this pressing
Speaker 1: plant in upstate New York. It made money. It never
Speaker 1: lost money. Even in the worst era vinyl era, when
Speaker 1: business trailed off, they made money. And at some point
Speaker 1: someone at m c A decided that they would make
Speaker 1: the bottom line look better by closing the plant and
Speaker 1: getting selling the presses, and they have a big bump
Speaker 1: in the bottom line for one year. That was worth
Speaker 1: it to them. And I said, don't do that, because
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen is Vinyl is gonna make a big
Speaker 1: comeback and you're gonna be on have to wait online
Speaker 1: like everybody else to get a record press And they
Speaker 1: looked at me like I was crazy, And guess what,
Speaker 1: now you and me has to wait online with everybody
Speaker 1: else to get their records pressed. So okay, But I
Speaker 1: repeat my question, how big is the potential market? It's
Speaker 1: as big as the demand can grow to become another's.
Speaker 1: There's no limitation in terms of production. It really comes
Speaker 1: down to how many companies are willing to invest the
Speaker 1: money in presses and setting up the infrastructure. Some of
Speaker 1: the like you know r T I in in Camearrio.
Speaker 1: It's a fairly small place. They have like twelve over
Speaker 1: thirteen presses and they have room to grow. But the
Speaker 1: guy that owns it, he's like, he's he's happy, he's
Speaker 1: making money. Everything's good. U. The guy at Harlem, he's
Speaker 1: running through three shifts a day, eight hour shifts, seven
Speaker 1: days a week, and they're just you know, it's also
Speaker 1: a matter of getting getting young people to want to
Speaker 1: be pressman. It's not a big it's not a big
Speaker 1: paying job. Okay, but let's talk. Let's talk the others.
Speaker 1: Let's talk the other side of what is driving demand?
Speaker 1: That's the best question. So what's driving demand? Or a
Speaker 1: few things. First of all, you have the older audiophile
Speaker 1: who think records sound the best, and they're buying a
Speaker 1: lot of the costly reissues. And then you have young people,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people don't understand why young people
Speaker 1: are getting into this. They just you know, they can
Speaker 1: stream for almost nothing. Everything you want to hear is
Speaker 1: on your phone or you can stream, you can listen
Speaker 1: on serious exam, you can you can stream, will modify
Speaker 1: and all these different services. So why are records continuing
Speaker 1: to sell? Part of it is the form factor that
Speaker 1: young people, especially those who grew up with with just digital.
Speaker 1: They have nothing to hold, there's nothing in their hands,
Speaker 1: they have a collection of nothing. They like the fact
Speaker 1: that they can buy a record. They feel a closeness
Speaker 1: to the artists that they support, They feel some connection
Speaker 1: to them, they feel the artist that said, here's twelve songs,
Speaker 1: here's a playlist. I want you to hear six songs
Speaker 1: on the side. And I hear from those people, these kids,
Speaker 1: and they love it. They just love the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I always it's like books. Books are not gonna go away.
Speaker 1: Books may become more niche than it is now, but
Speaker 1: there's always going to be a demand. And young people.
Speaker 1: I hear these story as well. Young people buy these
Speaker 1: records to hang on the wall. They don't even open them.
Speaker 1: I don't buy that. I mean some do that for sure,
Speaker 1: but the way the market is growing, and when I
Speaker 1: hear from young people, they get together with each other.
Speaker 1: There's something about analog the brain are. I sent you
Speaker 1: a paper, I think a scientific paper about you know,
Speaker 1: you get on a telephone call in the digital domain,
Speaker 1: all our phones and now digital, you jump over each
Speaker 1: other because everything's pushed in these little packets that come
Speaker 1: at you, and then the silence and then it starts again.
Speaker 1: There's something about listening to records. And I always said this.
Speaker 1: I always said, if kids can get it, can hear
Speaker 1: hear this and experience what a record sounds like properly
Speaker 1: played back, they'll want it. So my neighbor. I have
Speaker 1: a neighbor whose kid is like nine years old. He
Speaker 1: was a Bob Dylan fan. He only heard Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: his MP three's And I brought him down here and
Speaker 1: I sat him down. I said, what do you want
Speaker 1: to hear? He said, I want to hear blood on
Speaker 1: the tracks. I played the vinyl and I was standing
Speaker 1: behind him and I could just see his whole body heaving,
Speaker 1: and I went on the other side. He was crying.
Speaker 1: He said, I've heard that record. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many times. I've never heard it before. The first guitar
Speaker 1: strum cut through me like a knife, and then the
Speaker 1: whole experience, the emotion of it. I've never heard anything
Speaker 1: like that. I think that experience is being repeated all
Speaker 1: over the world as young people here finally hear something
Speaker 1: that's analog and the way music should be heard. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I laugh a lot of these people are no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: I laugh at a lot of things. But what I
Speaker 1: laugh about in this particular case is there buying this
Speaker 1: expensive vinyl and playing it on Crossley. All in ones
Speaker 1: are really crappy systems, and that sort of defeats the purpose.
Speaker 1: In my mind. Now that does and I've I've railed
Speaker 1: against that. I say, what, there's something wrong with buying
Speaker 1: a fifty dollar copy of Dark Side of the Moon
Speaker 1: and playing back on a record player. Yeah, that's a problem.
Speaker 1: And you know that is a problem. There are much
Speaker 1: better turntables now that don't ruin your records, that will
Speaker 1: sound good, that don't cost more than a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to get you started. So yeah, that you know,
Speaker 1: Crossley got started as a gift shop supplier. That company
Speaker 1: would supply gifts to like gift shops, and one of
Speaker 1: their gift shop buyers went to a convention and someone
Speaker 1: had a cute little turntable and they said, oh, this
Speaker 1: will be a nostalgia item. Let's we'll stock a few
Speaker 1: of these. That became their biggest selling item in the
Speaker 1: gift shops. And that's how they got into the turntable business.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, it's not a great way to listen
Speaker 1: to records. It's not as bad as I thought it was.
Speaker 1: I've heard a couple of them. A little backfill. The
Speaker 1: big thing back in the vinyl heyday was you bought
Speaker 1: a Japanese pressing. Not only was a Virgil Virgin vinyl.
Speaker 1: It was thicker. Does the thickness of the vinyl let's
Speaker 1: not forgive For those of us who really remember the record,
Speaker 1: it was rare that you got a perfect copy. They warped,
Speaker 1: they had surface noise. So is the thickness just an
Speaker 1: image or does that help? Well? Two things. First, you
Speaker 1: know Japanese pressings are the finest pressings in terms of
Speaker 1: the quality, and they really are. However, they didn't always
Speaker 1: get the best source, so it will be a third
Speaker 1: generation taped that they would use. And their EQ was
Speaker 1: kind of weird. They would roll off the base. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like, because you know, the walls are
Speaker 1: thin and people are packed together, you don't have to
Speaker 1: much basic going through people's apartments. So yeah, the quality
Speaker 1: was about heavier vinyl if it's properly done, can sound better.
Speaker 1: But doing it well, pressing a hundred a gram record
Speaker 1: is very difficult to do correctly. Uh So I don't
Speaker 1: want when they say it's a hundred eighty gram record,
Speaker 1: the record label say it's pressed on a hundred gram vinyl.
Speaker 1: I'm not as much interested in that as a how
Speaker 1: it was cut, where it's being pressed. Why is it
Speaker 1: so difficult to gram vinyl because it's a it's a
Speaker 1: larger biscuit of warm vinyl that's on the press that
Speaker 1: has to be pushed and spread across the surface of
Speaker 1: the stamper, and it can start to harden before it
Speaker 1: gets all the way out to the outer edge of this.
Speaker 1: Pressing a perfect record is a miracle, it's almost a miracle.
Speaker 1: But pressing a good record is not that difficult, and
Speaker 1: pressing a flat record is not that difficult. But getting
Speaker 1: it to flow evenly over the surface of the stamper
Speaker 1: and not begin to harden before it gets to the edge,
Speaker 1: it's difficult. And so what you get is what's called nonfill.
Speaker 1: There are a number of issues involved in a bad record,
Speaker 1: and one of them is is non filled. But we
Speaker 1: shouldn't get too technical here because you know, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we got some people who are actually very interested in this. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go. Let's go back to analog versus digital. One
Speaker 1: of the big things when c ds came out, they
Speaker 1: had the codes on the back of the product. They
Speaker 1: would be like A A D D D D you know,
Speaker 1: D at the end would represent the final iteration like
Speaker 1: the c D, but their first D would represent it
Speaker 1: was cut on a digital machine. Second would be was
Speaker 1: mixed on a digital machine. So the first question I
Speaker 1: have for you is if something is cut analog. I
Speaker 1: totally understand an analog and product, but if something is
Speaker 1: cut digitally originally, tell me why vinyl would be good
Speaker 1: as opposed to a great file of that quality. That's
Speaker 1: a very good question. So first of all, let's say
Speaker 1: you're buying a CD made from a four bit master.
Speaker 1: You're going down in quality from K four bit to
Speaker 1: six K, so you're losing quality right there. If you
Speaker 1: cut a record, a vinyl record from a four bit file,
Speaker 1: and the dacoder that's used to create the analog signal
Speaker 1: from the digital is the highest quality dacoder you can buy,
Speaker 1: which is very costly and can be found in some
Speaker 1: great studios. The chances of that record sounding better than
Speaker 1: a CD version is great. It's it should sound better
Speaker 1: than a CD version. Streaming high resolution can sound really good.
Speaker 1: But the fact of the matter is the d d
Speaker 1: A conversion is critical. The resolution of how you convert
Speaker 1: it back at home is critical. I met just last week.
Speaker 1: I met a man who I can't mention his name,
Speaker 1: and I can't tell you the company that he founded
Speaker 1: and into high resolution digital. And he said to me
Speaker 1: last week, he said, you know, I invented the blankety blank.
Speaker 1: But I still think records sound better. He says, even
Speaker 1: if a record is cut from a digital source, I
Speaker 1: think it sounds better if the converter is better than
Speaker 1: what than when a kid has at home to turn
Speaker 1: it into into analog to play at home, it can
Speaker 1: sound better. And let's talk. Let's talk at the super
Speaker 1: high end, which you're very familiar with. If we have
Speaker 1: a file at one two that easy equivalent to the
Speaker 1: original master, and you have the appropriate equipment to play
Speaker 1: it back, you have the right converters, it should sound
Speaker 1: better than the analog version. Well, it'll say, it's just
Speaker 1: sound different, now, you know. Better is a subjective thing.
Speaker 1: Everything we listen to is all a distortion of reality.
Speaker 1: Nothing sounds like, you know, live, when you're a live
Speaker 1: and nothing. I have a stereo that's stupidly costly. It
Speaker 1: sounds great. But if if someone's playing live upstairs in
Speaker 1: my house, I know it's live. I know it's that
Speaker 1: my system, you know. So that's the first thing. Every
Speaker 1: step in the process of making it into a record
Speaker 1: or making it into a CD, or making it into
Speaker 1: a high resolution fround. This distortion involved in it. If
Speaker 1: adding the distortion of cutting a lacquer and making a
Speaker 1: record out of it adds something that makes it sound
Speaker 1: more real, I'm okay with that. I'm okay. You know,
Speaker 1: when digital recording started, what's the first thing that happened
Speaker 1: in the microphone business. The studio said, this sounds so
Speaker 1: harsh and so drabbed, we better start putting some tube
Speaker 1: warmth into our recording. So Noyman microphones, which you could
Speaker 1: buy for a song at first, no pun intended, started
Speaker 1: getting more costly as as studios and engineer started buying
Speaker 1: all of these devices that are noisy and distortion producing,
Speaker 1: because adding that added a certain kind of warmth that
Speaker 1: was pleasing to the ear. So yeah, theoretically, if I
Speaker 1: had a high resolution file that was for a bit
Speaker 1: and I played it back on my deck, which is
Speaker 1: one of the best acts you can get, that file
Speaker 1: should sound as good as it's going to get. If
Speaker 1: it's converted to a record and played back on my system,
Speaker 1: it should sound very close to the to the file,
Speaker 1: and it does because my analog playback system is let's
Speaker 1: go back, because I was heavily invested in this emotionally
Speaker 1: in dollars. Wise, okay, there were a lot of issues
Speaker 1: in vinyl, all of which are still in the game.
Speaker 1: One is the balance of the cartridge to the angle
Speaker 1: of the needle three and I hate to bring this
Speaker 1: up because it was innovative, but it had way too
Speaker 1: much friction. The Garrard turntable where the needle moved perpendicularly
Speaker 1: to the record. Ultimately, Piana Sonic Techniques they did that.
Speaker 1: Then there's the issue with skating. What those all those
Speaker 1: issues still exist today to what degree to those affect
Speaker 1: the ultimate sound? All of those issues still exist, but
Speaker 1: we are learning, you know, a lot about how to
Speaker 1: solve those problems. And so, for example, I'm involved in
Speaker 1: a stylists rake angle um zoom conference on Saturday where
Speaker 1: there will be people from all over the world there
Speaker 1: to how do you set the stylist rake angle of
Speaker 1: your playback system? And all this sounds completely anachronistic. I know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like deciding how to make your Steam
Speaker 1: engine run better. But when you have all these records
Speaker 1: that thank god didn't get thrown away, old records that
Speaker 1: can sound unbelievable today, and and new records too, and
Speaker 1: playing it back correctly. We're learning a lot about how
Speaker 1: to do this better. And there are better and better
Speaker 1: turntables and better and better cartridges, and all of the
Speaker 1: material science that's involved in everything we do today UH
Speaker 1: is now applied to this subject because there's a market
Speaker 1: for it. There's a business in it. Um tangent. Still
Speaker 1: tracking is overrated and not really necessary. I'm I'm in
Speaker 1: the nine inch pivoted arm camp. I still think them
Speaker 1: added distortion that that adds, when properly done, is less
Speaker 1: than gets added by the rest of your stereo system.
Speaker 1: So all these issues are there, but properly played back,
Speaker 1: there's nothing like a record. And I I say that,
Speaker 1: and I have people coming over with total skeptics, and
Speaker 1: when they leave, they go, I had no idea. I remember,
Speaker 1: is a c D C. The original c D was
Speaker 1: well mastered, never mind the subsequent iterations and which was
Speaker 1: not the case in the late eighties. And I remember
Speaker 1: putting on that c D and I have plenty of power, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Because I never want to hit the stortion and then
Speaker 1: whipping out the vinyl, which I take very good care
Speaker 1: of but Back in Black had been played so many times.
Speaker 1: If I put on the c D and cranked it up,
Speaker 1: eventually my ears would start to bleed, so to speak.
Speaker 1: If I put on the VIR, I would feel something
Speaker 1: with my body. It would like shake, it would like
Speaker 1: being at a live show. It definitely sounded different, definitely
Speaker 1: sounded better to my ears. But then there are other
Speaker 1: people who say, hey, we've made so many advances in
Speaker 1: digital that all your complaints of the eighties and nineties
Speaker 1: no longer exist. Well, it's certainly gotten better, and no
Speaker 1: thanks to the people. At the beginning he said it
Speaker 1: was perfect, and that just drove me crazy. Every time
Speaker 1: I would hear a CD if something it was horrible
Speaker 1: compared to the original record. In fact, there's a very
Speaker 1: famous mastering engineer that I met. I met her through
Speaker 1: old sobs. Actually that's all another funny story. And uh,
Speaker 1: he said, I've just remastered the Peter Gabriel catalog. Can
Speaker 1: I come over to your place and listen? This is
Speaker 1: nine in their early nineties. This was And so he
Speaker 1: came over and we started playing. It was either so
Speaker 1: or one of the early ones, and to me it
Speaker 1: sounded horrible. I said, now, I'm gonna play for you
Speaker 1: the original British Charisma pressing, and I put it on
Speaker 1: and in three seconds his face fell in. You went,
Speaker 1: what happened? What? What? What happened? I said, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You heard what I just heard. That's something that has
Speaker 1: to be worked out if this is gonna ever sound
Speaker 1: really good. Yeah, there's no noise, there's no has All
Speaker 1: the problems with analog are solved, but the music itself
Speaker 1: doesn't sound right. And now today it's sounding better, but
Speaker 1: it's still there's still something you can't measure. But you know,
Speaker 1: I have I have a fifteen year old kid writing
Speaker 1: for me, Bob. He's a vinyl fanatic, and what he
Speaker 1: says is that when you listen to digital, there's noise.
Speaker 1: And it's not noise on the disc in the groove,
Speaker 1: but it's something about the process that creates noise in
Speaker 1: your brain. And then when you put a record on,
Speaker 1: your whole body drops and relaxes, and you start bringing
Speaker 1: the music into your body and your brain relaxes. I
Speaker 1: can't measure that, but I know I can hear it. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go to the equipment itself. Uh, when we're talking
Speaker 1: about turntables. There's been this endless war between direct rye
Speaker 1: the belts. Belts look like they want now direct drive
Speaker 1: is coming back. What's your take on that. I'm currently reviewing. Um,
Speaker 1: I think I sent you a picture of it. Is
Speaker 1: it's a half a million dollar turntable. It's crazy. It's
Speaker 1: belt drive. And then there's another two others that are
Speaker 1: direct drive. Again, it's a matter of how the technology
Speaker 1: is accomplished. So the idea of having a motor that's
Speaker 1: attached to the platter is problematic because anything that's that's vibrating,
Speaker 1: that's not smooth, or that's cogging, is going to create
Speaker 1: problems in what you hear. The best direct drive turntables
Speaker 1: today are really really good. And when Techniques got back
Speaker 1: in the turntable business, they after stopping they had to
Speaker 1: retool everything over again and they redesigned their turntables even
Speaker 1: though they look like the old disc jockey turntables, and
Speaker 1: they're much much better, they sound much much better, and
Speaker 1: they're already a file quality now, whereas at the beginning
Speaker 1: they were not. They made they have all kinds of problems.
Speaker 1: So both technologies are good. You can have techniques. I
Speaker 1: still have my SLT hundred. People don't really remember. There
Speaker 1: was the twelve hundred hundred and four hundred twelve hundred,
Speaker 1: which is legendary for DJ's fully manual. Fourteen hundred you
Speaker 1: drop the needle, but it would return it. Thirteen hundred
Speaker 1: would both drop the needle and return it, and you
Speaker 1: could dial up a certain number of plays. Our automatic turntables,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about stacking. We all know that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But there are automatic turntables just dead. There are very
Speaker 1: few being made anymore. Um. There are a few that
Speaker 1: pick up at the end. That's about it. But it's
Speaker 1: not really an important part of the market. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like my my father wants to play his records
Speaker 1: and he falls asleep before it ends. Can we can
Speaker 1: you get me a turntable to pick somebody? So? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do that? Well, I mean I must say that,
Speaker 1: you know, it bothers me because the turntable they tend
Speaker 1: to use now is bell drive. And of course this
Speaker 1: is another issue how much you can fit on one side.
Speaker 1: So I'm listening to the new UH Peter Green tribute
Speaker 1: album and it's on two c d s and UH
Speaker 1: six vinyl records. Okay, so there's not much music on
Speaker 1: each record. See it's going to be released soon. It's
Speaker 1: not much music on each record. But I'm constantly having
Speaker 1: to get up, which is one thing if I'm only
Speaker 1: sitting on a couch, but if I'm working at the computer,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a pain in the ass. I tell
Speaker 1: the people in my industry, you need to get up
Speaker 1: every twenty minutes. It's good for you, it's good for
Speaker 1: your heart, it's good fear legs, good fear joints. Get
Speaker 1: up every twenty minutes. Twenty minutes, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: is a perfect amount of It's like eating a meal.
Speaker 1: How much food can you eat in in one sitting?
Speaker 1: Twenty minutes is a nice amount of listening time before
Speaker 1: you have to break from what you're doing and turn
Speaker 1: it over. But you know, the big problem with music
Speaker 1: over the past forty years is it's become a background source,
Speaker 1: and listening to music has become almost like like vampireism.
Speaker 1: You put the record on, it's in the background while
Speaker 1: you cook, while you eat, while you exercise. But artists,
Speaker 1: they don't, They didn't make music for that. They make
Speaker 1: music for you to sit down and pay attention to
Speaker 1: what they're doing, and records are really good for that,
Speaker 1: not just because of the physical nation off you have
Speaker 1: to sit and listen to it and it's only twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: but there's something about it. And I've always said this,
Speaker 1: when you put a record on and young people are
Speaker 1: discovering this, it draws you in in a certain way
Speaker 1: where you want to pay attention to it, whereas digital
Speaker 1: your brain says, I don't like this, I'm not comfortable
Speaker 1: with this. I must do something else while this is on.
Speaker 1: And I really believe that, And I think if it
Speaker 1: hasn't been proven yet, it will eventually be proven. But
Speaker 1: certainly the way people consume music has demonstrated that to
Speaker 1: be true. Okay, now, in the early sixties, all of
Speaker 1: us tended to listen on one box radios. Your appearance
Speaker 1: at a bigger system. The Beatles came in. We went
Speaker 1: from one track to two track, to four track, to
Speaker 1: eight track to sixteen to thirty two unlimited, and there
Speaker 1: was a concommoned explosion in stereo such that everybody wanted
Speaker 1: to have a better stereo, and the landscape was riddled
Speaker 1: with stereo shops. In the nineties, they were somehow replaced
Speaker 1: by all in one boom boxes. And now except for
Speaker 1: you know, some stuff that you're familiar with, it is
Speaker 1: seeded back into the marketplace. We have the tweaks as
Speaker 1: they call them, with super high end stuff. They can
Speaker 1: spend a hundred k no problem. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of people are listening to digital
Speaker 1: through earbuds. But if you want to get into vinyl,
Speaker 1: how much money do you have to spend to cross
Speaker 1: the threshold of quality. You can get a satisfying system
Speaker 1: for twelve or fifteen hundred dollars, which, if you think
Speaker 1: about inflation, is not that your money you can get.
Speaker 1: It's a small pair of speakers, they won't have a
Speaker 1: lot of base. You can get a turntable that's gonna
Speaker 1: play back well and not distort and not ruin your records,
Speaker 1: and it will sound quiet. And you can get a
Speaker 1: small receiver or integrated amplifier that will have enough power
Speaker 1: to drive the speakers. And there are systems that you
Speaker 1: can You can go on the right websites and find
Speaker 1: those systems and they sound great. And when a young
Speaker 1: person who has only heard earbuds and only heard his
Speaker 1: phone play music, when they hear something like that they
Speaker 1: respond to it naturally because it sounds great. It sounds
Speaker 1: really good. Okay. As you mentioned earlier, it was a
Speaker 1: big issue in the seventies. You don't want the turntable
Speaker 1: to ruin the records first. The thought back then was
Speaker 1: you should not You should need to let the vinyl
Speaker 1: rest before you play it again. What's your theory on that. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, in my job, I have to play a
Speaker 1: record over and over against to get to know the
Speaker 1: music well enough to write about it. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a problem on a clean record with a clean
Speaker 1: stylists tracking at the right tracking force. I don't think
Speaker 1: and record where is another is another thing I hear
Speaker 1: a lot about records really don't wear if you take
Speaker 1: care of them, and I can go back and play
Speaker 1: any like I had these guys. I went to cross
Speaker 1: the street to my neighbors when I moved in here
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, and my neighbor introduced me by saying,
Speaker 1: you see this guy. This guy plays records still. He
Speaker 1: thinks records sound better when these guys are laughing at me,
Speaker 1: and I said, we're in a hot up. I said,
Speaker 1: what do you like rolling stones? I said, get dry
Speaker 1: it off, come on, of course the street. I'll play
Speaker 1: some Rolling Stones. So I had just gotten the S
Speaker 1: A C D s of the Rolling Stones catalog, and
Speaker 1: those are better than CD quality, and I brought them in.
Speaker 1: I sat them down. I said, all right, let's let's
Speaker 1: play Aftermath nineteen sixty seven. So we put the S
Speaker 1: A C D of Aftermath on and these guys have
Speaker 1: never heard a really good stereo and they were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's It's like wow, I'm hearing all
Speaker 1: these instruments separated in space. It's really incredible. You're telling
Speaker 1: me the records better? All right? Now playing Merbers Pressing
Speaker 1: I've been playing since nineteen seven, and I'm gonna play
Speaker 1: that for you. And I put it on and in
Speaker 1: two seconds the first guy goes, Okay, I get it.
Speaker 1: It's like the other was good. But Mick Jaggett was like,
Speaker 1: standing right in front of me in three dimensions, I
Speaker 1: can see him and everything is. I hear all the
Speaker 1: instruments and yeah, that's much better. How is that possible?
Speaker 1: I said, let's go back in the hot tub. We'll talk.
Speaker 1: You know, no one ever comes down here. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: go back to turntables. You mentioned earlier that there are
Speaker 1: these cheap turntables that are good enough. Hey, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the price point. Be what are the brand names? See?
Speaker 1: Is that enough? Or really, if you're interested, you should
Speaker 1: you buy something better that will last you longer, or
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to replace this initial cheap turntable. If
Speaker 1: a young person comes to me, I tell them the
Speaker 1: least expensive turntable that you can get that's going to
Speaker 1: do the job is made in Americas by a company
Speaker 1: called you Turn. And you can start at with a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy nine dollar turntable and you can upgrade
Speaker 1: it as you go. But if you start with that
Speaker 1: and buy their phono pre imp which is a Pluto,
Speaker 1: which is you're getting started with something that's well made,
Speaker 1: relatively well made, and it's gonna take care of your
Speaker 1: records because you're gonna want to upgrade as you go
Speaker 1: over time. And those kids are funny. They their tough
Speaker 1: university graduates. They got their degrees and they told their
Speaker 1: parents that they're gonna they decided they're gonna open up
Speaker 1: a turntable manufacturing company. And their parents were so disappointed
Speaker 1: with the money, the advantage and these kids did it,
Speaker 1: and they have like fifteen or sixteen employees now in Wuburn,
Speaker 1: and they sell a lot of turntables and a lot
Speaker 1: of phono pre imps and upgrades. That's the basic minimum,
Speaker 1: and then you can go up to a project or
Speaker 1: even an audio technica that costs about two and seventy
Speaker 1: nine dollars. And I spoke to a dealer in in
Speaker 1: Louisiana a couple of weeks ago who told me that
Speaker 1: he had back order of these Audio Nicko turntables. He
Speaker 1: finally got them in and then he had to wait
Speaker 1: like months, he found so he called audio technic. He said, look,
Speaker 1: I want to get more of these, so I have
Speaker 1: a stock of them and they said, sorry, we're back
Speaker 1: ordered that that I can't. That blows my mind. And
Speaker 1: those are being bought by young people. That's not like
Speaker 1: my generation or even a generation younger than mine. Those
Speaker 1: are kids buying that. And this is spreading. It's it's
Speaker 1: like a virus. It spreads because once okay, let's get
Speaker 1: down to the bolts though relevant of the pnumbra. Okay,
Speaker 1: so those audio technicals cost how much to seventy nine? Okay,
Speaker 1: what's the step beyond that? Uh. Step beyond that is
Speaker 1: getting rid of the plastic body and getting a project.
Speaker 1: Um A debut carbon is like three, and that's made
Speaker 1: in the Czech Republic. That will really get you up
Speaker 1: there to a to a pretty good turntable and you
Speaker 1: can that arm is good enough. You can put any
Speaker 1: cartridge you want, and you can start with an inexpensive
Speaker 1: order font and then get a more expensive order on
Speaker 1: and keep improving the cartridges as you go and the
Speaker 1: sound gets better and then you're hooked. Okay, if I
Speaker 1: spend three, is that enough or forever? Or one day
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wake up said no, I need something better.
Speaker 1: But that's like saying what a key Is that going
Speaker 1: to settle it for me? Or do I want to get? Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk cars, BMW, Mercedes, Bins, Lexus, Maserati. Those are
Speaker 1: premium cars. Okay. Now I don't want to make it
Speaker 1: totally an analogy, but if you're buying the best Japanese
Speaker 1: regular car, the best American car without going into the stratosphere,
Speaker 1: how much money is what you should spend? Okay? If
Speaker 1: you if you want to put some serious money into
Speaker 1: a stereo but not go you know, crazy like uh,
Speaker 1: five thou dollars for a turntable is you're hitting a
Speaker 1: point of a really really fine product, well made, that's
Speaker 1: gonna sound really good it and then the cartridge you
Speaker 1: can put in there should be a couple of thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and so that's about seven or eight. Let's go cheaper
Speaker 1: than that. Okay, I started at three d and twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: If I is it worth it spending twelve hundred or
Speaker 1: two thousand, or I have to go all the way
Speaker 1: to five. A two thousand dollar turntable will definitely perform
Speaker 1: better than a four in a dollar turntable. It will
Speaker 1: be quieter, it will extract more information from the grooves,
Speaker 1: and mechanically it will perform better. So in all ways
Speaker 1: it will it will sound quieter, which is important. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you records work, it's it's
Speaker 1: a velocity based thing. The stylust goes through the groove
Speaker 1: and it's reading the grooves. If the turntable is well designed,
Speaker 1: it will suppress the pops and clicks and you won't
Speaker 1: hear them. If it's poorly designed, the whole thing is
Speaker 1: gonna resonate like in a canyon. So the more you spend,
Speaker 1: the better performance. So, but you have to spend that
Speaker 1: much money for a couple of thousand dollars, you're you're
Speaker 1: getting a turntable that's going to do a really, really
Speaker 1: good job for you, and you can put anything. What
Speaker 1: are the brand names that are? What are the models?
Speaker 1: In that case, Project makes turn tables starting at nine
Speaker 1: going up to fifteen thousand or something like that. So
Speaker 1: that would be a good brand to look at. Um,
Speaker 1: you know what, you gotta go on a website and
Speaker 1: look at different brands. Clear Audio makes some reasonably price turntables. Also,
Speaker 1: that's a German company. They make good turntables starting at
Speaker 1: a reasonable price. You have to look around. There's so
Speaker 1: many different brands. I don't even you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: good at Let's go to the cartridge. Back in the
Speaker 1: hey day in the mid seventies, you had to match
Speaker 1: everything in your system. You have to match the cartridge
Speaker 1: to the amplifier, to the speakers. But today, even turntables
Speaker 1: in four figures they come with a cartridge. What's up
Speaker 1: with that? Well, some do, but but actually most most don't.
Speaker 1: You know. Some will come with the cartridge, but not
Speaker 1: a great cartridge. They want to get you started. But
Speaker 1: cartridges today ranging price from ars to a fifteen thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, And the technology that's in these
Speaker 1: cartridges is amazing. But you don't have to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money to get a decent cartridge. Company like
Speaker 1: order Fon makes cartridges from to above ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: and you know, anybody that would sit down and listen
Speaker 1: can hear the difference between them. So, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: spend a lot of money on a cartridge or you
Speaker 1: can spend a little month. Okay, let's just assume I
Speaker 1: have a set dollar plus a thousand dollar turntable. How
Speaker 1: much should I spend on the cartridge? I would start
Speaker 1: out at around five, and then you can go up
Speaker 1: because a turntable at that price point should have an
Speaker 1: arm that's sufficiently well built with sufficiently good um bearings
Speaker 1: in it that it can handle the energy that will
Speaker 1: come out of a more expensive cartridge. So that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why you do want to buy a
Speaker 1: turntable that has an arm on it that can be
Speaker 1: allow you to upgrade your cartridge. Okay, so like five,
Speaker 1: what are the brands I'm looking at? Their Um, Order Fun,
Speaker 1: sound Smith, Clear Audio, Um just just an endless number
Speaker 1: of brands, but Order Fun and sound Smith, which is
Speaker 1: made in America. Uh, they've got a whole range of
Speaker 1: cartridge that very good ones at five UM Audio Technically
Speaker 1: makes a whole line of great cartridges. I visited them
Speaker 1: once and they've been in this business for decades and
Speaker 1: they've they've got really good quality control and they're the
Speaker 1: best value. I mean, you can get a fifty dollar
Speaker 1: Audio Technically that really performs surprisingly well. So okay, how
Speaker 1: about moving magnet moving coil, Well, I think moving coil
Speaker 1: moving called cartridges offer higher resolution there they have lower
Speaker 1: mass so they can react in the groove faster. So
Speaker 1: Order Fund makes a two M black for seves. That's
Speaker 1: pretty much the epitome of moving magnet cartridges. It's very
Speaker 1: very good. You can put that cartridge in most decent
Speaker 1: turntables and you'd be surprised how good it sounds. They're
Speaker 1: moving coil line starting at a thousand dollars and up.
Speaker 1: They've got a line that the Cadenza line is around
Speaker 1: and that takes you to a different level of sophistication
Speaker 1: and timboroil balance and UH and high frequency response. So
Speaker 1: there's no endto this. Okay, let's go to the amplification. Yes,
Speaker 1: in the seventies the big thing was the receiver. Most
Speaker 1: people were unaware there were three elements. There was the
Speaker 1: pre amp, there was the amp, and the receiver the
Speaker 1: FM tunor needle. Say, no one needs an FM tun anymore.
Speaker 1: In terms of the amp in the preamp a what
Speaker 1: do you say integrated versus separates? What do you say
Speaker 1: in terms of price? What do you say in terms
Speaker 1: of power? Give me some wrap on that. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: one thing that's happened. We've moved to Class D amplifiers
Speaker 1: at the lower end of the market, and now it's
Speaker 1: moving up. These are extremely efficient amplifiers that use a
Speaker 1: different kind of what's called a switch mode power supply,
Speaker 1: so they don't require big transformers. You remember the big
Speaker 1: heavy receivers of the day had these big transformers in it.
Speaker 1: So like, I've got a PS audio sprout here. It's
Speaker 1: made in Colorado. It's very very small, very very lightweight.
Speaker 1: Yet it's got plenty of power. It's got well over
Speaker 1: a hundred watts of channel. It's got it built in
Speaker 1: phono preamp. It's beautifully made and it's it's like under
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars. So there's a lot of good things
Speaker 1: for not that much money right now. If you you know,
Speaker 1: if separates are the way to go, if you have
Speaker 1: a big sophisticated system, you can buy an integrated amplifier
Speaker 1: now that it's got the pre amplifier and the amplifier
Speaker 1: in one box. And some of them have phono pre
Speaker 1: umps built in. But I think you're better off having
Speaker 1: the phono primp as an outboard device and adding your own.
Speaker 1: That way you have more flexibility and what you're ending
Speaker 1: up with. But and also all of this stuff is
Speaker 1: out there. I know. I love reading your column where
Speaker 1: you say, oh, no one does this anymore, or it's
Speaker 1: hardly there. It's still You go to the show in
Speaker 1: Munich is four days and thousands and thousands of manufacturers
Speaker 1: are there. It's it's packed and the crowds are huge.
Speaker 1: Hi Fi is still a big thing. Okay, so there
Speaker 1: are many people. And this now gets into the tube question.
Speaker 1: Who believe all these amplifiers have a different sound. What
Speaker 1: do you think about the sound of the amplifier and
Speaker 1: what do you think about tubes? So I'm in the
Speaker 1: solid state camp now tube camp. I still review tube gear.
Speaker 1: I like some of the sound of that. I think
Speaker 1: mixing and matching is a good way to go. So,
Speaker 1: like I was saying, a lot of the noyment microphones
Speaker 1: that are in the study videos today, a lot of
Speaker 1: them use two pre EMPs. Pre EMPs two pre EMPs
Speaker 1: have more distort, more harmonic distortion, but there's something about
Speaker 1: them that makes them sound more musical. And so you
Speaker 1: could have a solid state amplifier and a solid state preamp,
Speaker 1: and maybe you want to bring a tube phono preamp
Speaker 1: in there just to warm things up a little bit,
Speaker 1: depending upon It's like cooking a meal. You know, you
Speaker 1: make a make a meal, and the first time you
Speaker 1: cook it it maybe it comes out a little bit
Speaker 1: too dry, or it comes out a little bit too
Speaker 1: hot or a little bit too a stringent. So you
Speaker 1: change the balance of the ingredients. So as you assemble
Speaker 1: a system and you listen to it, you can make
Speaker 1: changes over time. If you want a little warmer, you
Speaker 1: can add a tube preamp. If you want your speakers
Speaker 1: to be fuller sounding, you can add a tube vamp.
Speaker 1: And I don't get into a fight with people over
Speaker 1: what they what they like. Whatever you like in hi
Speaker 1: fi is fine. That that's the best part about it.
Speaker 1: You got to a hi Fi show, every room is
Speaker 1: gonna sound different. So if you want a warm sound,
Speaker 1: you can get with tubes. If you want something that's
Speaker 1: a little more punchy, go with solid state. Whatever you like. Okay,
Speaker 1: now let's go to speakers. You know on the low end.
Speaker 1: What are you getting? And one are the brand names there?
Speaker 1: There are some great inexpensive speakers now uh KIF and
Speaker 1: eLAC and clips, and there's a whole bunch of companies
Speaker 1: making small, little two way speakers for under under eights
Speaker 1: that sound incredibly good. I reviewed a pair of Lex
Speaker 1: and those are designed by a guy named Andrew Jones,
Speaker 1: who I think is a speaker designing genius. He used
Speaker 1: to design very expensive studio monitors for a company called
Speaker 1: T A D in Japan that were seventy dollars, and
Speaker 1: he went the other way, said I'm going to design
Speaker 1: inexpensive speakers that are engineered correctly. So I reviewed these
Speaker 1: b fives that were three nine a pair, and I wrote,
Speaker 1: these speakers are not good for the money, They're just good.
Speaker 1: And that's what my fifteen year old reviewer uses a
Speaker 1: pair of eLAC B five's, and if you set them
Speaker 1: up correctly and take into account in the room acoustics,
Speaker 1: you don't get a lot of bottom in, but everything
Speaker 1: else that's there in terms of three dimensionality and transient
Speaker 1: response and just the presentation of the timberl balance, it's
Speaker 1: quite good for five bucks a pair. Okay, uh, going
Speaker 1: back to that era, which is now crazy, there's the
Speaker 1: two way, there's the three way, there's the base reflex.
Speaker 1: If you want to get a full representation of the music,
Speaker 1: what do you need? Full representation of the music? Full?
Speaker 1: You need a speaker that goes down to twenty hurts
Speaker 1: that gives you the all the base that's possible. So
Speaker 1: you can do that one of two ways. You can
Speaker 1: either have a par of satellite speakers that go down
Speaker 1: to a limited response that say, fifty hurts and then
Speaker 1: add the supwiffer that covers the bottom of the rest
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. Or you can get a big, full
Speaker 1: range speaker that does all of it. And that's going
Speaker 1: to cost your money. You know, base costs money. Good
Speaker 1: base costs money. That's where you put the money in. Okay,
Speaker 1: how much money? Oh? Well, Let's say you could get
Speaker 1: a pretty almost speaker that sounds good for um, fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand a pair. Okay, before we get to fifteen thousand,
Speaker 1: you talk about elocs of four, Right, what do I
Speaker 1: get in a thousand or and I'm not getting into
Speaker 1: the ones of four. You're gonna get a better tweeter,
Speaker 1: a tweeter that has better or if access response that
Speaker 1: that sounds smoother over a wide range. You're gonna get
Speaker 1: a flatter frequency response, I fewer lumps and bumps, and
Speaker 1: maybe you'll get more power handling so you can play
Speaker 1: it loud before it starts distorting, which we all like,
Speaker 1: so you get more of everything. It's like handling on
Speaker 1: a car. Okay, let's go back. Let's assume you're a
Speaker 1: rock fan, or even a hip hop fan, which has
Speaker 1: heavy base. Okay, how much do I have to spend
Speaker 1: so I can get speakers that will give me all
Speaker 1: the sound, fill up a living room, and I won't
Speaker 1: have to worry about clipping. Again, it depends on how
Speaker 1: big your room is and how loud you play your music.
Speaker 1: Let's just assume I'm playing it loud. Playing it loud, well,
Speaker 1: then you can probably want a base reflex speaker that's
Speaker 1: fairly efficient, so you don't need a lot of power
Speaker 1: to drive it. Um you could get some some clip
Speaker 1: shorings which should be nice for that if you like
Speaker 1: it really allowed and they sound good. Again, there are
Speaker 1: so many varieties. Okay, but most people, many people are listening.
Speaker 1: We have people who know everything and people know nothing.
Speaker 1: So when you say for system, they understand that. But
Speaker 1: today there are a lot of people. We know twelve
Speaker 1: hundred maybe better as an entry system than all the
Speaker 1: systems of your But there are many people who want
Speaker 1: to invest a little bit more. They don't want to
Speaker 1: invest five thousand for turntable. They have five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for speakers if they want something better than twelve. So
Speaker 1: there's this company. eLAC is among a few companies that
Speaker 1: makes floor standing speakers that go pretty low that are
Speaker 1: under fifteen hundred dollars a pair. There, they go low,
Speaker 1: they're well designed, they'll play fairly loud, and I think
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a reasonable price point to get nearly
Speaker 1: full range response and get the SPLs that you want
Speaker 1: without distortion, and get the broad coverage in a room
Speaker 1: that you want. And I've heard many many good systems
Speaker 1: based run upon speakers from eLAC and KIF and UH
Speaker 1: and some of the others, and Monitor and some of
Speaker 1: the other companies that make floor standing moderately priced speakers.
Speaker 1: And then you can always add a subword for later
Speaker 1: if you want to just get that list. Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's say I'm buying I got fifteen, but I also
Speaker 1: have I don't want to waste my money if I
Speaker 1: go from fifteen hundred to twenty five or three. What brands?
Speaker 1: What am I getting that I don't get with those elocks? Well,
Speaker 1: all of these brands that I've mentioned UH all have
Speaker 1: speakers that go up in price from the very bottom,
Speaker 1: and so the more you spend again, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: more better base response, smoother treble, UH, a smoother mid range.
Speaker 1: They'll add a mid range driver. Instead of a two
Speaker 1: way speaker where the where the lower speaker handles the
Speaker 1: base and the mid range, you have a three way
Speaker 1: speaker where there's a separate mid range driver. You get
Speaker 1: better crossover networks, so the response is smoother from bottom
Speaker 1: to top. Again, you get more of everything. So what
Speaker 1: you really want to do when you go shopping for
Speaker 1: this stuff if you can find a store is start
Speaker 1: at the best that they got, listen to the best
Speaker 1: thing in the store, and then go to the price
Speaker 1: point that you can afford and find the thing that
Speaker 1: has the performance as close as you can hear to
Speaker 1: the top. That's the best way to do it. The
Speaker 1: stupidest thing is to go on and listen to what
Speaker 1: you can afford because you don't really know what what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Okay, let's go back to those law speakers.
Speaker 1: What how much amplification do I need to make sure
Speaker 1: I get a loud enough sound without clipping or distortion.
Speaker 1: I think you need least seventy five to watts the channel,
Speaker 1: regardless of the of the efficiency of the speaker. And
Speaker 1: that's why it just cheap. Why did it just cheap today?
Speaker 1: Bob Okay, explain the difference between class A class D
Speaker 1: and why you need a certain amount of wantage. All right,
Speaker 1: So a Class A amplifier, and you really want to
Speaker 1: get into this Class I amplifier is one where it's
Speaker 1: constant bias all the time on the transistors, and it
Speaker 1: gets warm, and it's inefficient and it's got a very
Speaker 1: smooth sound. Class A B is a more typical amplifier.
Speaker 1: But I don't really think this is relevant for this conversation.
Speaker 1: What's relevant is do you want a Class A B
Speaker 1: amplifier and solid state amplifier or do you want a
Speaker 1: Class D amplifier? And the Class D amplifiers are where
Speaker 1: you get more power, more of aitiency, smaller size, and
Speaker 1: more low end umph. So I reviewed a pair of
Speaker 1: amplifiers from ps Audio in Maide in Colorado. At first
Speaker 1: class the amplifiers sounded horrible. They're getting much better. These
Speaker 1: are I think six thousands a pair and they have
Speaker 1: hundreds of watch there and the bottom end is as
Speaker 1: good as I've heard from any amplifier at any price.
Speaker 1: That's how good they are. Am I sacrificing anything by
Speaker 1: getting Class D instead of the A B, you're sacrificing
Speaker 1: a finesse in the upper mid range. There's a kind
Speaker 1: of a in all of these products that I've heard.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of an upper mid range ringing sound,
Speaker 1: unpleasant sound to me, which you can work around with
Speaker 1: the rest of the gear that Jubai. But you're getting
Speaker 1: a lot for your money at that rate. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's the best value there is that I've heard
Speaker 1: let's talk about the landscape of audio. Yes, you have
Speaker 1: younger people who are say is my price point? Okay?
Speaker 1: Where is most of the action? As you say, it
Speaker 1: is very hard to find a store. And if you
Speaker 1: do find a store, generally speaking, they are appealing to
Speaker 1: the upper edged customer. You know, how are the dollars
Speaker 1: or the units spread along the spectrum. You know, the
Speaker 1: foolish store owners are the ones that don't welcome in
Speaker 1: young people and let them get a taste of the
Speaker 1: best that there is, because those are your future customers
Speaker 1: for the for the expensive stuff. And most of the
Speaker 1: stores that do exist, I go visit and I see
Speaker 1: what they're what they're doing, and the smart stores have
Speaker 1: you know, I did a piece for MTV in the
Speaker 1: early nineties and they we took a woman, a young girl,
Speaker 1: shopping at the stores of New York City, and you
Speaker 1: know what they did. They took that this woman and
Speaker 1: they never let her hear the good stuff. It took
Speaker 1: her to the front and said, oh, you want a
Speaker 1: rack system, Oh you want you know, it's the stupidest
Speaker 1: thing you can possibly do, So you want to take
Speaker 1: them into the back, let me hear the good stuff,
Speaker 1: and then say how much can you spend? All of
Speaker 1: these stores have these smaller systems set up, usually in
Speaker 1: the front of the store, in the entryway or someplace
Speaker 1: close to the front, not in the big rooms. And
Speaker 1: if you can't go to a store, you know, all
Speaker 1: of retail is challenged right now, Bob, And you know
Speaker 1: that everything is challenged with Amazon and everything. You can
Speaker 1: buy a good stereo on Amazon and you can trade
Speaker 1: it in, or you can go to crutch Field, or
Speaker 1: you can go to Music direct or you can go
Speaker 1: to Elusive disc or Acoustic Sounds. All these websites will
Speaker 1: sell you something and then if you're not happy, you
Speaker 1: can return it. And they have people on staff who
Speaker 1: will talk to you and try to walk you through
Speaker 1: and do what we're doing now in a less good
Speaker 1: way because I'm not a retailer really good at retailing.
Speaker 1: But they'll do that. They'll they'll they'll give you the
Speaker 1: service and help you find a system that works well together. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna mention certain brand names. I want
Speaker 1: your take. In the old days, Macintosh was a standard.
Speaker 1: Even the grateful dead use them. Where's Macintosh today? They're
Speaker 1: still in being in New York and uh. They are
Speaker 1: still making two amplifiers and solid state amplifiers. They make
Speaker 1: a lot of really good things. They make some things
Speaker 1: I'm not such a big fan of, but they have
Speaker 1: They're still around, and they still do it the way
Speaker 1: they always did it, and they're big all over there.
Speaker 1: They are a brand ambassador for high fire around the world.
Speaker 1: And some of their great stuff is still great. What
Speaker 1: is what is there? What is there? Great stuff? The
Speaker 1: big m C two seventy five, which is their classic amplifier.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not a good list giver, and I
Speaker 1: certainly you know, wasn't okay that I don't even we
Speaker 1: don't need to go that deep. Bows I have, I
Speaker 1: have big problems Bose. First of all, Bows tried to
Speaker 1: get me thrown off a w B C n in
Speaker 1: in the nineties seventies. They tried to get me thrown off.
Speaker 1: They I'll tell you that your Bows to me is
Speaker 1: a litigating company that happens to make some sound products
Speaker 1: on the side. They the original speaker that they made
Speaker 1: the Bows nine O one was a terrible speaker in
Speaker 1: my opinion, just an awful speaker. And that's what I
Speaker 1: went on the radio and talked about because I went
Speaker 1: to Tech Hi Fi and they were selling the nine
Speaker 1: oh ones. I wanted to hear them. And you know,
Speaker 1: Dr Bowse said, he's he's a he's a professor of
Speaker 1: acoustics and he invented this speaker that bounces sound off
Speaker 1: the back wall on a ratio of eight to one,
Speaker 1: because that's what he heard at Boston Symphony Hall. But
Speaker 1: what does that have to do with any records? You
Speaker 1: play nothing, and I want to hear them. And when
Speaker 1: I went there, there was a salesman had a little
Speaker 1: sticker on his on his lapel, had said, asked me
Speaker 1: about Bows. And I had never seen anything like that,
Speaker 1: because Hi Fi in those days was a gentleman's game.
Speaker 1: There was There was Edgar Wilture from Acoustic Research, Henry
Speaker 1: Close from from kl H, and these guys were not
Speaker 1: mercantile based guys. They were like inventors and and idealists.
Speaker 1: I said, why do you why do you have a
Speaker 1: bows sign on your lapel? There are you're pushing one brand?
Speaker 1: He goes, well, if I sell enough nine oh ones,
Speaker 1: I get a free trip to Hawaii. And I went
Speaker 1: on the radio and talked about that, and they tried
Speaker 1: to get me thrown off, but they didn't get me
Speaker 1: thrown off. But you know, Bows to Me is a
Speaker 1: company that is a brilliant marketing company. You'll see there
Speaker 1: their microphones all over the NFL, all over television. I
Speaker 1: don't think their products sound very good. I think I
Speaker 1: refute for The New York Times Cambridge sound Works, Bows
Speaker 1: and an esoteric brand of computer speaker. That was the assignment.
Speaker 1: And they said to me, pick one expensive esoteric computer speaker,
Speaker 1: which was an eminent technology of planar magnetic pick an
Speaker 1: inexpensive one on under a couple hunderd alls. I picked
Speaker 1: the Cambridge sound Works, which was Henry Closes company, and
Speaker 1: they made me do the Bow's acousta mass and I
Speaker 1: cut them some slack because I didn't, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a mainstream publication. I tried to say as many
Speaker 1: good things about it as they could. But they're speaker
Speaker 1: protection device, and their speaker is a light bulb in
Speaker 1: series with the output that that saves the money, so
Speaker 1: all the energy goes into the light bulb so it
Speaker 1: can never blow up the speaker. Because when too much
Speaker 1: energy goes into bulb glows, it's ridiculous. Anyway, I wrote
Speaker 1: the review, and I tried to be I didn't mention
Speaker 1: that I tried to be a younger. I said, it's
Speaker 1: not too bad, but the Cambridge sound Works was half
Speaker 1: the price and twice as good. But I didn't say that. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: I never wrote for The New York Times again, even
Speaker 1: though they told me it was very good copy. And
Speaker 1: I'll have more work. Okay, if I'm buying computer speakers,
Speaker 1: what's the price point that I need to pay and
Speaker 1: what's the equipment to get adequate sound. I have a
Speaker 1: pair of the of speakers called by a company called
Speaker 1: Van two V A N A T O O. They're
Speaker 1: self powered, they're really good for the money, and they're
Speaker 1: under firefront at allars. But A Z Fox makes some good,
Speaker 1: good computer speakers. I don't consider myself to be a
Speaker 1: computer speak expert, so I can really give you much
Speaker 1: information on that. But you can get great little speakers
Speaker 1: and put them next to your computer and get good
Speaker 1: sound powered speakers. Okay, let's go back to the brand names.
Speaker 1: H J B L. You know, back in the day,
Speaker 1: we you know what J B L stod for. Back
Speaker 1: in the day, it's stood for junk. But but they
Speaker 1: make great speakers. Obviously, that's that's the West Coast, you know.
Speaker 1: Jb L was the West Coast Sound and Acoustic Research,
Speaker 1: and kh for the East Coast Sound and j b
Speaker 1: L and Harmon they still make great speakers. They've got
Speaker 1: a retro speaker that looked like the old Orange Cube speakers.
Speaker 1: They're really good. Those are great speakers. So that's a
Speaker 1: good company still making good stuff. Harmon makes. Let's say
Speaker 1: I'm going vintage Henry Klaus went from company to Acoustic
Speaker 1: Research to kl H to Advent to Cambridge Sound Works.
Speaker 1: If I'm laying my money down, which are those products?
Speaker 1: Do I want? Get a pair of Advent one hundreds
Speaker 1: that are where the foam is still good? Uh, And
Speaker 1: you can get him on eBay or wherever. Those are
Speaker 1: great speakers by any definition, at any time. And I
Speaker 1: think the same is true of of original A R
Speaker 1: speakers if you can get them where the foam hasn't gone.
Speaker 1: And the same with Boston Acoustics. That's another company that's
Speaker 1: still in business making great speakers that are not that expenses.
Speaker 1: And Polk makes the genius of Matthew Polk. They still
Speaker 1: make some good speakers, Okay, Now, there were companies and
Speaker 1: technologies that seemed to have fallen by the wayside. Doll
Speaker 1: Quist and Lick should be electrostatic, what's up with that.
Speaker 1: Doll Quist made great speakers in the day, and those
Speaker 1: were not electrostatic speakers. Those are like flat kind of speakers,
Speaker 1: but they were an electrostatic They went out of business. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are companies making electrostatic speakers now and and good ones.
Speaker 1: If if you like that sound, um, it's not my thing.
Speaker 1: But Martin Logan still in business making electrostatic speakers. And
Speaker 1: the problem with electrostatic speakers is that the mid and
Speaker 1: high frequencies sound phenomenal, but then you have to chip
Speaker 1: with a whoofer that's gonna be a big cone and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be slower than the rest of the speakers
Speaker 1: that they have to finesse that in. And the big
Speaker 1: ones they make sound pretty good. But it's not my sound.
Speaker 1: What I like doesn't I always tell people, But what
Speaker 1: I like doesn't matter. What My job is just to
Speaker 1: tell you what something sounds like. And that may be
Speaker 1: your sound and not my sound, So you know it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter to me. Okay, Now, if all the stereo
Speaker 1: magazines that our mainstream merged into one sound Envision. We'll
Speaker 1: see how long that last. But you cannot open the
Speaker 1: magazine without seeing an ad for Golden Air. What's up
Speaker 1: with Golden Air? Right? So, Golden Air is is a
Speaker 1: company that was owned by a fellow named Sandy Gross,
Speaker 1: who I know very well, who's a very serious audiophile
Speaker 1: and loves music and he's an art collector too, and
Speaker 1: he he was involved with um with Polk from any
Speaker 1: years and then he started Golden Year. And Golden Year
Speaker 1: is a high value, high quality, relatively inexpensive brand of speakers. So, uh,
Speaker 1: if you can hear Golden Ear speakers, by all means,
Speaker 1: listen to them. It's it's a serious brand that makes
Speaker 1: good products overseas well designed and they sound good. I
Speaker 1: have only good things to say, but not because I
Speaker 1: know Sandy Gross, but because it's good. Where does that
Speaker 1: leave us in terms of speakers? Well, I just finished
Speaker 1: reviewing a pair of Wilson x v X speakers that
Speaker 1: sell for three dollars a pair, and you know, Bob,
Speaker 1: I bought them, And you could say, where do I
Speaker 1: get the money for that? Okay, So you know I
Speaker 1: was I was an expert witness in the trial of
Speaker 1: Quincy Jones versus the state of Michael Jackson. And if
Speaker 1: I got fass, which side were you on? I was
Speaker 1: on Quincy side. And uh, I was really well paid
Speaker 1: for that. And and that's the whole story. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you have to have time for that story,
Speaker 1: but I put that money away and in the meantime,
Speaker 1: I've been buying and upgrading my system. So my last
Speaker 1: speakers were Wilson Alexis, which sells for selling about a
Speaker 1: hundred and five and I get an industry discount. And
Speaker 1: if anybody has a problem with that, too bad. I
Speaker 1: work in the business and I think I'm entitled to
Speaker 1: get the same price that a dealer gets. But that's all.
Speaker 1: I don't think anything for free. I don't get free bees,
Speaker 1: I don't get stuff given to me. And over time,
Speaker 1: I keep investing. And yeah, I had the money to
Speaker 1: get these speakers at the dealer cost minus the trade
Speaker 1: in for the speakers I had. And yes, it's taking
Speaker 1: a chunk out of my my out of my retirement account,
Speaker 1: but you know what, I can look at my bank
Speaker 1: account and hear nothing. These speakers are so incredible. I'm
Speaker 1: up every night to two in the morning. I do
Speaker 1: this for a living and I'm up every two in
Speaker 1: the morning and listening to this these records I thought
Speaker 1: I knew and like, do you know there's an eighth
Speaker 1: note handclap on the birds? Mr tambourine man in the background.
Speaker 1: I've never heard it before. All of a sudden, put
Speaker 1: Mr Tamboin on here an eighth note. Now that's not
Speaker 1: important musically, but there it was. And uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you can spend a couple under thousand
Speaker 1: dollars on my pair of speakers, there's lots of good brands,
Speaker 1: lunch Reiker, Magico, Um Endless Numbers are well designed speakers
Speaker 1: that give you everything. And if you've got the money,
Speaker 1: you should take a chance and do it. And I
Speaker 1: talked I go around the world to meet these people,
Speaker 1: and they're well, I've been to the Philippines, I've been Japan.
Speaker 1: I've been all over the world listening to people's stereos
Speaker 1: and they love their music and they love their stereos
Speaker 1: and it's the great pleasure they get in life. And
Speaker 1: then close recording engineers too. So okay, when you look
Speaker 1: at these Wilson's, they're very expensive, but they look like
Speaker 1: items for children. They have a plastic surfaces. Can you
Speaker 1: explain what makes a Wilson so great? Okay, so it's
Speaker 1: not it's not plastic, it's automotive paint finishes. So it's
Speaker 1: very well finished. So Dave Wilson, who passed away a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, his his whole idea was that
Speaker 1: he you know, sound reaches you at different points in time,
Speaker 1: and we are very sensitive to when sound gets to us.
Speaker 1: That's one of the issues with digital that was bad
Speaker 1: at first. So we're very sensitive where things are in space.
Speaker 1: That's how we survived. You gotta know where that tiger
Speaker 1: is if is it behind here, in front of you,
Speaker 1: to the sides of you? Uh he His his position
Speaker 1: was that the transgance coming off of various drivers, the
Speaker 1: transgiance should reach your ear at the same time, which
Speaker 1: is different than phase response, is transient response. And so
Speaker 1: the bigger Wilson speakers have the driver's in separate boxes
Speaker 1: aligned in time so that the transgiance from each speaker
Speaker 1: reaches your ears at the same time, and that's moves
Speaker 1: out the frequency response as well as producing this sense
Speaker 1: of overall coherence. The cabinet has to be totally inert.
Speaker 1: The more that a cabinet vibrates when you put low
Speaker 1: frequencies into a cabinet, and it's vibrates that produces boom
Speaker 1: and boomy base. And that's that's the worst of all worlds.
Speaker 1: So these speakers are inert, essentially inert. They made out
Speaker 1: of this this phenomic and other kinds of material that's
Speaker 1: very inert, and then they're stacked up in this device
Speaker 1: that allows you to adjust each of the drivers, the
Speaker 1: mid range, the midrange, and the tweeter in three dimensional space,
Speaker 1: both forward and back and um rake angle towards you.
Speaker 1: And it's all mathematically aligned and delne you sit down
Speaker 1: and no one who sat down and heard these My
Speaker 1: wife sat down and said to me, you have to
Speaker 1: have these? What does that happen? It never happens, but
Speaker 1: it happened. Okay, they send someone from the company to
Speaker 1: adjust them. Correct. If you buy a pair of speakers
Speaker 1: for three and thirty thousand dollars, they better send somebody
Speaker 1: from the company to set them up because you can't
Speaker 1: do it yourself, and they do. That's part of what
Speaker 1: you get when you when you buy a speaker for
Speaker 1: that kind of money. Okay. You also talked about trading.
Speaker 1: That's a big thing amongst high audio. Uh purchaser's high
Speaker 1: end plenty of it. You know, what kind of return
Speaker 1: on a dollar does one get in a trade in.
Speaker 1: It's very similar to cars you's driving at the lot.
Speaker 1: It's worth half of what you paid. You don't buy
Speaker 1: hi fi as an instrument of investment. You buy it
Speaker 1: for the listening pleasure and um so, yeah, you're not
Speaker 1: buying it for its investment value. But if you buy
Speaker 1: the right stuff, it'll still have hold its value pretty well.
Speaker 1: So a company like Wilson has a has a division
Speaker 1: now that does what BMW and Mercedes do with used cars.
Speaker 1: You know, they both have programs where you trade your
Speaker 1: car and they send it back, they refurbish it and
Speaker 1: they say it's it's like new now and you get
Speaker 1: a aren't with it. They do that and they can't
Speaker 1: get enough of their old speakers back to do that
Speaker 1: to everyone that they get back and refurbished gets sold
Speaker 1: immediately because there's a market for it. So if you
Speaker 1: buy a good brand, and a brand that's gonna be
Speaker 1: in business in twenty years that's been in business for
Speaker 1: a long time, like McIntosh or even Morants, which is
Speaker 1: you know, traded hands numerous times. If it's a company
Speaker 1: that's been in business a long time, UM, it will
Speaker 1: if the product is good to begin with, and the
Speaker 1: company services what it sells, Like like Audio Research that
Speaker 1: the company in Minneapolis that makes tube gear, they've got
Speaker 1: stock of every product they've ever made. If you need
Speaker 1: a knob for an sp one, they got it. If
Speaker 1: you need a capacitor that's no longer made, they've got it.
Speaker 1: So before you buy any of this stuff, you should
Speaker 1: know whether it's a company that's been around and it's
Speaker 1: going to continue to be around, and whether you can
Speaker 1: still get service for what you're buying. Okay, in audio,
Speaker 1: there tends to be one genius. Sometimes their name is
Speaker 1: on the product. So if Dave Wilson died, is what
Speaker 1: is keeping the innovation and quality uh moving forward? That's
Speaker 1: such a great question, and it's always an issue because
Speaker 1: you go to a high fi show and there's one
Speaker 1: man who started the company whose name is on the product.
Speaker 1: When the guy dies, So the guy is at a
Speaker 1: high F show, he shows it to you, and after
Speaker 1: a couple of years he passes away and the company
Speaker 1: gets sold the next year, you go back and there's
Speaker 1: twenty guys in suits walking around and they have no
Speaker 1: idea what they're doing. They don't know any think about music.
Speaker 1: They know what they bought the company because it had
Speaker 1: a name. In the case of um Wilson, Dave passed away,
Speaker 1: but his son, Darryl, turns out is at least as
Speaker 1: good a designer as Dave, if not better as it
Speaker 1: turned out, and he's designing the products now, and their
Speaker 1: line of products is stronger than it's been in in years.
Speaker 1: And so you can buy a pair of Sabrina's for
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand. Now. Rick Rubin did not like Wilson speakers forever.
Speaker 1: He he didn't like them. We go to high fight
Speaker 1: shows together and he sit there and he wouldn't like them.
Speaker 1: But the Sabrina came out and he actually bought them
Speaker 1: because he really liked them. So the bottom of their
Speaker 1: line at about seventeen dollars, and that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to, you know, say it's not a
Speaker 1: lot of money. But what you get for the money
Speaker 1: is a speaker that goes down down low and has
Speaker 1: really good base and goes up the ladder smoothly, and
Speaker 1: it's a great speaker. And if you were a pair
Speaker 1: of those, you'd like them. Okay. What's the markup in
Speaker 1: high end stereo. It's usually forty points or fifty points.
Speaker 1: It's high. Okay. So a company like Wilson, you know
Speaker 1: there'll be people at home saying if I sold one
Speaker 1: pair of three thousand dollar speakers, I don't have to
Speaker 1: work the rest of the year, if not longer. How
Speaker 1: many units can these companies sell. That's an interesting question,
Speaker 1: more than you might think. For example, the speakers I
Speaker 1: got the x v x is I got to review
Speaker 1: because of COVID. They were met, they were built and
Speaker 1: then built in the over the over last summer, and
Speaker 1: then they sat at the factory and uh, they couldn't
Speaker 1: be delivered to me until the fall. And they were
Speaker 1: serial number seventy nine and eighty. But their way into
Speaker 1: into the hundreds and hundreds. Now they've sold hundreds of
Speaker 1: pairs of the speakers. Hundreds. It's a bigger market than
Speaker 1: you think, and and uh, and it's growing, especially with
Speaker 1: the pandemic. What happened to our industry over this past year.
Speaker 1: I started getting in Boks clogs with people saying I
Speaker 1: want to upgrade my speakers. I want to upgrade my
Speaker 1: turn table. I got nothing to do but sit around
Speaker 1: and listen to music. I wanted to sound better than
Speaker 1: I got. What can I do? So okay? So you
Speaker 1: personally in the system, you want what are you using
Speaker 1: for amplification and reproduction at the turn table? Land? Okay?
Speaker 1: So uh. The amplifiers I owned are called dart Zeals.
Speaker 1: They're made in Switzerland and their solid state and they're
Speaker 1: very beautiful and they're very good. Um the pre amplifier
Speaker 1: has a dart Zeal pre amplifier, which is battery powered
Speaker 1: and it sounds very good. And the phono priump I
Speaker 1: have have to phono priumps. One is called c H Precision.
Speaker 1: It's also made in Switzerland, and it's a current amplifier.
Speaker 1: It amplifies the current that that a low up moving
Speaker 1: coral cartridge puts out and that I don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about prices because it's it's all ridiculously costly. Um well,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the price of the speakers. You gotta mention
Speaker 1: the prices of this other stuff. You're killing me. You're
Speaker 1: gonna kill me. I'm gonna hate mail, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a video on the STERIFI did a video
Speaker 1: of my room a couple of years ago and the
Speaker 1: prices as I went through the room, and I said,
Speaker 1: I I own this. Because people think that audio reviews
Speaker 1: are on the take and they get the stuff or nothing.
Speaker 1: I bought everything in my system. And then the anti
Speaker 1: semitism starts on there. You would not believe the things
Speaker 1: that are on on the other that I have to
Speaker 1: respond to. But or they say I look like Jerry Springer,
Speaker 1: or oh Jerry Spinker as a stereo, or oh Lou
Speaker 1: Reed has it's it's pretty ugly, but um, okay. The
Speaker 1: amplifiers are about a hundred and seventy K a pair,
Speaker 1: and the pre ampts, so you're saying, yeah, because you
Speaker 1: have one reach channel, Yeah, pair up mono blocks. The
Speaker 1: c H precision phono preamp is another fifty thousand. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then I have another one called yip Salon, which has
Speaker 1: made in grease, which has got tubes in it. It's
Speaker 1: got military grade tubes in it at last, almost forever.
Speaker 1: And that's probably another fift K. And this is stuff
Speaker 1: I have acquiet over thirty years of doing this job
Speaker 1: and putting all my all my spare money into this
Speaker 1: because I love this. This is all I do. It's
Speaker 1: you know, I drive the same car I've driven for
Speaker 1: the last twelve years, which I love, but I don't
Speaker 1: have a new car, and this is where my money
Speaker 1: goes into into my high fight and into records. So
Speaker 1: and if I sound defensive, it's because the amount of
Speaker 1: guff I get online from people. Where does your money
Speaker 1: come from? Well, you know, okay, inherited some money. It's
Speaker 1: not of your business. Um. The turntable I had was
Speaker 1: to Continuum CALIBERN which sold for a hundred and fifty K.
Speaker 1: And now I'm going to get a new turntable. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure of what I'm going to get at, but
Speaker 1: I have a couple of them that I'm considering, but
Speaker 1: not the half million dollar one. That's too much for me.
Speaker 1: The arm I have started at thirty thou dollars. And
Speaker 1: you know, I have a lot of people around the
Speaker 1: world that depend upon me for my advice and what
Speaker 1: I hear, and I take my job very seriously. And um,
Speaker 1: I got this arm sent to me by this designer
Speaker 1: in Sweden who has graduate degrees in material science and
Speaker 1: mechanical engineering, and his other work was working on the
Speaker 1: Ariana rocket project for the European Union, and UM he
Speaker 1: was involved in designing parts for Volvo and other car companies.
Speaker 1: And he set his sights on designing a great tone arm.
Speaker 1: And it was thirty thou dollars and I got one
Speaker 1: to review. I stuck it in my system, and the
Speaker 1: performance was better than anything I'd ever heard by a
Speaker 1: wide margin. They I've never heard a bottom in like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, like Donovan Live. There's an uncle Donovan Live,
Speaker 1: which I've known for years, and it opens up and
Speaker 1: there's a person playing the viola or a cello in
Speaker 1: that album. I never heard it. I thought it was
Speaker 1: just a little low frequency noise. And all this other
Speaker 1: musical revelations happened from listening to this arm, and I
Speaker 1: made sure I knew I was hearing what I thought
Speaker 1: I heard, and I reviewed it and said what I heard,
Speaker 1: and he sold seventy of them off that review for
Speaker 1: thirty thod dollars apiece, and everybody that bought one sent
Speaker 1: me email saying thank you. I wouldn't have known to
Speaker 1: buy that. I heard about it, but I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: wasn't spending thirty thousand dollars and something I didn't know
Speaker 1: you wrote what you wrote. I trust you. I bought it.
Speaker 1: It's what you said it was. And thank you very much.
Speaker 1: You know that's important to me. Yes, And the cartridge,
Speaker 1: the cartridge. I I have a number of cartridges. I
Speaker 1: have a Lyra Atlas LAMB to s L that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's about thirteen thousand dollars. I'm very careful with it.
Speaker 1: I have a orderfon and a D which is about
Speaker 1: eleven thousand, and I have a an exquisite cartridge from
Speaker 1: um Switzerland that sells for about that much too. I
Speaker 1: just I just reviewed that a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: and I wrote a great review of it, and people
Speaker 1: that bought it emailed me and said, you're right, it's
Speaker 1: just what you said it sounded like, and that's the
Speaker 1: sound I like, so thank you. And what about headphones.
Speaker 1: I live in a house and I can play music
Speaker 1: as loud as I want, and I think headphone listening
Speaker 1: is you know. And I have a pair of Jerry
Speaker 1: um what's his name, I can't remember his name, a
Speaker 1: guy in Florida that makes these headphones for any year.
Speaker 1: He makes a lot of studio monitors. Uh, I forget
Speaker 1: his last name. Unfortunately, he's gonna kill me. And those
Speaker 1: are great. You put him in your ear and they're
Speaker 1: molded to my ear. And so when I travel on
Speaker 1: an airplane and I do ice do a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: miles a year, uh, and I hope to do that again,
Speaker 1: and I put those in my ear with a good
Speaker 1: I have an Astlin Current player that has high res
Speaker 1: and and DSD quality files on it, and that sounds
Speaker 1: fantastic to travel with. Can't beat it. But okay. Then
Speaker 1: there are many people who say the people at the
Speaker 1: super high end are more into the equipment than the music.
Speaker 1: What's your take on that? You know, that's like every prejudice,
Speaker 1: every racial prejudice you've ever heard, and it's really awful
Speaker 1: and it's not true. It is really not true. There
Speaker 1: was a time, I'll admit, there was a time when
Speaker 1: having a big stereo was your you know, fatique, Philip
Speaker 1: watch or whatever it is. You know, it was your
Speaker 1: status symbol. Uh. And there were people that had that
Speaker 1: and they weren't that into music as they should have been.
Speaker 1: But that's gone now because there are other things. You
Speaker 1: can have a status symbols, and you can actually wear
Speaker 1: them on your wrist, or you can walk around with them.
Speaker 1: I travel around the world, Bob, and every home I
Speaker 1: go into, it's people who love music and that is
Speaker 1: the passion of their life. And it's true here when
Speaker 1: I go visit people I got. I was in Bulgaria
Speaker 1: and I visited a lawyer and he has a room
Speaker 1: full of records and tapes and he's got these big
Speaker 1: Wilson speakers that had to be carried up by hand
Speaker 1: five flights of stairs by piano movers on their backs.
Speaker 1: And these people are all deady, and it's the most
Speaker 1: fun to meet people who love music. That's what they love,
Speaker 1: and they have the means and and they have the
Speaker 1: wherewithal to have really fine stereos, and they especially in
Speaker 1: this pandemic, it's been a lifesaver for a lot of
Speaker 1: people to be able to sit there and turn the
Speaker 1: lights out and uh. Like people say to me, your stereo.
Speaker 1: I could have live music and your house for the
Speaker 1: same kind of money. I said, you get Miles Davis
Speaker 1: to come to your house. I'll be there. But I
Speaker 1: could put on Miles Davis live at the Black Hook,
Speaker 1: And it doesn't take much for my say, wow, I'm
Speaker 1: in the black hook and Miles Davis is right there
Speaker 1: in front of me, and I see his horn and
Speaker 1: I see it moving around the microphone, and it's as
Speaker 1: thrilling to me now as it was forty years ago. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about the music you recently
Speaker 1: reviewed varying iterations of Aqualung And what is interesting to
Speaker 1: me is having talked to Steven Wilson, who recently remixed
Speaker 1: the album and also said the original was uh, master
Speaker 1: tape was stretched and not representative of the sound. Hey,
Speaker 1: did you hear the Steven Wilson version and found it inferior?
Speaker 1: Or was it not on your landscape? And what's going
Speaker 1: on there? Um? That wasn't on my landscape. And because
Speaker 1: that record has never been a good sounding record, and
Speaker 1: you know, after a while you don't want to hear
Speaker 1: it anymore. I have I have a big problem with
Speaker 1: all of these reissues at a certain on a certain level,
Speaker 1: some of them deserved to be reissued, and some of
Speaker 1: them do we have to hear that again? And that
Speaker 1: one never sounded good. I have an original British chrystalis pressing.
Speaker 1: I have the original French Pink label Island. I have
Speaker 1: the American reprise was never good, and I have the one,
Speaker 1: the recent one done in the box, which is probably
Speaker 1: as good as the original can sound. And that's it.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard Stephen Wilson's thin any of that. This
Speaker 1: is one of the rare cases where there's a problem,
Speaker 1: and Ian Anderson agreed to be interesting to get your
Speaker 1: take on that. What if someone has a high end stereo.
Speaker 1: What are some of the great records? You know, all
Speaker 1: these records are And there's so many elements in the
Speaker 1: chain of a record, the recording studio, the matate machine,
Speaker 1: the master, the reproduction. But I used to always say,
Speaker 1: you know, super Tramp, Crime of the Century, half speed Master.
Speaker 1: That's that's how I bought my n Camici five eighty
Speaker 1: two because I was comparing it against some more expensive Iowa.
Speaker 1: That was the top line MUTI. But I could hear
Speaker 1: things I couldn't hear reproduced. So what are your go
Speaker 1: to records? The first one I tell people to buy
Speaker 1: and is to buy Duke Ellington Masterpieces. It's a mono
Speaker 1: recording from N and it was reissued by Analog Productions
Speaker 1: and I got an original pressing of that. I was
Speaker 1: at a at a record fair, and you know when
Speaker 1: there's a guy at the record fair who looks like
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley and he's selling rock and roll on on
Speaker 1: the top tables, and then there were tables underneath where
Speaker 1: he puts the junk. That's where I go, because that's
Speaker 1: the stuff he doesn't know anything about. And that's where
Speaker 1: I found this Masterpieces and I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1: I looked at it and I thought it was gonna
Speaker 1: be a bunch of seventy eight's that were strung together
Speaker 1: to make an LP at the beginning of the LP era.
Speaker 1: And I bought it and I put it on and
Speaker 1: I hate to use the expression of my jaw dropped
Speaker 1: because I don't like that. I don't use it, but
Speaker 1: I almost wet my pants. It was like, what is this?
Speaker 1: And then I read more carefully, and what it was
Speaker 1: was it was the first one of the first times
Speaker 1: that Duke Ellington could go into the studio and record
Speaker 1: to tape and not do a three minute dance single,
Speaker 1: which is all he could do previously. So he was
Speaker 1: traveling the world with this incredible orchestra and doing these
Speaker 1: long suites, these twenty minutes suites and people were hearing
Speaker 1: this incredible music, but there was no way that you
Speaker 1: could hear it at home because it was three minutes
Speaker 1: singles on a seventy eight. And they said, Duke, bring
Speaker 1: the orchestra into the studio. We're gonna record this on
Speaker 1: a tape at the thirty Street studio and we can
Speaker 1: now sell your your suits. So they made that record.
Speaker 1: Was at a time when nobody had a thirty three
Speaker 1: and a third record player. So it came and it went,
Speaker 1: and that's what I found, and I called it. Chad
Speaker 1: Cassip at Analog Productions and I said, Chad, you have
Speaker 1: to reissue this mono record from Duke Gillington. And Chad,
Speaker 1: who was, you know from New Orleans? He goes, He goes,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, he is old, regged Duke Gillington mono.
Speaker 1: I said, Chad, just do it. And he did it
Speaker 1: and it became the biggest selling record for a while
Speaker 1: that he ever had, Bigger than T for the Tillerman,
Speaker 1: which is another one you should get as as a
Speaker 1: great sounding record to tone and it's an amazing I
Speaker 1: bring this record, this reissue that he did, which is
Speaker 1: better than the original much better, and I bring it
Speaker 1: around the world. I brought it to Japan and played
Speaker 1: it and in front of a large crowd of people
Speaker 1: at the end of the mood Indigo, they stood up
Speaker 1: and they applauded as if Duke was right there. It's
Speaker 1: the most amazing sounding record. So I recommend that first.
Speaker 1: Then uh T for the Tillerman, the Supertramp record. Um
Speaker 1: if you can find of the original think label Island
Speaker 1: Traffic albums are amazing, the first one, especially Elvis and
Speaker 1: Roy Orbison records. The originals are absolutely stunning, and I
Speaker 1: can recommend those any of the Blue Notes that are
Speaker 1: coming out now. You know this Tone Poet series they
Speaker 1: were doing on Blue Note. The whole catalog was well
Speaker 1: record well. Rudy Van Gelder recorded those things, and those
Speaker 1: tapes of Scotch one eleven and Scotch one eleven is
Speaker 1: like bulletproof. It doesn't shed, it doesn't stretch, It's Joseph bulletproof.
Speaker 1: And those records are amazing and they're selling in numbers
Speaker 1: that just blow the minds of the Universal executives. They
Speaker 1: just had no idea that this could happen, because once
Speaker 1: you hear one and that's classic, you know that's classical
Speaker 1: music of the of the twenty of the twentieth century
Speaker 1: is jazz, and those records so those are incredible. Whatever
Speaker 1: whatever still exists of the Impulse catalog, all the jazz
Speaker 1: records of the fifties were wonderfully recorded. And if you
Speaker 1: can buy go on discois and buy used copies, that's great.
Speaker 1: By the reissues, if they're cut from tape, those are great. Um,
Speaker 1: Chad just reissued Tony Joe White's Black and White. You know, Tony,
Speaker 1: are you familiar with Tony Joe White? Of course, Posy,
Speaker 1: of course, that's that's the one song. But this record
Speaker 1: that he did, Tony Joe White black and White. Black
Speaker 1: and White refers to the cover, but it really refers
Speaker 1: to him doing a song about racial harmony at a
Speaker 1: time when no one was doing songs about racial harmony
Speaker 1: down South. And it's a wonderful song and it's a
Speaker 1: beautifully recorded album and it just came out and he's
Speaker 1: such a natural singer. You feel like you know him
Speaker 1: and he and the recording is so good. You sit
Speaker 1: there and it's Tony Jerrowhite sitting in front of you
Speaker 1: playing these songs. So that's a great one. What else
Speaker 1: I bring? I brought some other new records here. But
Speaker 1: brether Than talk about particular records, the just categories of records,
Speaker 1: you know this stuff that. Yeah, So why are records
Speaker 1: so expensive today? Is it pure markup or is that
Speaker 1: what it costs? I mean, I remember Tom Petty bitching
Speaker 1: about the increase of the by universal of the price
Speaker 1: of his record and all of them the list prices
Speaker 1: below ten dollars. Now records list price seems to be
Speaker 1: twenty five or thirty dollars. Okay, So first of all,
Speaker 1: take out your old copy of Sam Goody's Sunday New
Speaker 1: York Times supplement and look at the prices in the
Speaker 1: in the sixties, and then extrapolate to what it caught.
Speaker 1: What that isn't in terms of inflation. And you're talking
Speaker 1: that's and it's hard for some of us older people
Speaker 1: to say, what, how can that be? But that's what
Speaker 1: it is. So it is that the actor that I buy,
Speaker 1: whether it's on Amazon or whatever, that's not an audio
Speaker 1: quality record, is eighteen dollars twenty dollars. Like I just
Speaker 1: got the new Black Puma's record. It was like eighteen
Speaker 1: dollars double record set nicely packaged. So that's that's reasonable
Speaker 1: in my world. And you know the audio follow records
Speaker 1: are more costly. But okay, let's go back to the
Speaker 1: other side of Michael Frehmer. What exactly is your job?
Speaker 1: Where are you talking about all this traveling these reviews.
Speaker 1: How is it that you make money? What are you providing?
Speaker 1: Is it something with corporations and magazines or is it
Speaker 1: one on one? How does it go? Alright? So, so
Speaker 1: I'm a senior editor at stereofallaw magazine, and I run
Speaker 1: this website, Cold Analog Planet, and I have a YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: and I used to publish magazine and I decided not
Speaker 1: that I wanted to make a living, so I stopped
Speaker 1: doing that. But I actually make a living at this,
Speaker 1: not that many do make a living at this. And
Speaker 1: I think part of the reason why I do make
Speaker 1: a living at it is because I think I have
Speaker 1: a good sensibility about what things sound like and I
Speaker 1: can describe it well. And uh, and so I become
Speaker 1: valuable to the company, and companies respect me and they
Speaker 1: run advertising around my column. And you know, I don't
Speaker 1: pay any attention to that. I really don't. And somehow
Speaker 1: I've been able to make a living. I made a
Speaker 1: DVD on how to set up a turn table? Did
Speaker 1: I ever send you a copy of that? Uh? You
Speaker 1: can send me another one, but I think you did,
Speaker 1: but a long time ago. So I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: I said to myself, and I started pushing vital in
Speaker 1: the eighties when it was really what are you crazy?
Speaker 1: Is going away? Shut up? I told Universal to keep
Speaker 1: the pressing plan open, and they wouldn't listen to me.
Speaker 1: I went to I went to Specialty Records in olif
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, which is the Warner Brothers plan. Went and
Speaker 1: they had this big pressing plant and they had they
Speaker 1: had c D duplication and they were just getting started
Speaker 1: in DVD duplications like early nineties. And the guy who
Speaker 1: ran the plant set to us, see those press record presses.
Speaker 1: We're gonna scrap those that's going away. We're gonna make
Speaker 1: room for the DVDs. I said, don't do that. Record
Speaker 1: is gonna come back. And it looked at me like
Speaker 1: I was crazy. Crazy at any rate, I made the DVD.
Speaker 1: I borrowed twenty thousand dollars to make this DVD, and
Speaker 1: I figured if I sold a couple of thousand copies.
Speaker 1: I maybe i'd make my money back. But I did
Speaker 1: it not for the money. I did it because I
Speaker 1: thought you should see how it's done rather than reading
Speaker 1: about it, because you can't really follow it reading about it.
Speaker 1: So I spoke to a educational DVD how to Company,
Speaker 1: and I said, what what do I What can I
Speaker 1: expect to make on? How many copies can I expect
Speaker 1: to sell of an instructional DVD? He said, unless you're
Speaker 1: Jane Fonda, you can figure on a couple of thousand,
Speaker 1: and the shelf life will be like three or four
Speaker 1: years for something like that. I see. He said, what's
Speaker 1: the subject. I said, it's how to set up a
Speaker 1: turn table? And he said, well, half that number. So
Speaker 1: I said, all right, I'm doing this anyway. So I
Speaker 1: did it and I've sold and in order to make
Speaker 1: my money back, I felt I had to sell it
Speaker 1: for thirty dollars a disc wholesale fifteen and if I
Speaker 1: sold three thousand copies, I make my money back and
Speaker 1: make a couple of bucks on it, which I thought
Speaker 1: I was entitled to make. Thank you very much, Capitalist Society.
Speaker 1: So it's still in print and I've sold like seventeen
Speaker 1: and a half thousand copies. So do the math. You know,
Speaker 1: it cost a dollar to press up a DVD, so
Speaker 1: I make like fifteen or sixteen bucks a piece time,
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand. That's where my stereo came from, a lot
Speaker 1: of it. So good for me, okay. And so mostly
Speaker 1: your money comes from reviewing or is there consulting to
Speaker 1: companies or is there consulting to individuals? I can't do that.
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to do that. I cannot consult. I
Speaker 1: can't do beta testing for anybody. So you know, I
Speaker 1: make a nice salary. My wife, she works in I
Speaker 1: T for back clearing of stock trading. She makes a good,
Speaker 1: good living, and I make a nice living, and the
Speaker 1: two of us together, you know, I I do not
Speaker 1: live extravagantly. All my money goes into my stereo and records,
Speaker 1: and and some nice clothes for when I travel. And
Speaker 1: when I travel, my expenses sometimes get picked up sometimes,
Speaker 1: but most of the time the company pays for my
Speaker 1: travel and I take no I do no consulting. I
Speaker 1: don't get paid anything extra because I'm not a journal
Speaker 1: I am a journalist, but I know that how The
Speaker 1: New York Times New York Times is like you have
Speaker 1: to wear a hair suit to come listen to stereo.
Speaker 1: I had a writer for The New York Times over
Speaker 1: here and he said he got records sent to him
Speaker 1: from the electric recording company in in England, but he
Speaker 1: had to send the records back. And if you're work
Speaker 1: for consumer reports, you can't even sit and have a
Speaker 1: meal with other people. I mean, it's just it's that's
Speaker 1: a level of separate you know journalism that I but
Speaker 1: that's what it is. Fine in my business because it's
Speaker 1: a small business. I can get taken out for a meal.
Speaker 1: That's allowed. Now if anybody thinks that I will review
Speaker 1: something positively in exchange for a meal, it's crazy. I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: My capital is my credibility, and I have credibility because
Speaker 1: I write what I think. I don't give all positive reviews.
Speaker 1: I've given negative reviews. I'm not afraid of giving a
Speaker 1: really negative review and then walking into a hi fi
Speaker 1: show and having someone screaming yell at me. That's okay,
Speaker 1: I don't mind, And that's where my credibility comes from.
Speaker 1: And so I get well paid and my DVDs still
Speaker 1: make money for me and whatever, So I do, Okay,
Speaker 1: sounds great. I know that as much as we've talked
Speaker 1: on some level, we've only scratched the surface. Don't you scratch.
Speaker 1: But for those people who are new to frem Her,
Speaker 1: you can go to his site, Analog Planet, and you
Speaker 1: can go down the rabbit hole. As you can tell,
Speaker 1: he's a verbal guy with opinions. You can get caught
Speaker 1: up in his word text to your benefit. Michael, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for doing this. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me about I love reading your newsletter. It's on.
Speaker 1: It's one of my highlights of my days when it
Speaker 1: shows up. Whether I agree with you or not on everything,
Speaker 1: but I agree with you more than you think, and
Speaker 1: you're a treasure to yourself. Wow. Thanks so much, Michael.
Speaker 1: Until next time, this is the Bob Left Sex Podcast