|
Random Noise 2
The hai-fai egret’s mating call: Tweak! Tweak!
Tweako! Tweak!
If the gentle reader regards
acoustic-isolation underpinnings as audiophile
hooey, he or she is advised to skip ahead to
“Recommended recordings.” But if, like me, the
gentle reader thinks they’re effective, he or
she may find the following of interest. (The
“he or she” bit falls under the heading of
editorial etiquette. My guess is that
throughout audio journalism, Internet and
print, female readers are one per thousand,
and that, I further suspect, is a generous
ratio. Ladies, if I miscalculate, email me in
your smothering numbers. I’ll acknowledge my
error.)
Anyway,
before we get to Joe Ciulla’s Multi-Mount
Footer (henceforward MMF), let’s begin with
Kevin Tellekamp’s Silent Running Audio
isolation platforms (www.silentrunningaudio.com).
The relationship will soon become clear.
Kevin’s component-specific VR and Ohio-Class
platforms are as beautifully made as anything
in high-end audio. The man is an avid
craftsman, and, more significantly, a
noise-suppression expert. His company’s name
alludes to Kevin’s background in materials
applications for martial stealth. That’s
martial, not marital. Marital stealth is
another matter entirely. When I sold my Mark
Levinson 33H mono amps, a pair of SRA VR
platforms went with them: matte-black, as
elegantly finished as a Wilson speaker (and
that’s saying something), and, to repeat,
component-specific. It killed me to part with
them.
 Ah
well. Attractive product design at a gentler
price point brings us, as promised, to Joe
Ciulla’s Multi-Mount Footer (www.equarack.com).
By way of user-adjusted weight optimization,
the hunky, handsomely machined MMF is flexibly
specific, emphasis on flexibly. While hardware
routinely departs (we’re audiophiles, after
all), its dedicated isolators need not. An
MMF’s bottom section features 16 shallow pits
into which the user places from one to 16
viscoelastic pellets, depending on the
component’s weight and weight distribution.
The top section’s concentric rings secure the
pellets in place. All of this is amply
explained and illustrated on EquaRack’s
Website as well as in the lucid tutorial that
accompanied my review foursome. The number of
pellets being critical, the instructions will
tell you how to assess your component with
respect to weight distribution.
The MMFs are under my Integris CDP (www.aurumacoustics.com),
which last perched on a home-brew platform
consisting of four upward-pointing VibraPod
Cones supporting a very heavy 16x16x2-inch
concrete patio tile, and atop the tile, a trio
of DH Ceramic Cones pointing into a trio of DH
Squares (www.goldensound.com).
The CDP and NuForce amps occupy the top of a
low, “country-style” Chinese cabinet, 56
inches long by 17 deep by 19-1/2 high. It’s a
sturdy old thing and handsome, but made of
wood and therefore resonant; thus the
elaborate isolation assemblage. The two
diminutive NuForce Reference 9 SE amps flank
the CDP on Vibrapod cones and pods (www.vibrapod.com).
Vibrapods come in five weight-bearing ranges.
I’m using Model 1, rated at 2-3 pounds each.
The NuForce Reference 9 SE weighs about seven
pounds. The amps they replaced weigh 200
pounds each. I’m still recovering from the
absurdity.
Because I wanted a bare-bones presentation of
what they can do, the MMFs under the Integris
are in direct contact with the cabinet. The
concrete patio tile, to which I applied
several coats of black enamel –– ah, elegance!
–– has been banished to Murmansk, our unheated
garage. The Integris’s designer, Derrick Moss,
recommends three footers. I normally act on
Derrick’s suggestions but finally opted for
four over three in response to one of Joe’s
email comments: “While using four may not
provide better performance with all
components, the potential is there for very
good reasons. The ‘extra’ footer adds
structural rigidity to the chassis and
provides additional damping. This is a simple
fact.”
Even before you set them up, the MMFs inspire
confidence. They just look as though a lot of
productive thought went into their conception.
But I’ve been around this scene long enough to
understand that good impressions can translate
into perceptions having more to do with a
positive bias than an actual improvement in
what one’s hearing. Allowing for that
likelihood, I can also say from experience
that one’s bias will sooner or later come to
terms with what he hears his speakers telling
him. I’ve given myself plenty of time to get
over the rush.
So then, in all sobriety, candor and gravitas,
what do I hear the MMFs contributing to the
mix? I’m getting a strong sense of focus,
speed and resolution. The system sounds more
dynamic and the soundfield’s to die for. In
short, it’s a question of the already good
having become better.
 As
a kindness to the gentle, gender-unspecified
reader, I’ll resist droning on about “test”
recordings. One example will suffice for a
whole lot of listening. Disc two of
Donaueschinger Musiktage 1999 [col legno
WWE 2CD 20075] features Tato Taborda’s
Estratos and Cergio Prudencio’s Cantos
crepusculares, performed by the Orquesta
Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos, La Paz
(Bolivia). You don’t get to hear an 18-piece
ensemble of indigenous instruments every day.
The MMFs did nicely at arraying native winds
and percussion throughout a rock-steady
soundfield. This is the kind of experience
that makes the optimized expression of
rewarding discoveries worth the trouble and
expense we nutcakes to go.
In evaluating isolation systems, whenever I’ve
removed one or another from under the Integris
CDP or its Mark Levinson 390S predecessor, the
image blurred to a varyingly disturbing
degree. Curtailments of resolution and
transparency degrade dimensionality and
verisimilitude, along with instrumental timbre
and the rest of the litany. The MMFs do as
good a job as I’ve heard in this room. Nice
going, Joe. You’ve earned the final word:
“…for a fraction of the price, the Footers
exceed or at least equal the effectiveness of
competing platforms costing several hundred to
thousands of dollars. AND they don’t need to
be returned to the manufacturer when a
component is replaced. Furthermore, they are
very small compared to these platforms and
require much less headroom. They can easily
integrate into virtually any rack system.”
Recommended recordings
 As a value-neutral fact, “he cranked them out
like sausages” fairly describes Johann
Sebastian Bach’s church-cantata production.
That’s what the Leipzig town fathers, among
others, paid him to do. (This sublime genius’s
responsibilities included gathering firewood
for the Thomasschule, where he taught). The
man also wrote cantatas celebrating this or
that worthy’s birthday, marriage or funeral
and, as a labor-saving device, wasn’t in the
least reluctant to crib numbers from earlier
works for the task at hand. Had Bach a
premonition of recording and the role it would
play in music’s dissemination, he might have
exercised a little more caution. And then
again, perhaps not. Bach modified many of the
borrowings to suit the occasion.
 And we haven’t even mentioned chamber music,
concertos, suites, Passions, motets, masses….
By the Romantic period’s standards, composers
of earlier eras were remarkably prolific.
Unlike the Romantics who composed in the main
on spec, their Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo,
and Classical predecessors produced work as
needed for patrons and employers: royalty,
nobility, the church. Consider Franz Josef
Haydn, whose 104 symphonies represent but a
fraction of his oeuvre. His boss, a count, was
a great music lover whose household included
an orchestra. You don’t see much of that these
days…. While one might fairly observe that
Bach was typically productive, the sausage
analogy is inapt. Wurst isn’t normally stuffed
with gems. The miracle is not the number of
extant cantatas (many have been lost) but
rather the abundance of priceless moments
within.
So it’s no wonder that several conductors,
along with their specialized ensembles,
chorales and soloists have attempted to record
the lot. Given well rehearsed, insightful
performances, it’s also no wonder that,
however many of the cantatas one listens to,
the magical moments persist.
The survey I’m trying to keep abreast of is
that of conductor John Eliot Gardiner and his
English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir and
vocal soloists. It appeared initially on the
Archiv label. The first of these in my
collection has a 1990 publication date.
Another Archiv of the same year is the first
of the “Bach Cantata Pilgrimage,” wherein
Eliot’s band of players, choristers and
vocalists recorded in various churches and
cathedrals in Great Britain and the Continent:
thus “Pilgrimage.”
As with another contemporaneous cantata
survey, that of conductor Ton Koopman, the
Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Chorus on the
Erato label, Archiv abandoned its commitment,
basing the decision, I suppose, on flaccid
sales. Happily, the survey resumes on the Soli
Deo Gloria label, an ad hoc creation of
Monteverdi Productions Ltd., with Gardiner, no
doubt, the man in charge. The sponsorship and
funding, beginning with the Prince of Wales,
is impressive. (As to that guess about the
Archiv divorce, I emailed Monteverdi
Productions for relevant gossip and got no
reply. Cheeky Yank!)
Even more impressive –– and a lovely example
of British eccentricity –– is the packaging.
The mostly two-disc sets are fashioned to look
like little books (a couple so far contain a
single CD). The cover art on each features
photographs of exotic faces: a frowning
turbaned Afghani as if in a Rembrandt
portrait; an Indian boy, his face decorated in
red mud; a young Buddhist monk; a festively
hooded Tibetan infant; a young Nigerian woman
festooned with cosmetic dots, etc., etc. While
Bach’s Lutheran cantatas are anything but
multicultural, our present day’s Zeitgeist is.
Besides, Steve McCurry’s photographs are just
plain gorgeous. The most famous of these, of a
young, green-eyed Pakistani woman covering her
nose and mouth with her hijab (head-covering),
gained worldwide circulation several years
ago.
The oddity continues with the volumes’
numbering: No. 1 was not the first to appear,
nor do the numbers occur in consecutive order.
I’ve no idea what that’s about. To return
briefly to that pilgrimage, it ended in New
York City’s St. Bartholomew in December, 2000:
volume 14, featuring Christmas cantatas, is
one of the series’ more instantly appealing.
While these are certainly among the loveliest
and best recorded performances I’ve heard, I’d
recommend beginning with Soli Deo Gloria SDG
114, a single CD featuring a recent Bach
discovery and ten selections from various
cantatas: instrumental music, solo arias,
duets, chorales. The label’s US distributor is
at
www.harmoniamundiusa.com. The easiest
route to Internet purchases is via
www.arkivmusic.com. I tried
www.amazon.com
and got thoroughly confused. Maybe it’s me,
but that’s one tough site to navigate for
specifics such as this.
***
This closing recommendation has a pungent
history. I reviewed this two-disc set for
another publication. Its music editor is
obliged to enforce a restrictive word-limit.
Not his call, and I could live with it. With
respect to brevity, who can forget Bennett
Cerf’s “The Detroit String Quartet played
Brahms last night. Brahms lost.” Another,
attributed to Max Reger: “I am sitting in the
smallest room of my house. I have your review
before me. In a moment it will be behind me.”
(Would that Reger’s music were as engaging as
that quip.)
 When
the publication’s Grand Panjandrum tells a
contributor that the set he recommends is
oddball crap (I paraphrase –– it wasn’t quite
that brutal), one’s job-contentment factor
deflates. And Reger’s quip resonates. Given
the review’s surroundings, Warren Burt’s
The Animation of Lists and The Archytan
Transpositions, XI Records XI 130 (www.xirecords.org),
was, it’s true, a square peg in a round hole.
I repeat my comments here, somewhat altered,
in the belief that good music ought to be
celebrated as often as possible. That’s what
high-end audio’s about –– adventure,
experimentation, the illusion of proximity to
enlivening art –– and yet music coverage in
most audio-centered publications remains
predictably middlebrow.
Without further fuss, XI’s Warren Burt
release: The two-disc set’s eight tracks trace
their lineage to an easier-going, American
turn on art music’s avant-garde. Lou Harrison,
Terry Riley, Morton Feldman, George Crumb, et
al., would be at home in Burt’s ravishing
sound-world. If one had absolutely to assign a
genre, Ambient might do were it understood
that a keen musical intelligence is at work.
(A great deal of Ambient is mindless. Indeed,
thought-avoidance might be the palliative
purpose and point.) For the Burt set,
“Downtown” puts it closer to an essence.
(Downtown: minimal / Uptown: complex. The
terms relate to Manhattan’s street grid.
Columbia University, once the center for
academic atonality, is uptown, whereas
downtown –– Soho, Tribeca, the East Village,
etc. –– has served as the setting for a
looser-limbed, boho aesthetic.)
If one’s definition of music can be expanded
to embrace any purposeful organization of
sound, try envisioning a vibrant aurora
bespattered with dazzling lightning strikes.
The music occupies an abstract present,
fashioning neither beginnings, developments,
nor conclusions. The compositions consist in
their entirety of struck aluminum bars milled
to microtonal scales. The fascinations are
twofold: the beauty of the initial attacks and
the richly textured complexities of their
interactions and decays. The listener’s adrift
within a strange and thrilling sound world. By
way of computer manipulation, Burt sidesteps
the need to machine additional bars in order
to achieve yet more detailed microtonal
clusters. However revealing your audio system,
you would never guess the computer’s part
without having read William Duckworth’s and
the composer’s notes. The detailed, up-close
sounds can also operate as a demo of your
audio system’s command of attacks and decays.
Head music to be sure, best experienced in a
dimly lit room with a few fingers of your
favorite firewater in hand.
Mike Silverton
|
