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Random Noise 3
Spooky? Yes. Effective? Yes.
 In
my first Random Noise column, I touched
briefly on two tweaks I’d like to return to
now, along with a third from Acoustic Revive:
the RD-3 Disc Demagnetizer, the RIO-5 II
Negative Ion Generator, and the recent
arrival, an RGC-24 Grounding Conditioner. The
Japanese company’s American distributor, Lotus
Group USA, prices them thus: RD-3, $399; RIO-5
II, $595; RGC-24, $450. You’re quite right,
we’re not in Filene’s Basement.
The three Acoustic Revive pieces are the work
of Ken Ishiguro, who, to judge from results,
is a member in good standing of a Japanese
elite of extreme audiophilic tendencies. (I
learned of Mr. Ishiguro’s role from Lotus
Group’s Joe Cohen, who has provided me with
information and insights –– and, more
important, whose impressions of what these
tweaks accomplish correspond with my own.) And
here I should add that Aurum Acoustics’
Derrick Moss, the designer of my Integris CDP,
put me on to the RD-3. Derrick has the
discontinued Furutech version manufactured
under license from Acoustic Revive. As far as
I’m aware, he hasn’t yet looked into the RIO-5
II or RGC-24. (I’m out here on a limb, alone.
Was that a cracking sound…?) Please
understand, I cannot tell you why this stuff
works. I can only report that it does.
To begin, then, with the Disc Demagnetizer:
The story goes that a digital disc’s label
side is printed with colors often containing
small amounts magnetic materials and, further,
that the disc’s foil substrate likewise
contains yet more minute amounts of magnetic
impurities. That doesn’t explain why a laser
reading zeroes and ones should be affected by
magnetic distractions. Doesn’t matter. I’ll
repeat it with my dying breath: the true blue
subjectivist responds to what he hears. When
one has been around hi-fi for a very long
time, he’s impervious to experts, none of whom
he understands anyway, taking opposing
positions on this or that hot-button topic.
 So
let’s move right along to a yet deeper
mystery: the RIO-5 II Negative Ion Generator.
It makes a difference. “That’s nice, Mike. How
does it work?” I haven’t a clue. We fly,
gentle reader, by the seat of our pants. I can
only report that a 14-second stream of
fan-driven heat a halogen bulb creates passes
upward through a layer of screen-enclosed
pellets consisting of tourmaline and a few
secret ingredients. Tourmaline, which my New
Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines in part as
“a semi-precious stone […] used […] for its
pyroelectric and polarizing properties in
electrical and optical instruments,” is
reputedly rich in negative ions. (Room air
purifiers have been using negative ion
generators for ages.)
Finally, we come to the RGC-24 Grounding
Conditioner. At one end of a length of
sheathed copper wire resides a spade lug
convertible to an RCA male the center post of
which is Teflon. It’s the RCA’s outer ring
that makes electrical contact. You either fix
the lug to a preamp’s external screw-head or
grounding post or plug the RCA into a vacant
input. The wire’s other end attaches to a
hefty, handsomely machined puck filled with
granules of various ores.
As an ethical matter, I couldn’t say much
about the Disc Demagnetizer and Negative Ion
Generator in that earlier column. A review I’d
written for another Internet publication was
running at the time. And now I have the
Grounding Conditioner to include in my
remarks.
In that review, I reported hearing the Disc
Demagnetizer making the greater difference. In
discussing this with Joe, he mentioned a
California dealer who judged the Negative Ion
Generator the more powerful tweak. With
respect to my own sound system, I’m still of
the opinion that the RIO-5 II embellishes what
the Disc Demagnetizer accomplishes. I hear the
latter extracting a degree of grain as it
contributes to a larger, better distributed
soundfield. The RIO-5 II does something
similar, yet subtly different: the soundfield
achieves a heightened degree of realism,
dimension and perhaps –– just perhaps –– a
touch of width. And, also perhaps, a touch of
smoothness. It’s not that the sound has shed
grain. It’s more a perception of … (and here
words fail). The RIO-5 II’s instructions
advise treating a disc’s two sides. Joe
prefers treating just one, label side down. We
agree that doing both sides can sometimes
create an excessively diffuse sound. (These
effects will wear off in time.)
Again with respect to my sound system –– a
reviewer cannot say so too often –– the
Grounding Conditioner largely affects
soundfield depth. Most significantly, I hear
the RD-3, RIO-5 II, and RGC-24 operating in a
fascinating synergy. Together, they’ve
elevated my sound system’s performance.
However, to return to that dealer’s opinion of
the RIO-5 II’s contribution (and belabor a
point), anything I or any subjectivist reports
about how something sounds –– with particular
respect to better or worse –– is utterly,
absolutely, irrevocably system- and
bias-dependent, with the greater emphasis
perhaps on bias. We audiophiles maintain a
sonic ideal in a corner of our minds, and
experience has taught me that these ideals can
differ to startling degrees. I’m saying in
effect that I hear this AR trio as a keeper,
and if I’ve succeeded in piquing your
interest, I’ve done my part. (Some of the
recordings I listened to in evaluating the AR
pieces are discussed below.)
Word of caution. The instructions are in
Japanese. Joe, a most affable fellow, will be
delighted to provide whatever needs
explaining. If you link to Acoustic Revive at
www.LotusGroupUSA.com, you can read about
AR’s products in that peculiarly pungent
English our Japanese chums think adequate.
(Ha! When Zen masters boogie.)
***
Recommended recordings
I’d best begin by explaining that I’ll be
commenting much of the time on recordings few
reviewers mention –– at least those marginal,
haunted souls who write for publications
devoted in the main to audio hardware. But
life is good! Clement Perry and I have an
understanding. This is my sandbox.
So back we travel to the period called Modern.
“Period,” as in fixed in place like a bug in
amber. Back when. Finito. You really get to
feel your age when the term no longer means
Now. With respect to the directions in which
art music sliced through the twentieth
century, the issue for a number of
intellectually disposed composers was –– and
remains –– one of a dialectical imperative
arriving at an outpost where, alas, it
languishes at the end of a sparsely visited
avenue. As an audience draw, the avant-garde
holds all the appeal of a gift-wrapped turd.
Do I care? Up the elite!
 Among
my favorite holdouts is a living, lively
German, Helmut Lachenmann. In order for his or
any modernist composer’s relatively anarchic
sound-world to negotiate the willing ear, the
listener must abandon all hope of
eavesdropping on a music that proceeds or
converses in any traditional sense. What fills
the space between the start and stop of a
Lachenmann composition is not your
grandfather’s Mercedes. A personal favorite is
Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied (Dance
Suite with German Anthem), for orchestra and
amplified string quartet. The title is
intentionally provocative. The tune to
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles began
as an anthem Haydn wrote for the Austrian
emperor and in the same year, 1797, used in
the Kaiserquartett, the third of
Haydn’s six Op.76 “Erödy” String Quartets.
Germany took the tune on as its national
anthem in 1922, thence to the Nazi connection.
The seemingly pugnacious lyric is actually the
work of a poet-professor addressing the
revolutionary disturbances of 1848. It’s all
academic, which is to say that I can’t pick
the tune out of Lachenmann’s scintillating
mélange. If you can isolate it, you’ve a
keener ear than mine. For a superb performance
by the Arditti Quartet and Berlin’s Radio
Symphony Orchestra under Olaf Hensold’s
direction, along with Lachenmann’s Reigen
Seliger Geister String Quartet, search out
a copy of Disques Montaigne CD MO 782130,
originally released in 1994 and reissued by
Auvidis Naïve in 2000. Try
www.ArkivMusic.com. I found it listed
there under Naïve for $13.99. (High marks to
this vendor for the convenience of its disc
locator.)
Notwithstanding the unorthodox sounds with
which Lachenmann fills his scores, his music
arrays by and large as a delicate filigree.
Such is not the case for Iannis Xenakis
(1922-2001). Xenakis, born in Rumania of Greek
parents, spent much of his creative life in
France, initially studying architecture with
Le Corbusier, serving as the master’s
assistant from 1948-60. During this time he
applied himself to composition under the
tutelage of Honegger, Milhaud and, most
tellingly, Olivier Messiaen. Xenakis soon
developed his own “voice,” characterized by
gritty, often violent gestures and strokes.
(As to his aesthetic’s provenance, Xenakis
lost an eye as a Greek partisan fighting the
Nazis.) Little in modernist music so neatly
conforms to an essentially architectural term:
brutalist. When Xenakis is hot, the hair on
the back of your neck will stand on end.
 I
heartily recommend two Mode releases:
Iannis Xenakis / Music for Strings
[Mode CD 152] and Xenakis / Percussion
Works [Mode 171 / 173, 3 CDs]. Mode is
Brian Brandt’s creation. Brian, whom I’ve know
for a very long time, is an avid new-music
partisan. While I don’t love everything he’s
issued, I’ve never caught a whiff of
compromise. Would that I could say as much for
a large number of labels.
Music for Strings, performed by a
German group, Ensemble Resonanz, under
Johannes Kalitze’s direction, begins with
Syrmos of 1959. This along with Aroura (1971),
for 18 strings; Voile (1995), for 20 strings;
and Analogigue A + B (1959), for nine strings
and tape, provides an enlivening portrait of a
great composer’s aesthetic. I am less taken
with Theraps (1975-6), for solo contrabass,
and Ittidra (1996), for string sextet.
Xenakis / Percussion Works operates as
quite the perfect expression of the composer’s
edgy, assertive style. The program’s nine
works consist of two for percussion solo; four
for percussion with instruments (oboe,
harpsichord, male voice, and, again,
harpsichord); and three with percussion
ensemble. Percussionist Steven Schick conducts
the ensemble, red fish blue fish.
The Lachenmann string quartet was recorded by
Michael Sander for SDR (South German Radio),
Stuttgart, in 1990; and the Tanzsuite mit
Deutschlandlied by Rita Bobo and Manfred
Hock for SFB (Sender Freies Berlin) in 1991.
The composer supervised Sonomaître’s
mastering. The sound is remarkably detailed,
which is usually the case with these German
radio productions.
Harry Vogt produced the Xenakis / Music for
Strings recordings in Hamburg, Frankfurt
and Köln with various engineers. Again,
excellent detail and, important to a
successful Xenakis realization, ample punch.
Steven Schick produced and Josef Kucera
recorded the three-disc Xenakis percussion set
at the University of Chicago’s Warren Studios.
Beautiful sound: lightning transients,
excellent dynamics, clean, taut bass.
Remember, I treated the discs I’ve covered
here with the three AV tweaks and have also
been listening to them on a system that
includes NuForce’s new (Version 2) amplifier
board in a pair of Reference 9 amps (not my
customary Reference 9 SE pair). The NuForce V2
board in the Ref 9 SE mono pair will be the
subject of my next column. At least I hope so.
To say it again, Mode is a great 20th century
/ new-music label. Have a look at
www.moderecords.com.
 Cellist
Mstislav Rostropovitch died on April 27, 2007.
Rostropovitch was a number of things, all of
them stellar: instrumentalist, conductor,
Soviet dissenter and, as important to our
culture as any of these, a man who
commissioned music from our period’s finest
composers. (Google Music Critic Tim Page’s
Washington Post obit.) The Deutsche Grammophon
label has come out with a new midline series,
Grand Prix. DGG 477 6357 is a reissue of a
1978 release of Rostropovitch with the Melos
String Quartet performing Franz Schubert’s
String Quintet in C major, D. 965, recorded in
Zurich in 1977. Most string quintets feature
two violas. Schubert’s grand masterwork
employs, for its period, an unprecedented
second cello. This is a stand-out performance
of oft-recorded music. Very little, past or
present, rises to the Adagio’s heartbreaking
heights. (I have another midline DGG, 477
045-2, three CDs, of the Emerson String
Quartet performing the late quartets and
String Quintet, again with Rostropovitch,
originally released, full price, in 1988, 1990
and 1992. An EMI Classics 5 66942 2 reissue
has the Alban Berg Quartet with cellist
Heinrich Schiff in a 1983 performance ––
another contender.)
In terms of good sound, the DGG Grand Prix
leaves nothing to be desired. If you’ve been
hankering for a plunge into nineteenth-century
German Romanticism, why not start at the
pool’s deep end? Immersion in a great
performance will do you no harm. Further,
there’s no chlorine to mess with your eyes.
Maybe a few tears –– that amazing Adagio.
Difficult to predict.
See you next month.
Mike Silverton
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