THE JOHN AND DON CONCERT WEB PAGE!

We want first to thank Tracy Killeen of Troy Chromatic Concerts, and Dr. Dan Berkenblit of the Union chamber series, for allowing us to record and photograph their concerts. At a time of increasing cultural philistinism, their dedication to quality without compromise has proved to be financially as well as artistically successful. Second, we want to thank Aaron Heller for the loan of his Calrec Soundfield stereo microphone, which we are currently using for these concerts. Aaron was DD's mentor at WRPI during that station's second golden age, 1983-89, when we digitally recorded over 200 concerts, including about 40 at the Music Hall.

We believe that single-point stereo microphoning is the only way to properly and honestly record classical music, especially in such locations as Troy Savings Bank Music Hall and the Union College Memorial Chapel. Spaced omnidirectional microphoning, however big and sexy it sounds at first, is little more than the sonic equivalent of soft-focus photography: Everything is surrounded in haze, so you really can't hear the "soundstage" accurately. Spaced-omni recording is THE politically correct dogma for recording classical music in the United States. But it's useless if you want to hear music with absolute clarity, and naturalness of balance and imaging. That's why the Soundfield microphone is so impressive -- it reproduces the actual performance stage with complete honesty. Accuracy is our sonic agenda.

Many of the snapshots here are just that, snapshots taken on a digital camera, or by Bob Oldendorf, John, Tracy, or myself on 35mm film stock. We can't compose every shot as perfectly as possible, because we must also set up recording equipment, and the recordings come first.

Most of our recordings are made not only for the local presenters, but also for NPR's Performance Today program, which has carried DD's recordings on ninety occasions effective March 19, 2002. They are also being recorded for local broadcast on WMHT-FM 's No Ticket Required series. We realize that WMHT does not offer RealAudio capability at this time. If and when it does, we will link to it here.

Please feel free to e-mail us with your comments. Our intention to create an unofficial WRPI web site is now on hold. But if we ever get it off the ground, it will contain photographs from our collections; thoughts and analysis on the marriage of technology and music, and on the state of "Werpie"; and plenty of musings by DD on classical music and classical broadcasting. We are learning how to create a web site, so some of this may appear amateurish. Please bear with us as we improve over time.

The 101st season of Troy Chromatic Concerts ended with a first-class chamber concert by the Maria Bachmann/Jon Klibonoff/Semyon Fridman piano trio, on Friday, April 24th.

Maria Bachmann will be known to some readers as the violinist who has championed contemporary music on the BMG/Catalyst label. That's definitely how I remember her, as we played her CDs at WRPI when I was their classical music director. And since the name Bachmann is familiar to Toscanini addicts, I asked her, at the post-concert reception, if she was related to Edwin Bachmann, the former principal second violin of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. "Many people ask me that. No, I'm not," she replied. She said, among other things, that her Catalyst CDs were her only ones for the label, which apparently is now defunct. Also, she is married to the head of Pegasus, which I recall is a website-construction firm for performing arts organizations. She brought up her brand-new Sony D-8 portable DAT, which we connected directly to one of the headphone outputs of the Calrec, and she got a master of the concert on the spot!

I don't know much about Semyon Fridman or Jon Klibonoff, but suffice it to say they are superb musicians, and it was great chatting with them at the post-concert reception. They posed for pictures, and here's a few.

As for their performances, this was our second Beethoven Archduke this season. The "Three Ladies" did this at the Union Chamber Summit on March 16th, so it was instructive to hear the slightly different interpretation this time, a little more reflective and introspective, not quite as gutsy and dynamic as the earlier one, but excellent on its own.

As for the Turina and Mendelssohn Piano Trios (both Number 2s), they were outstanding: Full of passion and energy and intensity, the Mendelssohn especially. Fortunately, they were kind enough to allow us to post a portion of this concert on Aaron Heller's Streaming Audio page, where at some future date, you'll hear the last two movements of the Mendelssohn.

We feel that the reproduction is also excellent -- close, clear, brilliant and properly balanced. Fortunately, Jon kept the piano in the center of the stage, so it sounds evenly distributed from left-to-right in the stereo soundstage. We hope they OK the tape for Performance Today, but let's not push our luck! Seven times in six weeks is plenty.

Here are some additional pix taken on the 24th: John outside the Troy Savings Bank Building. Don, also outside, looking more and more like Jackie Gleason. (When WILL he stop eating all that junkfood?) The top floor is now a little brighter because we're on daylight time, so you can see everything better.

Some new personalities to introduce: Elisa Barney-Smith, Germanophile par excellence and PhD candidate at The 'Tute (her office is one floor below JS's in the JEC building), helped us out for the second time this season. Here are two of the stagehands, Roger Snyder and Todd Langston. (No Dick Regnier yet! Maybe next year.) And here's Tracy Killeen with the page turner of the evening, Jennifer Angerosa. She's a senior at Union College who hopes to become a veterinarian. Good luck Jennifer!

Well, that's it. Our final report from Troy Savings Bank Music Hall for the 1997-98 Chromatics season. We hope you have had as much fun reading these chronicles and seeing the snapshots as we've had taking them. And as we said, check the Aaron Heller Streaming Audio Page for a portion of this concert, in MP-3 encoding, somewhere down the road. They gave us the go-ahead!

Capital District chamber aficianados were given a notable treat last Monday and Tuesday, with back-to-back concerts by some of the most exciting younger musicians active today. It was another example of heads-up, outstanding programming by the Schenectady Museum/Union College International Festival of Chamber Music.

The summit began on Monday night with the tenth series appearance of the Pamela Frank/Yeesun Kim/Wu Han piano trio. Pam Frank has distinguished herself in performances with major orchestras, including the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood last summer. She will soon premiere a new violin concerto by Ellen Taafe Zwilich, with the New York Philharmonic. Yeesun Kim is the cellist of the Borromeo String Quartet, which gave two superb concerts at the Chapel earlier this season (one of them approved for airplay, the other awaiting approval). Wu Han -- who played the Chapel just two months ago with her husband, cellist David Finckel -- is a former Performance Today artist-in-residence. Next season, she'll present her first solo piano recital at the Chapel.

The following night, one of the musical world's most celebrated pianists, Mitsuko Uchida, made a rare chamber music appearance in an all-Mozart program. She was joined by Mark Steinberg, first violinist of the Brentano Quartet; and Peter Stumpf, assistant principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Obviously, this would have been a notable event, no matter what the program was. That they did three piano trios of Mozart -- not frequently played individually, let alone together -- was a singularly courageous act of programming. Here they are, after the concert, left-to-right, Stumpf, Steinberg and Uchida. After what we hope was a good night's rest and a safe journey, the trio took this program to Philadelphia. We weren't allowed to record the second concert, possibly because it was the first "tryout" of this program before the Philly gig. However, we did tape the previous night.

Uchida and her colleagues arrived at the Chapel during the intermission of the Monday night concert, and they listened to "the girls" (as Dan B. calls them) perform Beethoven's Archduke Trio. After the program, Uchida and her favorite piano technician, Aleks Markovich, went straight to work on the piano. She played for a while, and then wrote down what she wanted done. At 9:30 the next morning, Alex was there, perking it up according to her recommendations. JS and I arrived at 4 PM, and took a bunch of photographs in the Chapel while it was still pretty bright outside. Then we tore down the recording setup. After a leisurely dinner at the Union Campus Center -- taller, brighter and cheerier than RPI's drab, dirty old Student Union -- we went to different locations in the Chapel, relaxed, and enjoyed ourselves as concertgoers rather than recording engineers.

This was a piano season for the Union series, and, sadly, four of our concert tapes were marred by major piano tuning and tech problems. Indeed, the Boris Berezovsky tape (approved by the artist nevertheless) was rejected by Performance Today due to those problems. In anticipation of this summit, a Steinway piano technician was engaged to partially recondition the piano back in December, and returned for these two concert dates. His name is Aleksandr Markovich. In addition to being a Steinway concert technician, Aleks is also Uchida's personal favorite, and has worked with her for many years. So, it was essential that he be brought back for this extravaganza.

We won't cover all the details of what's happened to the Union Chapel piano over the years, it is too painful to recount. When I talked to Uchida after her concert, she replied, "What are they doing? They're ruining pianos all over the country!"

When Aleks worked on the piano for a week in December 1997, it sounded great in our recording of an all-Brahms program with the Borromeo Quartet and pianist Stephen Prutsman. In the weeks that followed, however, local tuners made changes that largely undid Aleks's work. So it was good to have him back for these two programs.

This piano (serial number 277140 ) is nearly seventy years old (1933). One problem is that the soundboard is cracked in at least two places. Moreover, the tuning doesn't hold, possibly because Yamaha parts were installed for the reconditioning of this piano when it was purchased some years back. Aleks had to hammer the pins down in order to keep the exact pitch. "The piano is not holding the tuning, so I have to do something a little more drastic". ;-). The damper system and action frames are messed up too. Not to mention what was done to the instrument after Aleks worked on it in December.

I also asked Aleks to describe what the differences are between the American and Hamburg Steinways. In our recent piano recordings with the Soundfield, I have wondered why the sound still lacks the sparkle I've heard in other piano recordings, and in live concerts -- notably, the Maurizio Pollini Beethoven sonata cycle at Carnegie Hall in 1995-96. At that series, Pollini had exactly the bright, ringing sound that I have heard and usually loved in piano recordings. Aleks said that Pollini plays the Hamburg Steinway, not the American. The differences have to do with different materials and design: The Hamburg has "more overtones" that give it a ringing, brighter sound. The soundboards are made of different types of wood. The Hamburg is more finicky, requires more frequent tuning, and is less touch-sensitive than the American. The domestic Steinway is more stable and robust, and in concerto performances, it can cut through the orchestral part more cleanly than the import. I gather that Alex prefers the domestic piano, but there are pianists who prefer the latter, notably, Grigory Sokolov, who will play at Union on Saturday, May 16th.

At last, this provided an explanation for the sonic differences I have heard in these pianos over the years. That may account for the sound we have obtained with the Calrec -- it may not be the mike after all, but the darker sound of the American Steinway itself. This mike tells no lies!!!

Now, a few more shots inside and outside the Chapel. Here are two views from upstairs , the first of which shows the installed eye hooks for the ropes. This one shows the mike in relation to the piano, and also a better look at how the stage floor opens into the hall. Here's JS, at the same position as in the previous photo, and you can see the eye hooks on the other side, measured out to within an inch of each other on both sides. Now here's two shots from the recording booth, the second showing JS's brand-new Sony MZ-R50 MiniDisc portable recorder. In initial uses it has sounded extremely fine -- certainly as good as a great FM broadcast, better than cassettes, and perhaps as great as CDs. (We did a bake-off, and our results are posted below.)

Here are some easy-to-see shots of the mike in the shock mount and mike mount, minus the foam wedges we always insert now. Here's some shots of the cabling and ropes, and the ropes fed down the side back to the booth. {insert these when you've loaded them on the TIFF dump, and add two of the mike tiffs that are bright -- it's your call as to where you want, I don't care}

Finally, a long shot from outside the Chapel on Tuesday, at roughly 4:40 PM. It's views like this, and one of the Nott Memorial, that make one appreciate the role architectural beauty and elegance play in marrying tradition, history and educational excellence.

All in all, as you see from the many photos we took, the summit was interesting and exciting, not just for the splendid music-making, but also to hear, finally, the Union Chapel piano sound its very best -- a tribute to Uchida, and to her favorite piano technician, Aleks Markovich.

The orchestral highlight of the 1997-98 Chromatics season was the appearance of the 65-piece Berlin Symphony, under the baton of former Boston Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Joseph Silverstein. 65 players may not be as large as the 95-player ensembles we're used to hearing in big halls and on records. But we must remember that in April 1875, Theodore Thomas inaugurated the Music Hall with a pair of concerts in which the traveling Thomas Orchestra numbered just about 65 players (based on what I have seen from newspaper accounts of the time). So, this orchestra made a "perfect fit" for the Hall.

The concert began not with the usual American practice of the players filing out to the stage when they're ready, but in the German tradition of coming out together, just moments before the program begins. At least, that's what DD thinks is the German practice! They already spent their time warming up, while Derek Han was at the piano going through the solo part of the Beethoven Third Concerto.

JS and myself were joined by RPI graduate EE student Elisa Barney-Smith. We brought a total of FIVE machines to this gig -- three DATs, an analog cassette deck, and JS's newly-acquired Sony MiniDisc portable. Because we had so much equipment this time around, we didn't take many shots except for the players on stage. TK brought his analog deck to make a dub on the spot for Silverstein. A copy of the DAT was FedEx'd to NPR's Performance Today the following morning, and should (we hope) be aired sometime after March 8th.

Based on prior experience, we suspended the Calrec mike above the fourth row of the Hall. This made it a little further back for the piano than we would have liked, but for the purely orchestral second half the distance was just about perfect. The nylon ropes we used were visible, and in the future we hope to use black theatrical tie ropes, or kevlar, or devise another way of suspending the mike at this sweet spot that is less visually obvious. The sonic picture was excellent -- bright, solid, clear, different than the more distant and darker sound in the farthest reaches of the Hall. But if we were to go higher or further, we might have picked up additional noises from the audience, which, on this occasion, was very well-behaved, fortunately, unlike some previous events in recent years.

This shot was taken during the concluding section of the Brahms Haydn Variations, which opened the concert. This performance brought mixed reactions: DD felt that it was too leisurely and stodgy, not unlike Silverstein's performance of this same work at Tangelwood in July 1982. TK felt it was excellent, done exactly the way he likes to hear Brahms. Here's another shot from the same section. Note that the piano was already in place for this purely orchestral work, which made the recorded sound just a little too recessed for the work. Also note the woodwinds off to the left, instead of at center stage, the usual practice.

We did not take pictures during the Beethoven Third Piano Concerto, but here's Derek Han, warming up before the concert. There was no formal rehearsal, nor even a short sound-check, by the orchestra for this concert.

The second half of the evening was comprised of the Schumann Spring Symphony, which was very alert and well-played. Here's the end of the first encore, Beethoven's Egmont Overture. Sorry for the slightly unsteady image, but I had problems steadying the camera while holding back the curtain just a few inches. Clearly, you can see the woodwinds and horns off to the left and at the back of the stage. (Photos by DD) Is there a precedent for placing them off to the side, other than a possible Stokowski influence? Here's another shot, which may have been taken by the steadier hands of JS. (All of these were taken from the furthest top boxes, by holding back the curtains, killing the flash, and pointing and shooting -- snapshots, in effect.)

To me, what Silverstein did with this layout of players made no sense. Moreover, the celli and violi were aimed in such a way that they were pointed away from the audience. DD firmly subscribes to the old, classic layout of divided violins across the stage, firsts on the left, seconds on the right. And, naturally, the winds belong in the middle, especially a reduced section like this one.

At the end of the Beethoven Egmont Overture encore, you see some of the musicians looking back to the left stage door. This is where Silverstein entered and exited, in contrast to the usual TMH practice of coming and going from the right side. For these shots, JS took the pix from right near where our equipment is set up, which is why the view is partially blocked by the emergency lamps. You can almost hear the ghost of Ben Grauer saying, "Maestro Silverstein has returned to the podium to accept the warm applause of the audience here in the legendary Troy Savings Bank Music Hall." Then, the second encore, Weber's Euryanthe Overture.

Amazingly, Performance Today made very good use of this concert recording, which aired twelve times!

Here's the stats:

March 11th: Brahms: Haydn Variations March 13th: Beethoven: Egmont Overture March 23rd: Weber: Euryanthe Overture March 24th: Schumann: Symphony No. 1(Spring) April 7th: Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 April 16th: Beethoven: Egmont Overture April 25th: Schumann: Spring Symphony July 23rd: Weber: Euryanthe Overture October 6th: Brahms: Haydn Variations November 11th: Beethoven: Egmont Overture December 16th: Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 January 21, 1999 Weber: Euryanthe Overture

Locally, WMHT-FM played not only this segment but two additional segments of the "Windy Europeans" tape during the morning and afternoon pledge periods on March 11th. We hope this signals a renewed interest on 89.1's part in airing the work of the two most respected and admired concert series in our area. Maybe one day they'll use ISDN technology (as some members have urged) and carry these concerts live.

As for JS's MZ-R50 MiniDisc portable by Sony, I was prepared to dislike what I heard based on the criticism I have read about the ATRAC data compression scheme. The reality proved me wrong. The sound is actually quite impressive on first experience, certainly better than the typical FM broadcast, better than what WRPI sounds like now with its less-than-state-of-the-art broadcast boards. To be fair, we patched the Calrec into the MD recorder, so we probably gave it as honest and as tough a test as could be imagined. It sounded extremely fine, and if ATRAC 4 or MP-3 data reduction sounds this good, then I'm sold on this as a more reliable alternative to DAT. So much for instant analysis!

Next up: The chamber music summit at Union College: March 16 and 17, 1998!

Troy Savings Bank Music Hall: Saturday, January 31, 1998 Ying Huang, soprano, in recital with pianist Thomas Muraco

JS was fortunate enough to have his department's digital camera again, plus a laptop, whichwe used during the concert to analyze and play around with some of the shots we took. Some of it turned out well enough that you will get a closer look at JS's newly designed microphone mount, and what we did this evening. Others didn't turn out so well, but don't hold it against us. (By the way, this text is being written just two hours after the event.)

First of all, this was a great night. Ying Huang (pronounced Ing) was in superb voice, and her program was excellent. Second, this was an auspicious night for the Hall, as it marked the debut of a brand-new Steinway, shown here with Thomas Muraco warming up, one hour before the concert. The previous Steinway, owned by Chromatics, was purchased back in 1974, and is a CBS-era model. Setting aside the specifics, suffice it to say that a buyer was found for this old piano, and the Music Hall Association purchased a new one, which was delivered just two weeks ago. This was, in fact, the very first concert with the new piano, and it sounded terrific, even if it was at half-stick. Finally, the audience was very quiet throughout, and the reproduced sound is tremendous -- brighter and closer than in the Hall, but with great clarity. Aaron, Jim, you'll love the tapes when you hear them.

A few shots from inside the "The Hall": The exposure on is reasonable enough to give you an idea of how we setup for this gig. In this picture the mike is obscured in black because of the extreme constrasts, but you get another look at the new piano. Yeah, this photo sucks, but you get an idea of the mike in relation to the piano. This shot was taken by DD with the shutter opening that was already programmed into the camera. Sorry!

Intermission, showing the microphone in relation to the piano. The right side is blocked either by a curtain or by a pillar, but we want you to get a feel for how we took some of these shots.

Here's some shots from the concert itself, taken during the final set (of Chinese songs) and after one of the three encores. Note the Calrec at the left, and the new scoop lighting above the stage. These lights were not used, however, just the spots up on both sides of the gallery. (Photos by JS) Sorry about the blurred picture, but at least you get a chance to see Ms. Huang's burgundy gown. By the way, these photos were taken without flash.

Guess who came to the concert??? None other than the great American bass-baritone John Cheek! You know John from his many recordings on RCA and Telarc (including a bunch of great things with Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony). What a great surprise! And at probably 6'3", let's hope he didn't hit his head on the low ceiling of the greenroom. Cheek said that he just moved to South Egremont, Mass., not far away from here, so a commute to Troy to hear his friend Tom Muraco was no problem. Very friendly person, with an incredibly rich speaking voice of a kind DD wishes he had. (Photo by JS)

I'm not sure who the woman is, but she is probably a friend of pianist Tom Muraco. Muraco thought the concert came off well, and he was proud to be the first player of the new Music Hall Steinway, as he himself mentioned during the second half of the program. (Photo by JS)

This gentleman was the piano tuner/voicer for this event. (Photo by JS) Bob Lee, from Syracuse, is also the tuner for Dorian Recordings.

You probably saw Ying Huang profiled by Eugenia Zukerman on the CBS Sunday Morning program several weeks ago -- great publicity for Chromatics, and perfect timing! Here she is again, with Tracy Killeen, chairperson of the artist selection committee for Chromatics. (Photo by JS) Thank you, Chromatics, for bringing her here!

Finally, two shots of DD himself. The first, cautiously touching a few brand-new keys on the brand-new Steinway, as the horrified piano tuner looks on. Second, at the helm, looking older, tireder and fatter than ever, with John's laptop (a Dell) to the left, the Sony DAT machines, and Calrec controller box to the right. Despite his politics, Don just doesn't photograph well from the left! Nowadays we must set up all the way on top because the original "WRPI Recording Suite" organ pump room (as we used to label the door with paper towels!) is gone, replaced by an interior stairwell. The old exterior fire escape where we used to stand on breaks is long gone, for almost ten years now -- remember how we used to stand out there and see the WRPI transmitter just beyond the edge of South Troy? Yes, DD is actually smiling -- one of those rare evenings where everything went really well. The quest for perfection is occasionally reached! (Photo by JS) Even though YH and TM approved this recording for airplay, NPR didn't touch it. Silly folks!.

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Some other photos, taken in the last months of Don's return tour of duty at WRPI: DD with Garrick Ohlsson, November 8, 1996. The great Garrick Ohlsson opened the 100th season of Troy Chromatic Concerts with a "Gallery Gods" solo piano recital, the second-to-last recording WRPI made in Troy Music Hall. After the rehearsal, Ohlsson came up to listen to the recording (made with a pair of reconditioned Neumann KM 84s, in X-Y pickup pattern, about nine feet from the piano). The Sony DTC 690 DAT recorder, owned by Tracy Killeen, along with his portable Sony D7. Thanks to Tracy, WRPI -- which owned no DAT machine -- was able to record a bunch of concerts at the Hall in 1995-96, the first concerts taped there by Werpie since 1992. Note to the left the metal box for the Valley People mike preamps. Those preamps were in rickety shape by 1995, and we'd never know if we'd get through an entire concert without a channel cutting out. Note also the thick Monster Cable RCA cables, which were lost by someone at WRPI in 1996. Finally, the Bach Choir of London, Sir David Willcocks conducting, at the rehearsal for their concert in April 1996. The rehearsal began before we could raise the mikes to the correct height, but we had them hanging above the seventh row, the farthest we have placed mikes in The Hall for a concert.

Finally, two photos of the exterior of the Troy Savings Bank building, taken by DD in 1989 but not displayed publicly until now -- the first looking closely at the windows on the {Second Street} side of the structure, the second taken from the same corner, but looking towards the {State Street} side. The majesty and dignity of this building is a reflection of what Troy, New York, might have been, 120+ years ago.

A Comparison

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On Friday, April 10th, Don Drewecki finally had a chance to conduct a long-awaited "bake-off" between the MiniDisc and DAT masters of the March 16th Frank/Kim/Han concert. This A/B comparison was conducted out of curiosity about the sonic differences between the two media.

This test was possible because Tracy Killeen's preamplifier allows for level adjustments between analog and digital sources. That preamp is a Sony ES series preamp with numerous source inputs. The power amp is also a Sony, roughly 100 watts/channel RMS. The speakers are late-70s ESS AMT floor-standing speakers with the famous Air Motion Transformer tweeters, which produce a very detailed yet full sound. DD has heard music on this system many times over the years and considers it one of the best systems he has auditioned -- that is, for a system that is not obscenely high in cost.

Briefly stated, we tried to make the test fair, by comparing the direct digital outputs of the Sony DTC-690 DAT recorder and MZ-R50 MiniDisc portable. This turned out to be impossible. The MD portable does not have direct digital outputs. Therefore, we had to use the analog LINE OUT stereo miniplug. However, we also compared the digital vs. analog outputs of the DAT recorder, to determine how large that difference would be. We matched levels as closely as possible, and synced the tapes to within a second of each other. TK did the switching, and DD either guessed, or wrote down his impressions.

In the first test, we switched between the MiniDisc and DAT. Every time, DD was able to correctly identify the MD source. It boiled down to two parameters: The MiniDisc, the data-reduced system, had thinner deep bass, and marginally less broad stereo image, with everything just slightly narrowed into the center, between the two speakers. The DAT -- which, naturally, is uncompressed digital audio -- had a deeper, more spacious sound, with greater left-to-right separation of the channels. This may have been due to the lack of a digital output on the MD portable, so we did the next best thing:

In the second test, we switched between the analog and digital outputs of the DAT recorder. This would test of the accuracy of DD's hearing. Here again, we were able to match levels as carefully as possible. In the four times DD guessed, he guessed wrong. He could not identify correctly the analog or digital outputs of the DAT player. This proved that the sonic difference between the analog and digital outputs of the DAT recorder, as fed through the digital preamp, was negligible, while the MD exhibited greater differences that were correctly identified, even through the analog LINE OUT of the MD. In other words, DD could not correctly tell the difference between precisely-matched analog and digital outputs, so the differences he did identify correctly were due to the different media.

For the final test, we simply let the MD portable play long chunks of the concert master. DD could not identify anything wrong with the MD master on its own, except what he and TK felt was an ever-so-slight hardening of the treble (and this master was made with a bright-sounding mike to begin with), plus that ever-so-slight thinning of the bass.

On its own, the MD master sounded fine. Without a DAT master to compare it with, and minus a top-notch sound system to judge them instantaneously, you could never tell that this was data-reduced audio. The system works, and it works well. It was very enjoyable to listen to, and better than even the best stereo FM broadcast. For situations in which the mechanical flaws of DAT may be a problem (such as radio), MiniDisc is, now, clearly the way to go. For stealth taping, a portable MD is less problematical than analog cassettes or DAT, especially with less-than-top-drawer mikes. On a plain, average loudspeaker or radio, or even a decent one, you'll never know you're listening to a MiniDisc.

It may prove that MiniDisc is a way of having your cake and eating it too: A close copy of DAT master, you can play it over and over without marring or damaging the actual master, and it will still deliver at least 90% of the sound. The player is extremely small, and fit into DD's jacket pocket with no problem. You can access tracks on it immediately, rotate the unit, shake it, and it still works. MD certainly has powerful attractions.

For critical mastering purposes such as legitimate concert recordings, however, digital audio tape is audibly superior. Our test reveals this clearly. To be fair, Sony and others do not offer MD has a substitute for DAT, but for analog cassettes. Still, it was fun to push the comparison to the limit. It makes one wonder how a different compression scheme might sound, or if Sony can devise an uncompressed digital recorder of magneto-optical design that sacrifices nothing in quality or convenience. We should state also that we are not cheerleaders for Sony. We wish they'd bring back the PCM processors of ten years ago, which were VERY well-engineered, and offered the user the option of connecting to the VCRs of their preference.

We will continue further this season by making Dolby S analog master cassettes on metal tape of the last Chromatics and Union concerts, to see if this system is sonically superior to MD and DAT. And we will post the results, as The John and Don Concert Web Page grows and grows and grows!

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Heller's Streaming Audio Page

This site, created by Aaron Heller, contains MP-3 samples of some of our classical recordings. Recent recordings with the Calrec Soundfield mike will be added in the future.

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The Unofficial WRPI Web Site is NOT coming soon. At least, for awhile. John and I have been so busy for the last four years that we've been constantly sidetracked. Essentially, what was once one of America's greatest college stations devolved into a low-tech public access facility, thanks to a few politically-correct students and community members. The sad sounds, lack of continuity and endless chatter are heard, in low-fidelity audio, every day of the week. So if you want to cry, tune into WRPI.

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