Michael's System

Hi garp

don't think I could top that description

Yes, I would have to say the maggie version captures my emotional likes more. For my tuning I find the FUNAI version takes me, in the long run, to a place where I find myself looking at things through a microscope, and although that is cool when I pull back it's a little harder to get to the heartbeat again.

One thing about digital for me is, when it crosses over into sterile and tilted I loose my interest quickly. The Maggie version does a great job of complimenting other components and speakers and other conditions whereas the FUNAI makes it's statement a little more known. Call me mellow yellow, but as time marches on the ole ears want to take it easy on the highs and lean toward warmth and for me even to the point of lush with that very believable body that the 2100 and 2300 provide.

Even though I enjoy the FUNAI the Maggie is like coming home to a nice cozzy fire on a winter day. For myself it's the best digital I have ever heard.

While listening to the new speaker line I've dipped into my Sonny Rollins.

thank you michael

Wait I'm getting ahead of myself again

I talk about a lot of music on here but there are times I say "stop the press, you gotta have this" well. You gotta have this



If you want a meaningful recording that doesn't know what speakers are "twentysomething" from the audiophile disappearing act is one of the greats. If you want to add a song selection being a perfect one, right on again.

Jamie because of this recording goes down on my classic list along side Elton John and Stevie Wonder, but more the Jazz spin put on these songs pulls it all together in a way that only very few have ever done and made you believe.

A treasure not to be passed

In case your wondering "where has michael been?"  Those of you who know me can tell "he's up to something".

The Capacitor playoffs have begun.



When your talking about a speaker cabinet (4 of them) that are so musically, I don't want to say the word revealing cause the industry has turned that word upside down, so let say...musical, every move is something that is almost historic in the harmonically balanced department. "Musically musical" I like that.

This morning maybe 3am I had to get up and go listen to the piano and cymbals playing. My God, what has happened is what went through my mind. No doubt it was the capacitors (one of them) open up. It was like sitting outside in Atlanta and the prettiest woman in the world handed you a perfect lemonade. Those of you who have had that happen know exactly what I mean. It was mind blowing how the right side smashed the sound of the left. I was still totally moved by the sound. I couldn't go back to sleep thinking how close I was to introducing a line of speakers so pleasing. So emotionally involving. I went downstairs to make a bite and by the time I came back up the left side had decided to open up as well. I could hear this coming up the stairs. "how weird for these two to open up so closely together". I completely forgot about my food, found it at the top of the stairs an hour later .

This has been a long road in the coming and am I really that close? I think about all the speaker companies out there and have no idea why they have not gone down this path. I think "is it too late for high end audio"? How could they have walked by something so common sense based, as I have wondered many times before and you have seen me write about it. And Yet! Here I am listening to it.

Guys, it's not in the complicated but in the voicing. Yes, I've said this before, but saying it and having it built are two worlds apart.

Something I am fairly certain of. I will not listen to an inductor again between my amp and drivers. Maybe in a sub setup but not my mains. My newest speakers are exploding in range and body.

It was painful moving on from Jamie. That recording did me in. I must have listened to it start to finish 10 times, in the room. Really highly recommended.

But if I'm going to voice these speakers correctly that means a wide range of music.

After Jamie I put on



to loosen up more of my piano ears. Look who's on the recording and you see I got my monies worth with the trio+one . At the time this was recorded I was living in NY and would walk by the Blue Note and ocasionally got to take in some of the shows. Quite the music history setting. I also enjoyed taking in some of Chesky records live events, fun stuff. The NY days were good times. I couldn't do a lifetime of it, but a smaller dose was just right.

By now you guys are probably getting a feel for how I test my speakers while designing. As with everything I do and a part that drives people crazy, is I have to put time into my efforts. My design pie doesn't happen in 45 minutes and as much as I think there is an over night fix for sound it just doesn't work out that way. No I'm not talking about production runs and woodshops, I'm talking about those notes and music structures. Something that I look at other designers and don't see them doing very often. I do see the parts getting swapped out, but I don't see the voicing.

Here's what I mean

When I go into design mode everything starts from scratch and I try my best not to assume anything. The music becomes my guide and the deeper I get into things I shape the product around the music and not the music around the product. In the end I hope that this will bring me to a point where the product becomes something that is able to play everything, or at least I develope a pretty good sense of why not.

It's kinda like when you guys tell me your hearing something in your music and I take a stab at what it might be. This is done by being there myself and hearing things from a lot of different angles and emotions. It's done through my passion of learning rooms, structures parts and materials and then having that desire for another challenge. Finding a part of music or piece of music that has not yet been uncovered. This is something that can't really be understood by someone who has not been there, looking at music from the equipment out instead of the music in. The music in is the way I view a product.

My last week or two or...who's counting has been looking into the emotions of some of musics bigger instruments and one of the most telling, such as the piano. Not only is it about the sound of the piano, even more about bringing out the emotions of each piano and each artist playing and every condition of their playing.

Starting early this morning I have moved to Geri Allen with Telarc's spin on her performance.



If you back up through the last couple of pages of my listening you can see my method, or madness. Not only different types of music but also looking into the emotion of each artist, for example the Jazz piano player. I don't want to hear frequencies or even notes, but the emotion and environment of every recording put on. If the music starts sounding like just a note from the point of view of a frequency, I know something needs voiced. None of these pianos or spaces should sound anything like the other.

It's not just a speaker, it's an instrument that has the job of being as much of the piano as the piano itself. You can't stretch plastic on a frame or build a dead box moving air and expect that piano to come to life. The speaker must become that piano and every piano that is played.

That speaker has to become a part of that music and a translator and interpreter to that, or any room. It's the performance and the speaker and the room, each one playing it's role as a team and never fighting to get to the music.

I thought this review was interesting.

"In the early '60's, jazz elites thought the only place to hear cutting edge hard bop was New York, and the only significant tenor had the initials J.C. But at Lennie's On the Turnpike in West Peabody, Massachusetts, stellar spontaneous bop was exploding on April 15, 1965. These tapes stayed on the shelf for decades, which is usually a sign of second rate music or alternative takes. The session's critically acclaimed first volume ('Jaki Byard Live') has been out for years. But this one is even better, mainly because you get plenty of Joe Farrell's tenor. The previous album has several cuts where Farrell plays drums while the drummer switches to vibes.
Here we have the genius of Jaki Byard, who learned from master Mingus how to be a leader. Not since 'Mingus at Antilles' (a true masterpiece) had there been a live session of such spontaneous passion, with a leader who shouts directions like a quarterback changing signals in mid-count, while each player responds to the ensemble measure by measure, laying down a counterpoint of jazz architecture that could never be written or anticipated. The exquisite drummer, Alan Dawson, who also came through the Mingus dynasty, shows here why he's among the most under-rated of masters, providing a kind of melodic percussion that is another voice in the counterpoint. Their usual bassist Steve Davis was not available on this night, so George Tucker fills in masterfully. Byard's piano incorporates the whole history of jazz, from Willy the Lion Smith's stride to Cecil Taylor's dissonant chord-clusters.
As a tenor student, I find Joe Farrell to be the real revelation here. He floated into '70's fusion as part of Chick Corea's Return to Forever - when groups have names like that, you know bebop is dead!- but in the 60's Farrell was a virile tenor influenced by Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy. The only other tenor of the time approaching his level of energy is Rashaan Roland Kirk - who also worked with Mingus and Jaki Byard. With this session, Farrell proves himself one of the truly important tenors of serious modern jazz. I place him among the 10 great under-rated masters of the instrument*. This music is all up-tempo and edgy: there are no mellow ballad statements. Yet the music never veers outside into the frenzied chaos of much mid-60's avant garde. Due to the craftsmanship and clarity of the four musicians, each measure of sound is coherent and melodic. Jazz historians, get this one!
*(The other nine would include: Bud Johnson, early Benny Golsen, Harold Land, Warne Marsh, Bill Perkins, Tina Brooks, Booker Ervin, David Murray, and Ernie Watts.)"

This is a fanscinating recording to hear played out.

I love this hobby because of the painting of pictures. It will never grow old and there are more than I will ever see in my lifetime. When I hear a recording that makes me feel the message, or the artist personality there's a connection that is like meeting a friend. Michael Franks does this for me and so does Eliane on most of her recordings.



There's debate over her voice, but I'm like sit down and shutup

This CD is mostly her playing and is right up there with the very best of Eliane's music. It's a smooth ride into her world, and I love when she is going after the middle of the keyboard letting the other musicians do their filler as if they to are part of her piano. Her music also has the right amount of Brazil in it, leaning toward the mellow side instead of the in your face. Kinda like a beautiful woman who has a hint of accent but not so much that you can't understand.

Yep, this is a picture I can live with

If you guys don't have "Paulistana" yet I think you would enjoy it in your music collection.

It's been an Elias couple of days.







Any recording that starts off with a version of "The Girl from Ipanema" is something that starts me off the right way.

and now

Sorry world I have been in my listening room and have no idea want outside life is up to

Today, I'm listening to Fred, Fred Hersch that is.



Round Midnight, is another one of those songs that grabs me by the ears when I hear it, and Fred's spin on it does me just right. Fact is this whole recording does me just right.

Multi-dimensional

This is how I describe



At first I had to think about what was going on. I'm I listening to old school or new school, then "planet rock" starts and I'm thrown into Kaftwerk land. If you are on the edge of Jazz still diping your toe in the water, this might be your chance to go swiming without going to far under the first time.

I could have easily been in my teen rock daze, and had "modernistic" play and be right at home. There's something going on here that is the beginning of new traditionalism that makes sense. A blend of ulta-electro without the electric. Some of the spins are right out of science fiction but presented in almost a classic way. Maybe I was in the right frame of mind when this recording started to take me over, but I find it as mind spinning as any electronic-new age trip, yet I have to give credit to the grounding roots of being brought back to Earth.

bravo and even encore

I've decided to head a little back to tradition but not all the way.

Today I'm listening to Lyle Mays, yes that Lyle Mays. The guy who makes everyone one around him sound great.



I personally think his solo work is some of his best even though you usually hear about him as part of....

This is a great example of his precision and dynamics. It's one of those where, if your systems not playing it you won't get, but if it is every note has meaning.



There's a gentle touch here that is beautifully played out and remains even during the speed. He's not playing the keyboards he's romancing them.

I'm now enjoying John Pizzarelli

If your going to do traditional male standup Jazz vocals, than it's a must to include Kurt Elling.



When ever I listen, I'm thinking this is the voice of someone who performed in the 1950-60's age of Jazz. And what's tough for me, is a lot of these voices were done right when the recording age was on the border of being great but sadly many were a few years off production wise. You listen to them and wish they would have been done maybe a little later so there is no guess work.



Then you put on Kurt and say right on, the kid's only 47 now.

Tonight I've been listening to



and



Why do I put them in the same post?

There's traditional, fussion, old school, smooth, contemporary, swing and probably a few other types. But there's also a Jazz that takes me personally close to the edge of rock over even folk rock. Both of these recordings took me there, Billy with his composition, and then Pat, which brought me to the edge of tears. You'll hear it when it happens. Kinda creeps up on you as you find yourself in the middle of "both sides now".

I'm glad Pat came back, it was too early to go

Your eyes are not deceiving you.







We have the Mini Mod and now the Mini Viola (almost) done. The Mandolin needs more work (those hardwood speakers ).

The Mini Mods and the Mini Viola are in the bag pretty much with only a Cap decision to be made yet.

The Madolin is a little trick-E-er, and you guys know me.

Here's the big surprise, the Music Ply is knocking me on my butt. I knew they would be good, but there's music magic going on with the newer music ply that has been curing. 60 classics, sorry I loved you but you'll have to sit this one out.

The older music ply was fantastic, but the newer wood has even more body and openess. Maybe I would call it transparently rich, if that makes sense. I have a newer proto almost here and I'm pretty sure that's going to nail it. That's the one in the picture. I added a hair of dimension change, because of re-voicing the tuning bar. We also re-pitched the tuning bolts a tiny bit. The protos I have now has this incredible separation between each string on all instruments and have to say opened up my ears a little to the spacing for classical and Jazz. It's like putting your hand in front of you, fingers touching, then opening them up, you can hear the spread. The size change I believe will do the same with all the notes all the way from bottom to top.

Sometimes you only have to look as deep as the artists to know you've got something special.

Wow

just put on my

i have the room above her



and was greeted with warmth plus. Paul Motian is a perfect mate for ECM records. Between the performance and the recording balance this is one smooth recording.

Can I ask you something

are you looking at your future, cause I'm sure looking at mine  



I have waited for this for so so long



I hope you guys can hear the bodies of instruments from these pics



Some may get this and some not, but your looking at a huge step forward in high end audio sound

First off, Merry Christmas

My listening has been going all over the place this week, but I wanted to spot light two particular artist, both drummers.

GRAMMY Award-winning drummer, composer and bandleader, Terri Lyne Carrington, was born in 1965 in Medford, Massachusetts. After an extensive touring career of over 20 years with luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, David Sanborn, Joe Sample, Cassandra Wilson, Clark Terry,



and

Joe Morello, a man who I wish would have done more solo work back in or after the Brubeck days, he is that great  



Two styles from two generations of influence is maybe not the truest form to describe these two, but with these recordings it makes sense for me. With Terri I can hear the more mod jazz happening and with Joe the 60's sound. Joe plays some special treats that I think you guys will really enjoy.

Lately Melody Gardot has been my commitment.

Seasons greetings ALL.

Tim

That's a lot of talent.



Happy Holidays Tim

"27" songs, from 66-68

I was not expecting this.



The Deram Anthology 66-68, is shocking me. Did I play this but didn't hear it before?

What is going on, this recording is fantastic. I have a feeling that these caps are starting to breakin  I am very surprised, and very happy.

"The Deram Anthology 1966–1968 is a compilation album by David Bowie, released in 1997. It collects together most of the material Bowie recorded for Deram Records that has been previously released in some form, including the 1967 debut album album in its entirety (tracks 5-18), in chronological order.

Originally this was planned to a be a two-disc release featuring several previously unreleased tracks, but Bowie vetoed the inclusion of such material. Reportedly the tracks Bowie vetoed included songs called "Pussy Cat", "Back To Where You've Never Been", "Funny Smile", "Bunny Thing", a cover of The Velvet Underground's "Waiting for the Man" and German-language versions of "Love You 'Till Tuesday" and "When I Live My Dream" (the last three have been widely bootlegged). A reel to reel copy taken directly from the master tapes exists of the songs "Funny Smile", "Bunny Thing", and "Pussy Cat" and is owned by a previous employee of Decca Records who worked for the company at the time the tracks were recorded. This person has stated that the tracks (which apparently do nothing to enhance Bowie's reputation) will not be made public."

Early life

David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London, on 8 January 1947. His mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy" (née Burns), from Kent, worked as a waitress, while his father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones, from Yorkshire, was a promotions officer for Barnardo's. The family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, located near the border of the south London areas of Brixton and Stockwell. Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, acquiring a reputation as a gifted and single-minded child—and a defiant brawler.

In 1953 the family moved to the suburb of Bromley, where, two years later, Bowie progressed to Burnt Ash Junior School. His voice was considered "adequate" by the school choir, and his recorder playing judged to demonstrate above-average musical ability. At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers called his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his poise "astonishing" for a child. The same year, his interest in music was further stimulated when his father brought home a collection of American 45s by artists including Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. Upon listening to "Tutti Frutti", Bowie would later say, "I had heard God". Presley's impact on him was likewise emphatic: "I saw a cousin of mine dance to ... 'Hound Dog' and I had never seen her get up and be moved so much by anything. It really impressed me, the power of the music. I started getting records immediately after that." By the end of the following year he had taken up the ukulele and tea-chest bass and begun to participate in skiffle sessions with friends, and had started to play the piano; meanwhile his stage presentation of numbers by both Presley and Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the original artists—to his local Wolf Cub group was described as "mesmerizing ... like someone from another planet." Failing his eleven plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie joined Bromley Technical High School.

It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher Sandford writes:

Despite its status it was, by the time David arrived in 1958, as rich in arcane ritual as any [English] public school. There were houses, named after eighteenth-century statesmen like Pitt and Wilberforce. There was a uniform, and an elaborate system of rewards and punishments. There was also an accent on languages, science and particularly design, where a collegiate atmosphere flourished under the tutorship of Owen Frampton. In David's account, Frampton led through force of personality, not intellect; his colleagues at Bromley Tech were famous for neither, and yielded the school's most gifted pupils to the arts, a regime so liberal that Frampton actively encouraged his own son, Peter, to pursue a musical career with David, a partnership briefly intact thirty years later.

Bowie studied art, music and design, including layout and typesetting. After Terry Burns, his half-brother, introduced him to modern jazz, his enthusiasm for players like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane led his mother to give him a plastic alto saxophone in 1961; he was soon receiving lessons from a local musician. Bowie received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. Doctors feared he would become blind in that eye. After a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation, his doctors determined that the damage could not be fully repaired and Bowie was left with faulty depth perception and a permanently dilated pupil. Despite their altercation, Underwood and Bowie remained good friends, and Underwood went on to create the artwork for Bowie's early albums.

1962–68: The Konrads to the Riot Squad

Bowie in 1967



Graduating from his plastic saxophone to a real instrument in 1962, Bowie formed his first band at the age of 15. Playing guitar-based rock and roll at local youth gatherings and weddings, the Konrads had a varying line-up of between four and eight members, Underwood among them. When Bowie left the technical school the following year, he informed his parents of his intention to become a pop star. His mother promptly arranged his employment as an electrician's mate. Frustrated by his band-mates' limited aspirations, Bowie left the Konrads and joined another band, the King Bees. He wrote to the newly successful washing-machine entrepreneur John Bloom inviting him to "do for us what Brian Epstein has done for the Beatles—and make another million." Bloom did not respond to the offer, but his referral to Dick James's partner Leslie Conn led to Bowie's first personal management contract.

Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. The singer's debut single, "Liza Jane", credited to Davie Jones and the King Bees, had no commercial success. Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their repertoire of Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon blues numbers, Bowie quit the band less than a month later to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who incorporated folk and soul — "I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger", Bowie was to recall. "I Pity the Fool" was no more successful than "Liza Jane", and Bowie soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio strongly influenced by the Who. "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" fared no better, signalling the end of Conn's contract. Declaring that he would exit the pop world "to study mime at Sadler's Wells", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower Third. His new manager, Ralph Horton, later instrumental in his transition to solo artist, soon witnessed Bowie's move to yet another group, the Buzz, yielding the singer's fifth unsuccessful single release, "Do Anything You Say". While with the Buzz, Bowie also joined the Riot Squad; their recordings, which included a Bowie number and Velvet Underground material, went unreleased. Ken Pitt, introduced by Horton, took over as Bowie's manager.

Dissatisfied with his stage name as Davy (and Davie) Jones, which in the mid-1960s invited confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees, Bowie renamed himself after the 19th-century American frontiersman Jim Bowie and the knife he had popularised. His April 1967 solo single, "The Laughing Gnome", using speeded-up thus high-pitched vocals, failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut, David Bowie, an amalgam of pop, psychedelia, and music hall, met the same fate. It was his last release for two years.

Bowie's fascination with the bizarre was fuelled when he met dancer Lindsay Kemp: "He lived on his emotions, he was a wonderful influence. His day-to-day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen, ever. It was everything I thought Bohemia probably was. I joined the circus." Kemp, for his part, recalled, "I didn't really teach him to be a mime artiste but to be more of himself on the outside, ... I enabled him to free the angel and demon that he is on the inside." Studying the dramatic arts under Kemp, from avant-garde theatre and mime to commedia dell'arte, Bowie became immersed in the creation of personae to present to the world. Satirising life in a British prison, meanwhile, the Bowie-penned "Over the Wall We Go" became a 1967 single for Oscar; another Bowie composition, "Silly Boy Blue", was released by Billy Fury the following year. After Kemp cast Bowie with Hermione Farthingale for a poetic minuet, the pair began dating; they soon moved into a London flat together.



Playing acoustic guitar, she formed a group with Bowie and bassist John Hutchinson; between September 1968 and early 1969, when Bowie and Farthingale broke up, the trio gave a small number of concerts combining folk, Merseybeat, poetry and mime.

One of the most important events that has happened in recording in the past 30 years is when Rick Rubin stepped up to produce Johnny Cash. Many of us grew up with Johnny. There were 3 guys that my dad would sing to my memory as a kid. Doc Watson, Roger Miller and probably more than both of them together, Johnny Cash "I hear the train a comin".

The American series almost always puts that lump in my throat, and raises the hairs on my arms.



unchained