Peter McGrath

22:21It's not a rendering. It's a physical fact, yeah. So the speakers are essentially in separate boxes. In separate boxes in different places. And then we can move them forwards and backwards independently of each other. On our biggest model, we could actually get the timing down to almost four microseconds. Wow. And the idea is to mimic what the microphone does to make the speaker a point source. Now, not many recordings are made the way the one you just heard. There's a lot of time smear, but that's okay. You don't want the speaker to be adding. And many times the time smear in the recording is part of the artifact of the process that could be very delightful.

23:03You know, it gives you the sense of depth, and it gives you all of the other wonderful things that delight the ear when you're playing back reproduced music. What's kind of interesting, Rick, is that I feel very privileged to have been involved in the aspect of music reproduction, both in terms of capturing it and also in terms of how to reproduce what has been captured. I'm by no means a recording engineer of great training or a speaker designer. I don't profess. I'm an interloper between these two incredibly massively complex technologies. And there aren't many people who have done that. I mean, most engineers, because it's a daunting process, you know, their job is to make recordings.

23:52Yes. And by the way, one of the things that attracted me to David Wilson was David Wilson, first and foremost, as a recording engineer. I didn't know that. Yeah, he started as a recording engineer. He started with purest principles, two microphones. I'll tell you a wonderful story about that. is that I was working on my graduate degree in photography, which is what I've studied. I was 1971. I was in Chicago and attending the Illinois Institute of Technology, where at the time they had the finest graduate photography program in the country. And I went there to study with Aaron Siskind, who had just left to teach at Rhode Island.

24:34and I was really upset and they got in this character that I'd never heard of before to be the chief teacher for the incoming year, a fellow by the name of Gary Winogrand, who I'd not known. And you know how life can be. You have expectations of one thing. Well, Gary came in and he became the greatest influence of my life. Wow. We would spend time listening to Mozart arias together. If you don't know who he is, he's, I think, one of the greatest photographers of the 20s, Gary Winogrand. He kind of, he took the genre of Besson to another level of street photography and had a profound, and again, simple techniques.

25:13One camera, one lens, how you approach the world, you know, and no modification of the image, just translate what the negative captured into a print, you know. And these are sort of the guiding principles of how they overlap in the world of recording and making images. because after all, you're capturing events, and you're trying to reproduce those events. In both cases, you're a documentarian. Exactly. I think I am, yeah. Although I don't have a real narrative. I let what has been documented be the narrative. Yes. I'm letting people bring their minds to see the story that has been captured. Absolutely.

25:49And not dictating. Well, all the information is in the recording. It's there. It's there. And words that you attempt to apply to them sometimes can weaken it. So I'm suspect of that. You know, I always have been. Anyway, I was working in a high-end audio shop while going to graduate school. And this character wanders in one day. He had a beautiful wife following it. He walks in. Back in the day, Rick, people walked into hi-fi stores with a stack of LPs that they wanted to hear. So he came in with half a dozen LPs. And he announced that I'm in the market for a stereo preamp. I have everything else.

26:29I just need a good preamp. The store I was working was a precursor to what later became known as high-end audio stores. They didn't exist back then, although this one was run by two gentlemen. They both had doctorates in musicology, and their training of me and my wife was, here are tickets to the Chicago Symphony, second row balcony, and if you don't show them to us as having been stamped, don't bother coming back. That was your education. That was my education. To work in the store. To work in the store. It's to attend the symphony. Train your ear. Listen to what sound is. Become passionate about it.

27:14That's how they started me. And that was really back in the day, that's what audio was. How old were you at that time? I was just coming out of the university. I went to the University of Notre Dame. I would have been 22. I worked through college as an audio engineer doing recordings. That was my college scholarship at Notre Dame. So I'd been exposed to the technology and so forth. But so I kind of knew my way around it and had a natural proclivity for it. I actually got off on a tangent, then another tangent. But I'd like to go back to this guy came into the store with a bunch of records and wanted to buy a preamp.

27:50And so I played him three different things, and he finally selected one. And it was an audio research, SP something or other, of that era, one of the very first ones. A tube preamp. A tube-designed preamp. He took the preamp home, and I'm at work at one night, and I see him carrying it. And he walks in the door and sees me and says, Oh, no, Peter, it's not what you think. I said, okay. I wanted to show you something wonderful. I hope you like it. So he puts it down on the calendar, whips out a screwdriver, takes the counting off. Look inside. There's a green card, these green card holders that were part of the original thing.

28:34Reaches into his shirt, puts in a card, and says, this preamp is now exactly what it was when you sold it to me. Oh, okay. now i'd like to show you what i did to it i said well you got to understand it's no longer under warranty i said i get that i get that not a problem he puts the card in he says now this is what i was actually after and i have to confess i wasn't really looking for a pre-amplifier for home you see i'm starting a record company and i've been shopping the world for microphone preamps. And the thought occurred to me that none of them can be as good as the world's best photo preamp.

29:21But the problem with photo is the RIAA, which is an equalization for the cartridge. So when I put this card in, it has the RIAA. When I take this card out, put my card in, it bypasses all of the circuitry of the RIAA. And I now have 60 dB of gain, 60 of the most beautiful dB of gain. So this will now become my microphone preamp for the start of my recording company. That was David Wilson. Wow. I didn't know him from Adam back then. He didn't know me from Adam. And a thought went through my brain. I said, this guy is someone I have to know. And I will follow him. Yeah. And it turns out we hit it off.

30:07We became friends. He moved to California. I moved down to Florida to start my audiophile store. David then started his recording company. And then we met up again at hi-fi shows. He had these little tiny triangular speakers that he was showing his recordings, because that's what he was selling. He had organ chamber music, various ensembles. And he actually did some beautiful choral recordings at Trinity Cathedral. But what really struck me were the little tiny speakers that he was playing. and people like me started saying, Dave, you should maybe find a way to build. Oh, no, no, no. That'd be way too expensive.

30:46No, no, there's so much that I have to put into them. And then Cheryl, his wife, said, you know, Dave, there might be an opportunity for us. They went through three bankruptcies. Then he got to a point where he no longer made recordings. But he came from that background, and that's unique, is that his whole goal was to make speakers that reproduced recordings that he made and that he knew intimately. And many of them involved his wife singing. So it was one of the things that really attracted me to him and him to me because at that point, I was starting to make, I got very serious. I also had the degree in photography.

31:28I'm still, now that the kids are gone and I've become very seriously involved in it again. And one of the joys of working for Wilson is I get to travel a lot and I get to photograph a great deal. And wherever I go, I have my camera. But back in the mid-70s, when I was getting serious about making recordings, it was Mark Levinson who posed the question to me. He said, Peter, do you want to be a master at what you do? I said, yeah, of course. We all strive to do the best we can at it. He said, well, what kind of credibility would you have as a photographer if you didn't know the first thing about what goes on in the darkroom?

32:12And all you knew about was looking at pictures and looking at other people's pictures and so forth. He says, in order to really understand the medium that you love so much, you have to understand the process. He said, the same applies to music. If you want to capture music, you have to not only know about the playback, but you have to become intimately involved as a master with the process of capturing it in the first place. That struck a chord with me, literally. So come with me. And then for two years, I accompanied him on all of the recordings that he made while running my store. Then I ventured out and I started doing more and more local recordings.

32:54This is before I started Audiophon Records. Then it got established. But I also started doing recordings for friends. And one of the loudspeaker manufacturers that I loved back then was a company called DCM, Time Windows. And Bob Waterstripe was based in Ann Arbor. And his father was involved with an organization called something or other, Burlick Orchestra of Ann Arbor. and Bob engaged me to come up with my studer and my microphones to record a full performance of all of the Bach Brandenburg concertos. That was my first borough orchestra that I'd done. I did the recording back then early days of CDs.

33:42I was able to burn CDs and I sent the CDs made from the tape to everybody I could think of. and I'd heard that there was a Harmonia Mundi, which was a company that I thought was a pinnacle because, again, all their recordings were minimally mic'd, beautifully done, and I sent the CD to a woman that I'd heard was going to be opening up the offices for Harmonia Mundi USA. Her name was Robita Young. Two months go by, I never, you know, I figure, nothing, you know, then finally the phone rings at the office and, is this Peter McGrath? And I said, yes. The one that recorded the Philharmonia Morroco, you know, the orchestra that she went out to say, I must tell you, it's easily the worst performance of the Brandenburgs I've ever heard, but the most beautifully recorded.

34:33Would you work for me? It was that simple. Amazing. That was the basis of it. And she had no idea who I was, but like all of us, we make decisions. There's the evidence. That's what I want. Yeah. How can I make that something I can do?

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36:27When you tell the story of David Wilson as a recording engineer and bringing these triangular speakers, historically, in recording studios, the speakers in the recording studios are not good speakers. Historically not. And it's understood that there are these Yamaha NS-10s. With toilet paper on them. Which were a standard in every recording studio. Absolutely. And the reason they were the standard was they don't sound good. Yeah, yeah. Well, David's position was he wanted to know if he was capturing what he heard. Yeah. But it's a revolutionary idea because in the recording industry, it was never about the playback.

37:08It was always about the recording. Absolutely. And for a long time, I made it a point to only use the same monitors that I would have in a recording studio in my home to be in tune with that. To keep in sync. But it was not a good idea because I never got to hear music sound great. Yeah. And where the exception that I found was typically the one I worked with the most and as closest to, of course, is Bob. I sold him his speakers. As we got to know each other over the years, when I went through my divorce and sold my business to my employees and my former wife, I was ready. I was done. Didn't want retail anymore.

37:50And I mentioned photography. One of my mentors was another photographer by the name of William Eggleston, and he has a very talented son who was a fantastic cabinet maker and loudspeaker maker. And I actually became a dealer. The old man, you know, I want you to listen to my son's speakers. I said, all right, you know, I'll be happy to. You know, you've been such a kind person to me. Any way I can help? And I heard William III speakers. And when I left my business, I joined him. And I helped put him on the map. Unfortunately, like many young starting companies, he brought in an investment group, didn't understand.

38:36And we both quit. And that's when Dave Wilson reached out to me, said, come join me. It was wonderful. And the way he did it was he had a pair of our best speakers, which was called the Andra, the Englestone Andra. And he bought a pair, had them set up. He flew me up to Utah, and he had just developed the new Watt Puppy 6, because I was competing directly with that, because it was in the same bill quality category, and he had those there. And he said, Peter, now, you know those speakers probably better than I do. Set them up as best you can, and I'll set mine up as best I can. And now you listen.

39:15And as the old saying goes, if you can't beat them, join them. That's how I joined. Amazing. It really was wonderful, and it was like coming home. Wilson really stands apart in the hi-fi world. So many of the manufacturers are small mom-and-pop shops, and they make limited runs of small things, and they're very interesting things. And very good things. And if you go to a hi-fi show, you'll hear hundreds of amazing sounding systems. Yep. But it feels like Wilson is the only one from that world that has transcended that world, and now it's considered, I want to say, the standard of high-end audio.

39:56It certainly is, and we're 51 years doing it. And I've been fortunate to be involved in at least half of that time, which is great. Actually, a lot longer than half, because I knew it before it even started. And I met and became a very close friend of the day before Daryl was even a twinkle in the father's eye. You know, so that's how long I've been involved. And we're very fortunate. But reality is, is that, yes, it comes from Dave's mind, his singular dedication. And, you know, he stopped recording because he says, I can't do both. I can't do both. And I've decided that this is what I really want to focus on.

40:37And he also jokes, plus I got you around, Peter. Which is one of the reasons. And he encouraged me to keep doing it. It's what you do well. And you serve my company extremely well as well because of what you do as a recording person. It's to my benefit as well as yours. And also the added benefit is that I can still flourish in my own way as a photographer. Yeah. A tip-off to me about Wilson was when I first started going to hi-fi shows, I would go and see, you know, 200 different systems. Sure. And in most of the rooms that had the best electronics of all different kinds, they all chose Wilson speakers to show their equipment with.

41:23Yeah. We were fortunate, and I helped play a role in that, but so did Dave because of the credibility that he had as a recording engineer. And a lot of electronic designers felt that this was a standard. I'll also add that we were known, particularly in the early days, for being a complex load. to drive. And if you could make our speakers sound good, you're building a damn good amplifier. You're building a good preamp. You're building a good turntable because, you know, our speakers will reproduce the rumble, whatever, you know, that we would provide a challenge and a fulfillment at the same time.

41:59And therefore we were pretty good too. Plus we got to be known as essentially neutral, meaning that we would serve any kind of music, whether it be pop, whether it be rock, whether it be a solo violin or whatever, it would reproduce those things, and we could become a very good one vacuum tube manufacturer. He said that we are the ultimate design tool for him. To try and design his amplifier without us was a bigger challenge than it would be with it. So Wilson is a traditional Cone speaker? Has been, and for the foreseeable future, will likely remain. Tell me about the other types of speakers, strengths and weaknesses.

42:40Sure. my start in audio I'll tell you we were living in Chicago and I interviewed for this high-end store because he came into another store that I was working at that sold Bose, sold Mac sold JBL, all of the stuff and he came into the store with a pair of headphones that he wanted to sell to our manager Stax, electrostatic headphones and the manager said play them for that kid and he'll tell me what he thinks of them And David brought the headphones over to me. And I had to connect them to an app. And I listened to them. I said, these are amazing. But I don't think this store is geared. He said, well, at least you have ears.

43:22You can tell. I said, yeah, I aspire to be involved in this business and many other things. He said, well, my offices are about four blocks down the street. Why don't you come in for an interview? Maybe we could use you. Fine. I show up for an interview with my wife, and David is standing there in the hallway at the beginning of the store. He's talking to me about what they do. They're principally an import company. Back then, they were importing products from England, Saks headphones from Japan. We imported the first Lindsandik turntable in the country and so forth. But he's telling me all of these things that they do and this, that, and the other.

44:04and I'm getting more and more irritated with him because from the other room, someone is playing the Sarabande for Bach Suite No. 3. Excuse me, Mr. Shooks, but can I go see who's playing the cello in the other room? I said, oh yeah, be my guest. And I walked around into it. It was a pair of quad speakers. It was a tortellier playing the Bach Suite. So it's the first time you ever got fooled by speakers thinking it was a musician in the room. Precisely. And it was a come-to-Jesus moment for me. I mean, at that point, I realized this is frightening, but this could be my fall from the horse kind of thing.

44:43And I pulled up a chair and just continued listening. And probably for the next 10 years of my life, I own those speakers. Now, how do those speakers work? They're a different design. Pure electrostatic. What does that mean? It means that it has, and the speaker, by the way, was designed it was called the quad 57 because that was the year that the speaker was designed wow yeah and it was the first quad electrostatic where's quad from huntington england unfortunately no longer now they're made in china but the company still is based in huntington i believe So it's a thin mylar film and two larger ones that would produce the lower frequencies.

45:30Then another panel in the middle with, again, mylar film with three sections, two of which were mid-range and then the tweeter section. But there was a crossover in the speaker that would divide the frequency. So they're flat. They're not a box. No box at all. Flat. With no boundary in the back either. So it radiated sound equally both in front and back. and what drives it is, forgive my layman terms, because I don't really know that, there's a high voltage grids on either side of it and depending on the alternating current coming from the amp, the mylaric diaphragm, which is plated with a chemical, would be attracted one way or the other and would vibrate.

46:11An almost massless diaphragm responding to the electrical impulse of the signal. and to this day they still remain the limitation however was dynamics they can't move a lot of air but for what i experienced that day and for almost a decade beyond that was music to me it reproduced the sound of a violin the sound of a human voice but with clear limitations you know but nothing that i'd ever heard while like speakers could play louder and go lower nothing gave me the beauty that was intrinsic to that. Until Dave Wilson came along. But the surface area that was producing the music was much larger than a traditional cone speaker.

46:59Absolutely. That was the difference. It was possibly that, plus, as you said, no box. No box. There was no enclosure. And the enclosures had coloration. Did Quad invent that electrostatic? No. the founder of Quad was a genius by the name of Peter Walker. And like in many industries, his son then carried it on to the next generation. I had many stories about that. My teacher, Gary Winograd, for example, as I told you, we listened to Mozart arias when I was still working at the store and we were still taking classes. Gary became addicted to the Quads, as was I. You know, he'd come into the store, and we'd listen to music together.

47:44He was Hungarian Jewish, and I remember vividly Gary would, you know, Peter, you know what's so beautiful about Mozart? Mozart is about singing, singing, you know, the way he pronounced it. And, you know, he's right. Everything beautiful in Mozart is a song. Lyrical. And these goddamn quads make singing more beautiful than anything I've ever heard, you know. So he became it. And then time went on, and I was still working at the store. And I called him, and I said, Gary, I got good news. I got bad news. What's the good news? Somebody traded in a quad system. Really? Yeah. I said, the bad news, it's mono.

48:22It's only one. Followed by a long pause. Then Gary said, you know, Peter, at this point, I'd rather listen to one quad than two of anything else. Wow. Amazing. That was his line, and he bought it. Yeah. And they're still in production today. Well, that model, of course, no longer is. The company was acquired by a Chinese company, and they're made in China, and they make a bigger one now. A brand new one, which is really quite good. And what they have done in their modern design is they use what's called a concentric delay, meaning that the impulse goes to the outer panel and then in concentric delay lines, it resolves to a single point so that it mimics a single point.

49:08So that's how they deal with a large panel, radiating sound, but it reduces, it pinpoints the image. It sounds focused. Totally, totally focused. Again, though, they're limited. I mean, they can't begin to approach what we do dynamically. I mean, I couldn't play a piano on a quad at a realistic level, the way I'm used to playing it now. Or even a voice letting loose or a Mahler symphony, which I love. And that's where, to my knowledge, nothing can beat cone designs. What are magnopans? Magnopans are similar. But instead of being a thin, electrochemically coated, magnopans are, again, a mylar diaphragm with wires attached to them.

49:52So kind of like a giant voice coil running up and down the extreme of the magnet pan. And that is purely magnetic, magna, magnetic panel. And so it's a purely magnetic system, although magnet pans of recent vintage combine and it's still magnetic, instead of being a panel for the high frequencies, they will actually have something that approximate what is called a ribbon. And what is that? It's the inverse of a ribbon microphone. I'm sure you've encountered ribbon microphone, which is a corrugated thin thing in a magnetic field that the acoustical energy vibrates the ribbon. It's the reverse. You put an electrical signal into the ribbon inside of that magnet, and it creates just the inverse, typically used for tweeters.

50:43How do Martin Logans work? Martin Logans are electrostatic combined typically with a woofer in a box. I see. What is still unique to the quad, in my view, is, again, the idea that it attempts to replicate a point source. Martin Logan's, however, are large panels radiating the same sound everywhere, which I couldn't mix on that. I couldn't recreate the image that the mic captured. it would give me a great sound for the same reason i've never been able to use magnet pans in a professional way you know to mix on wilson's replicate what the microphone captured in a unique way in much the same way this does you know and the idea of imaging in reproduced music is an artifact but it's one that's treasured and if you're really good at recording you want that replicate it because you're deprived of the visual component you can't see what they were doing but if you can closing your eyes and having the speakers reproduce where this vocalist was relative to that one where where the drum set was behind that and where that is that's magic that you want and i love it and speakers could do that you know good ones uh planar speakers do it in a different way, but not to a way that satisfies my sense of expectation.

52:11Not anymore. Not anymore. Well, actually, the quads, even the early quads did it. Because again, having the bass panels outside, the mid-range inside, then the tweeter in the middle, it was pretty much time aligned. And there was a speaker version of that that I made in conjunction with Mark Levinson in the late 70s and early 80s, where we took two of those quad 57s, stacked them, and then in between, we added a ribbon tweeter. And then on the bottom, we added a 24-inch Hartley woofer. Wow. We called it the HQD, Hartley Quad Deca, because the ribbon was made by Deca. Yeah. And that was triamplified.

52:58And I established a reputation back in the day of selling those. I sold over 30 pairs of those around the world. And I flew all around. Did they sound good? They were spectacular. Yeah. To this day, I continue to run into people at events, whether it be in Europe or they said, I wandered into your store and I heard the HQD. And that's what got me addicted to music reproduction. I've never forgotten that experience. Today, that experience we convey with a speaker from Wilson called The Wham. And when people hear that, they'll never forget that experience. of listening to music through something that does that.

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55:05This first thing that I'm going to play is an excerpt from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. This, I think, was performed in 1992. Florida Philharmonic Orchestra. The conductor was James Judd, who was the music director and remains to this day one of our closest friends. And I recorded it in one of my early recordings in Surround. You won't be able to experience that, but what James had done was he had put the brass section up in the balcony, part of the brass, children's chorus on the two sides, and the main chorus on the front along with the orchestra, and the soloist. Wow. And when you hear it on my system at home, played back in the way it was recorded, in the 4.0, you're in the hall and these things come at you as if you were there in that sense.

55:59But nonetheless, it's a beautiful, beautiful music. I'll just give a few seconds of it.

56:16Thank you.

57:14CHOIR SINGS And we have been there for one day. For one day is my name. For one day is my name. For one day is my name.

58:09ORCHESTRA PLAYS

58:45CHOIR SINGS

58:59So that was 1992. Now we'll jump to 2025. There's a group called Seraphic Fire, which is based in Miami. They've released many commercial recordings, which I've not recorded. I just do their concerts. It's a choral group. Well, they actually mentioned the name of the organization. This is sort of their premier piece, and it was performed in their 25th anniversary concert. It's just beautiful.

1:00:13CHOIR SINGS Thank you.

1:01:03Beautiful. How many people were on stage? I think there was probably 25. And obviously the guitarist, that was it. This is a lot of fun, what I'm about to play. This is an excerpt from the Copland Clarinet Concerto. And he studied with Nadia Boulanger in France, as many American composers did in that early part of that century. And her advice to him was go back and sort of focus on music of your country and so forth. And specifically, she was advising him to do jazz. So he wrote the clarinet concerto, and it was dedicated to Benny Goodman, who was the bleeding guy. So I'm just going to go into a little bit where he has this long cadenza.

1:01:50The clarinetist is a fellow by the name of Alex Fitterstein, who is a major musician. And thank God he stepped up after my friend Julian passed, and he's now become president of the Friends of Chamber Music, and he's going to help us keep it alive. The orchestra in this case is a Russian orchestra that was on the tour and he performed this with them.

1:02:21Thank you.

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1:03:23Thank you.

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1:04:52Thank you.

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1:06:32ORCHESTRA PLAYS

1:07:20ORCHESTRA PLAYS

1:07:35PIANO PLAYS

1:07:53Thank you.

1:08:31What an incredible recording. Oh, thank you. It really does sound beautiful. It's a Russian orchestra, an Israeli Jew on the clarinet, doing the music of an American Jew, Copeland, reproducing blues, an American blues. in such a coherently beautiful way. I mean, talk about universality of music. So beautiful. Yeah. Wow. Breathtaking. Yeah, it's a great, great performance.

1:09:06There's a long tradition of reading sacred text slowly, allowing each word to settle, echo, and reveal meaning over time. Rather than rushing to conclusions, this practice invites reflection, listening, and attention. For centuries, this repetition has been used to stay close to wisdom, not by studying words as information, but by receiving them as something lived and experienced over and over again. This tradition is known as Lectio Divina. Emerging in early monastic life, it engages scripture through four gentle movements, reading, reflection, repetition, and rest. A short passage is read, a single phrase is held.

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1:11:08Learn more at lectio365.com

1:11:21Next is something sort of strange. This is a group led by Michael Tilson Thomas, a small group from the New World Symphony, which is based in Miami. And I recorded them for the first 15 years of their existence. I was on their board. In fact, I was on the committee that helped bring MTT to Miami many years ago. But this is recorded in the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentina, because I flew down there with them one year to be with a strange piece.

1:12:08Thank you.

1:12:45The End

1:13:30So cool. The composer is Daugherty, I think, Michael Daugherty. But the idea that you've got this American orchestra comprised of music students. They're people who completed their graduate studies, but then they come together and join this ensemble in Miami called the New World Symphony. they sign up for three years and Michael leads them and he brings in guest conductors principals from all over the world to teach them and right now it's interesting and I'm proud to be a part of the New World Symphony I don't know if the statistic it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 % of all members of American orchestras that are under the age of 50 came from this ensemble.

1:14:18Wow. Great lineage. So the idea is that you go here, you get polished, you've got your doctorate, you've got your master's, but then you come into this so that you can get a job. So it's really quite a beautiful thing. So beautiful. I love it. Here's another thing, very recent. It's just a psalm by Frank LaRocca. It's just a classic, Psalm 22. Just recorded at a beautiful church in Miami.

1:14:46My shepherd is the Lord, nothing in thee shall I want. My shepherd is the Lord, nothing in thee shall I want.

1:15:12The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want. Fresh and green are the last doors, when he gives me remorse. Near rest the waters he leads me To revive my loving spirit My shepherd is the Lord Now give it deep shall I fall Beautiful. There's a famous folk song, I think it's Carrie Fergus, Irish folk song. And Benjamin Britten did a variation on it called Oh Wally Wally. And the singer, Paul Appleby, he's accompanied by Ken Noda as a pianist, but the singer Paul, after he performed this, he came backstage. I was practically in tears because it brought back memories. when Elizabeth and I were coming together years ago.

1:16:30We'd been listening to a lot of variations on this particular song. And he said, you know what, Peter? You know why I performed it? He said, my wife now of 10 years, I sang this at Juilliard, and she was a cellist, and she walked in while I was singing it, and she started crying, and we're now married. Wow. But his voice is just beautiful. His name is Paul Appleby. He's now part of the Met Opera.

1:17:04The water is high, I cannot get home. And neither have I wings to fly. Give me a part that can carry me too, and both shall roam, my love and I.

1:17:42O town in the meadows the other day, a gathering flowers both fine and gay, a gathering flowers It was both red and blue I need to stop Earth's love can do

1:18:25Beautiful. They're lovely. This I recorded 30 years ago, more, in 1990. It was a Christmas concert in Miami in a cathedral. And the brass ensemble was the then Empire Brass, which were at the time one of the best in the world. And Rolf Smedving, the principal trumpet, there are a couple of things that are interesting about this. Rolf, before they started this track he went down to the audience and he said, I need a percussionist From the audience I need a percussionist and there was this beautiful, cute little maybe 8 or 10 year old girl sitting on the edge of the hill I'll take you so he brought her up and he handed her a triangle so that was the percussionist so the timing is not exactly perfect but it's just the spontaneity of it and then in the middle of the piece He was fairly far back, and then he walked up and stood where the microphone was and then blew into it.

1:19:29And these speakers could probably handle it, but let it be loud, because it's just amazing what the consequences of that are. Then it goes into an organ, and then it goes into a chorus. It's really quite a fun adventure.

1:19:49Percussionist.

1:20:09That's Rolf Smedwig, the best trumpeter at the time in the world.

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1:22:39I'm going to now go to, we're back to the Hermitage. Again, it's the same intensity of beauty, especially in the cello.

1:22:54Thank you.

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1:24:55Thank you.

1:25:39ORGAN PLAYS

1:26:02PIANO PLAYS

1:26:25Thank you.

1:27:14That's fabulous. Isn't it? There's an interesting story on the next one. Possibly the greatest gamba player. in the world is Jordi Saval. And he's the leader of a group called Hesperion 21. He was married to a great, great singer. And he came and performed in Miami. And I recorded him two or three times in different concerts. Then he came one time. I had my mic set up and he's going to perform a solo gamba recital. and he saw the mics as he walked in and he saw me and he walked over to me said you know Peter I'm so sorry but there are some things going on in my life I really don't want this concert recorded I don't want to explain it but I just don't want this concert and I said okay you know but he said please stay I want you to hear what I have to say in music but I don't want it recorded and it was at a new hall that had just been opened in Miami, designed by Frank Geary.

1:28:20And Michael Tilson Thomas was there because it was his hall for the New World Symphony and he was sitting there with his partner and so Elizabeth and I went up and sat with him. And during the performance, I saw Michael almost crying. Again, tears coming down. And when he was finished, he said, it's a pity, Peter, you did record it because that's some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard in my life. I said, well, next time. And so we're walking out, and he's there greeting people, and he turns to me. He says, Peter, I promise you, the next time we're together, you will record. Well, two weeks later, his wife passed.

1:29:01She was dying of cancer. So he was going through this. And about eight months later, he's back in Miami with his big group, the Hesperian 21. one. And it's a big event because there's percussionists from Latin America, there's singers, there's all kinds of early music. Andrew Lawrence King was on the harp, was one of the great Baroque harpists in the world. I mean, it was a stellar star event. And I'd set up, I'd been setting up for two and a half hours, you know, anticipating where I had to put things. And And finally, just as I'm finishing up, the manager comes over and says, who are you? I said, I'm here with the Tropical Baroque Society.

1:29:44I'm commissioned to record. It's not in our writer, not in our contract. You cannot record. You know, I said, well, I'm here to do that. And at that point, Jordi comes in carrying his gamba. He sees me, puts gamba down, walks over and embraces me with tears in his eyes. I said, it's so great to see you. And of course, I knew what he'd gone through and everything. And the name of the manager's name is Pedro. I said, but Jordi, I have a problem. Pedro says, I cannot record this. He stares at me. He said, come with me. Puts his arm around my shoulder and the two of us walk up. Pedro, this is my friend Peter.

1:30:29If he doesn't record, I don't play. amazing there's so many things that I've had happen like that you know where it's about the relationship it's about whatever you can establish I mean I recorded a wonderful pianist Sirkin Rudolf Sirkin one of the last recitals he gave in Miami he came to play the last three Beethoven sonatas and I went over the previous afternoon while he was rehearsing I introduced myself I record concert events in Miami and I said to him, I'd like to record your recital tomorrow night. He said, why? I said, well, I think it should be recorded. He smiled and he said, I do too, do it.

1:31:19That was it. So I'm addicted to that, you know, more so in the past now because it's a lot of work. But back then I had a little Stella Vox 15 IPS machine in 2B and K mics, and I got it. And it was really beautiful. I've never done anything with those recordings. They exist. I don't know what to do with them. But it was a spectacular play. One of the great, great Beethoven pianists of all time, doing three of the great sonatas of Beethoven. So anyway, I've been blessed to capture. Let me give you a little excerpt of Jordi's concert. Thank you.

1:32:28Thank you.

1:33:06Thank you.

1:33:36It sounds like your mics are inside the kick drum. Exactly. Actually, it was sort of this flat thing. He was holding it like this and banging it with a... Wow. It was amazing. This again, back to Michael Tilson Thomas with the brass ensemble of New World Symphony. Also at Teatro Colon. Wonderful.

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1:35:45In the Teatro Colón, to do that, to bring kind of a blues thing there. Interesting that those are classical musicians playing jazz. Young classical musicians. Whereas in its day, that music was played by people who only played that music. Exactly. And this is classical musicians interpreting a foreign thing. There's so many crazy mixes of it going on. There's this whole world of music going on beyond the mainstream. So much of what we hear in the mainstream is all the same. Yeah. You know, it's also interesting, and I don't know where to what to attribute this, But as I mentioned, I was involved from the very beginning with an organization called the New World Symphony.

1:36:28And the idea was, is that when we first started, we'd go out and audition people. And again, the groups were anything from people either freshly out of undergraduate or even those that have already just completed their PhDs as trained musicians. And in every field, whether it be violists, pianists, a few pianists, but mostly strings and brass and so forth. In the first year or two, we had to struggle to find enough because we'd have 100 people. And the idea is that they'd lived in the institution, a hotel on South Beach, for three years. And every year, a third of them would move on and another third would come in.

1:37:15In the beginning, I can't remember what the number was, but we had to recruit. today to audition those 33, I think we have over 5 ,000 applicants. Wow. Every year? Every year. And, you know, what that speaks to in the classical world, there is no shortage of qualified, trained musicians who've chosen to make this their profession, irrespective of the reality that, you know, that there isn't music trained in the schools and so forth. Rick, you see as I'm sure in every field of music is that there's more people who desire to make it a profession than there are opportunities to make a living at it.

1:38:00But it's a good thing that despite the fact that it's not a part of the curriculum as much as I would like it to be, it's still a part of life. And there's no shortage of people who aspire to it. Yeah. And that's a great thing. Whether they get jobs doing it or not, they will always have a passion. They will always have a need. And they will always be an audience, at the very least, if not the creators and makers of it. Has the model of that orchestra been adopted by any other places around the world? There are other youth orchestras, but very successful ones. Claudio Mado. My dear friend James Judd managed that orchestra for many years.

1:38:49And there are music institutions, but none that have quite what the New World Symphony does. Michael has retired from it. He has, unfortunately, a progressive cancer, which may take him any time. And we have a French conductor who's world-class, who's the head of it now. But there has been no one else anywhere else that modeled it, to my knowledge. I may be wrong. That's so interesting, though, because it sounds like it's a new model that's working. Yep. It does work. Fortunately, it's also funded well. I think the principal is Ted Arison, who's a friend of mine, who was the founder of it. He Which is based in Miami.

1:39:38Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that would have been the kind of sponsor it would have. Yeah, but it is. And along with a lot of local sponsors in Miami, I'm not on the board anymore because I just don't have the time. And I don't have the money. I have board members. You know, what I contributed as a board member was recording. Yeah. Services in kind, which gets me to another stage of my life in terms of what I've been involved in. And for 15 years, I recorded the Florida Philharmonic. For 10 years, I recorded the New World Symphony. For the Friends of Chamber Music, I recorded for the last 20.

1:40:14What I'm getting to, Rick, is that I have an archive of digital recordings. All my analogs were lost because they vacated the warehouse where they were stored, which resulted in a lawsuit which we fought with for years. But the reality is that I now have, and Elizabeth can attest to this, our house is a storage facility. But the problem is that all of the recordings that I made were made when you recorded to tape. Whether it was on a DAT, whether it was on an Elyse's ADAT, whether it was on my Nagra, which I recorded for over a decade, more than a decade and a half. I have master tapes, which are on tape.

1:41:01And at my age now, and I'm still working, I don't know when or how I'll ever get them transferred to a file. Because as you know, tape can only be transferred to a file in real time. Plus you have to have the working machine that can do it. Which Nagra no longer repairs the Nagra D. And mine is aging. It's a conundrum because at my age, I don't know if I'll live long enough. and yet they represent a legacy of classical music reasonably well recorded, in some cases very well recorded, in some cases not, and not only of the orchestras that I worked with, but for example, I have a recording I'll play next, of Gurgiev, the conductor, doing pictures when he brought the orchestra from St.

1:41:52Petersburg to Miami. And those are things that I recorded. I recorded all of the visiting orchestras, the LSO, the Orquestra Nationale de Paris, all of the visiting orchestras where they came in. And if I wasn't traveling and I was in town, I'd record it. In many cases for national public radio, for broadcast. I was kind of the stringer back then. But again, those recordings of which I have probably a couple of thousand. Wow. And I have no interest in monetizing it in any way. I just want it to continue to be accessible. Of course. To people who might have interest in experiencing some of it. Almost everything I play there is on a tape that I have personally already done.

1:42:33And they're good. They're good recordings. I mean, I've listened to a lot of the archives that orchestras have had. You know, it is done with two mics and a grubby machine and limiters or whatever. But these are good recordings. Yeah, yeah. They're probably better than anyone else's recordings of these groups. I would say, in all honesty, I'd say you're right. Yeah. So somehow, I hope someday to find a way to achieve that goal. For sure. You said you were going to play Gurdjieff? Valery Gurdjieff. He's a conductor. And I was supposed to record him in Palm Beach. Then he's going to perform in Fort Lauderdale.

1:43:10Then he's going to perform in Miami at our new concert hall. And I said, NPR has asked me to do just one. Oh, Peter, can you do all three? I'd love what you'll do. And I did. Great. So it was very interesting because I recorded all three using the same mic technique in surround so that you have one of the great orchestras in the world performing the same music in three different venues with the same technique so that what you're hearing is the difference in the hall with the surround. Yeah, I have those files. So this is really a big orchestra.

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1:44:50ORCHESTRA PLAYS

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1:45:45Wow. Isn't that amazing? Amazing. Single-point bike, that's it. Amazing. Good. You don't need 20 mics to do it. I mean, if you can do it, you can capture it. One of the issues I do have with digital is not the sound, but how the technology is implemented. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. So you use it the same way you would record on tape? Yeah. It's a storage device. That's all it is to me, a storage. Yeah. And the techniques that I adopt are what I always did. So no digital manipulation. I honestly find that the minute I engage an equalizer, the minute I engage a compressor, the minute I manipulate the digital data, even reverb destroys it.

1:46:32Yeah. All I want is ones and zeros, ones and zeros, and everything analogs this end and that end. Yeah. That's it. Nothing else. And that doesn't mean that there's good equipment out there. what it probably speaks more to is my ignorance of how to use those tools. But if someone had in me... It works in your favor. I think so. Because if someone had in me, Rick, a compressor or an equalizer, I wouldn't know the first thing to do with it. Often the limitations end up being a real benefit. Well, thank you. And I think that's it. And it allows me to focus on trying to do my best to not feel I need it.

1:47:09If I could correct the problems by not allowing them to occur in the first place, then I think I'm better off. Now, admittedly, there are halls that I've been that are so dry. I wish that I could sweeten it, but every attempt I've tried with reverb, it just makes it sound artificial to me. I'd never used them in the analog world anyway, so I found that they work for me in the digital world. When did you first come in contact with Anonymous 4? That was with Harmonia Mundi, and we made their first recording. It was called A Lady Mass. And you know what? At the time, I don't know the figures now, but you may remember the Three Tenors album that came out.

1:47:57Our sales of that recording were second only to that recording. Wow. Which single-handedly had sold more than any other classical recording in the history of time. I had the number two record of all time. Yeah. That's where I first learned of you. I bought that recording when it came out. Absolutely. Oh, wonderful. I love it. That was done again with just the Schep's Sphere two-channel mic. Another really fabulous recording that I'm so proud of was the Mozart Horn Concertos with Nicholas McGeegan and the Philharmonia Baroque. We did that session, and it was in a church in San Francisco. And we had just completed it.

1:48:38Thank God we got the last takes. When the head priest of the church came rushing, Why are you all still here? I've got a mask. Never am I going to allow you back in here. That was it. We'd done like four records in that venue over the years. We loved it. So I'm back in my office in Florida, and I get a phone call. One of my salesmen, who was a deadhead of all things, answers, hi, Sal Capodans. Who's calling? Mickey Hart? Ah, no. Who are you? Who's really calling? And the guy said, my name is Mickey Hart. I'm in Miami. I'm on tour. And I have a vinyl pressing. And I was told to go to Peter's store to hear it so that I get an idea what it sounds like.

1:49:26Oh, oh, I'll get Peter. So it turns out it was Mickey Hart. So Mickey comes to the store. We played on a turntable. And it was one of his percussion drum things. He saw my student in the office. He said, you record? I said, yeah. Let me hear some of your stuff. And so then I played him the book. I said, but we were just chased out of that church. So that's the last thing I'll ever make of that church. Really? He said, you know, I've got this new studio. It's Lucas Skywalker. And I'm very close to George. Let me put in a good word for you, you know, to see if I can get you in there. And he did.

1:50:02And he followed up. You know, you never believe that's going to happen. He called back and he got us in. Great. And Rene and Robita dropped everything. They flew up there to see it. They said, Peter, this is heaven. So we don't need that church anymore. And from then on, we did about 15 recordings at Lucas. Fantastic. And we were the first classical group to ever do anything in that place, thanks to Mickey Hart of all people. Amazing. The world is, you know, so full of these wonderful chances that you get. Tell me a little bit about the changes you've witnessed in audio playback from those days till now.

1:50:39the sound has not improved or changed all that much. The means by which the sound at its best has indeed changed dramatically. I was not involved pre-stereo, so I've always been in the stereo now. And by the way, for the last two decades, I've been recording in 4.0 surround because my goal is to capture not just what's in front, but the sense of behind. not putting instruments behind, but the hall. That's part of the experience of being in it. But the big changes, well, obviously the technical shift was going from analog to digital. How big of a change is that, and what's good about each? Well, I think up until the early 80s, I was recording with the state-of-the-art analog.

1:51:31And by that, I mean it was a highly modified Studer tape recorder, 30 inches per second, half inch, and quarter inch, two tracks. The machine was designed and developed by the Mark Levinson company. In fact, Mark trained me in that machine, and he trained me in the microphones that I used. And I actually accompanied him for years on different projects he was doing, and typically two microphones. That's kind of where I got my dogmatic training from him and a lot of other engineers that I've had the privilege of knowing and loving. Anyway, I started actually for Harmonia Mundi when I was still recording in analog when I work with them.

1:52:21But I started using digital as backup. Started carrying around DAT machines. Also, back then we had recorders that would record straight to a CD. You know, you could bring the analog signal you're feeding to your analog machine and then straight into that. And clearly they were not the equal of what I was getting out of the analog machine. But as the technology started to evolve and the digital started getting better, there were some areas that I felt that the digital recorders, whether it be a Sony PCM-F1 or whether it be devices that would allow to go beyond 16-bit. My first serious digital recorder was a machine made by Nagra.

1:53:10It's called a Nagra D. It was a four-track recorder, although you could use two tracks to double the sampling rate, and so you could record up to 2496. And this is in early, I think, 92. Was that mainly used for film originally? Well, the original analog Nagras were. I see. But they came out with a digital recorder, which was for field music recording. And by far, it was the best thing at the time. It was a bit expensive, but I bought one of the very first that came into the U.S., along with a lot of my people that I knew. My mentor, Jerry Brooke, actually brought that one to my attention. He's regarded by many as one of the greatest recording engineers of our time.

1:53:56And Jerry is, thank God, still with us. but I started with the Nagra and there were trade-offs still with the best of analog but one of the things that really impressed me you know and back then what was the end result going to be was the end result going to be a record or was it going to be a cd you know and at that point I was mastering all my records with Bob Ludwig, who to this day, we're still very, very close friends. And in fact, a funny story about that is that when I brought my first in 1980, it might have been 1981, Bob was at Master Disc in Manhattan, and I brought my tapes up, analog tapes, to cut our first records for Audiophon, my label.

1:54:49and I listened to his studer playing the tapes back and I thought, this doesn't sound right. I'm not sure what it was. I can't remember. I said, Bob, what I really want to hear is what my tapes sound like playing on my machine because that's what I heard. And I said, yes, I'm going to come back and I brought my machine up from Florida and we listened and indeed it sounded different through the playback, but how are we going to cut this? Well, Bob came up with a crazy, insane idea, which is we'd put the feed reel, my tape, through his machine and then have it go over to my machine, running continuously.

1:55:34And we'd adjust the variable speed on his machine so that they were precisely the same. So his machine would provide what's called the preview for the mastering. My machine provided the signal that was actually cutting the record. Had that ever been done before? Never. Or since, that I'm aware of. So all of my records were actually mastered off of the same machine that was used to make the recording. Beautiful. It was unique. And unfortunately, those LPs are, well, people are paying over$200 or$300 a copy for the LPs, you know, if you can find them. And we did them for over 10 years that way. I was a bit difficult to work with because I was a bit of a fanatic.

1:56:18But what I did note was, and one of the things that helped me transition from analog to digital was that I don't claim to have perfect pitch, but I do think I'm very sensitive to wavering pitches. and I specialized in piano and one of the things that bothered me not so much in the tape but certainly in the LPs was that LPs were adding a vibrato that didn't exist. There was wavering in pitch particularly on long sustained chords like you hold a Liszt chord where it just drops for 10 seconds down to it. Well, that wasn't in the recording. That wasn't the piano doing that. When you listen to that backup tape on digital, none of that was there.

1:57:04The pitch was right, steady, and constant. Number two, Bob, on my recordings on analog, I was recording at 73 dB dynamic range. 73 dB, signal-to-noise ratio, reference to 3 % third harmonic distortion. Well, that's great, but you can't cut that. Too dynamic. And so Bob would very graciously sit there with the score at his hand on the level of control, you know, riding the game. Yeah. But when we took those analog tapes and cut CDs from them, none of that was necessary. We had the dynamic rage. So arguably, I already started to see the daylight. Of course, there is this world that's still very much infatuated with analog.

1:58:01But the reality for me is that at best, it's a compromise of the original recording. And I'm finding now that with the quality of digital playback, even the little DAC in that Hegel is spectacular. And the DCS is, I mean, the technology has moved so fast. as a person involved in recording i would have to say that i do have a big problem with much of what's being done today in terms of digital versus analog when people say they love vinyl well i do too but only if it's a true analog vinyl i see no value no matter how much you spend on a turntable or a cartridge or a tonearm in taking an lp that was cut from a digital master.

1:58:54I see no value in that. I'd rather listen to the file on a really good deck. I haven't been convinced that playing an LP cut, it may sound more pleasurable to somebody, but my brain can't accept it. Yeah, less accurate. That's it. Because what gives me pleasure is fulfilling what the microphone captured. Tell me about solid state versus tubes. I adore tubes and solid state. At home, I listen with a tube design pre-amplifier. I have solid state amplification and have had that sort of combination for years. And the reason I love what tubes do is that they are accurate, but the harmonic structure just is to be more pleasurable.

1:59:42And what you need then is the accuracy of the solid state to provide horsepower to that beauty. What about tube microphones versus? Good question. Again, it comes down to the design of the capsule and the electronics. But by and large, I use solid state. One of the issues that a lot of engineers have told me is that, and it's a valid one, when you have 100 people up on stage and you're paying for that session, and suddenly the tube microphone starts to develop a hiss because the tube is failing, you're doomed. so that really is one of the justifications of going to fets and various it's essentially reliability i mean a good case in point is that neumann offers their vintage tube mics you can still get the tube but they make the solid state version and i like both the microphones that i use predominantly though were made by joseph grado the fellow that developed cartridges and headphones.

2:00:47And Joseph, in his later years, well, I knew him from the 70s, but in his later years, after he sold the company to his nephew, he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, I think it was. And he called me and said, I've got a microphone I developed. I want you to hear it. And I went up, I heard it, and I acquired six of them. Wow. And they account for about 90 % of what I record today. It's an Omni mic. It just doesn't sound like anything. It just sounds like the sound that's going into it. Yeah. Period. That's all I want. So I'm wedded to them. And they're Omnis. And using Omnis presents challenges because of the nature of how they gathered the sound.

2:01:31I remember there's a wonderful engineer by the name of Tom Jung, one of my heroes. And he also embraced the microphone the same way I did. and I remember setting up for a string quartet using those mics and my phone was buzzing and I answered, Hi Peter, it's Tom. Calling to tell you that Joe just passed at 91 or something like that. And it just hit me like a, and then I was thinking, I couldn't be doing a finer tribute to him than to be using his microphones today. In this moment. In this moment. It was perfect. Yeah, you know, it was devastating, but it was what I do and what he did. And he enabled me to continue doing what I did.

2:02:16Tell me a little bit about mic placement. Does it start with you walking around the space and listening, or is it more of a mathematical equation? I'm fortunate in that the halls that I'm privileged to work in, I've been using for decades. So I pretty much know what I want to get out of that and the instrument that's in it. and it's mostly a mechanical formula that i've worked out in terms of spacing of the omnis if i'm recording a piano if i'm recording a string quartet if i'm recording a choral ensemble the biggest challenge i'm having and enjoying very much is i'm recording a large choral ensembles with orchestra and soloists and different churches i'm really loving that that that gets a bit more complex yes going from old analog recordings to making a high res today are there any best practices or things that you would do to get the best version of an older recording wow now when you say analog are you talking about tape yes tape absolutely yes get a really good properly calibrated tape recorder and get the very, then play it at line level, not through a console, but straight out of the machine into the analog input of the very best A to D converter there is.

2:03:51The cleanest possible signal pattern. What are the choices today? Wow. I'd avoid workstations. We're talking two channels, so we don't need anything more complicated than that, there'll be one coming very soon. A fellow by the name of Bob Stewart. He's developing a new A to D converter. He should have it in a few months. Do they keep getting better and better? Yeah, yeah. But he said, and he's right, people have been pushing the D to A's because of the consumer market. But the A to D's have been pretty much static for years. Right now, I think merging technologies make some of the better ones.

2:04:31They're very popular. But take as straight a signal path out of the output of the analog to that and do it whenever you're poised, whether it be DXD or 192.24 bit. Well, tell me about the different resolutions available in high res. Yeah, I think that the higher the bit rate, obviously, the better it's going to be. So DXD. I used to be a big fan of DSD, but the problem with one bit is, in my view, is it's impossible to work with. You know, if you want to do even splicing, editing, you can't edit. It has to be converted to PCM and then back again. That's my primitive understanding. I'm not gospel on that.

2:05:16And I found that PCM with higher bit rates have gotten better. I mentioned my friend Jim Clark. You know what he got his PhD in? He studied with Tom Stockham, the guy that invented digital recording. Wow. At the University of Utah. Wow. And Jim maintains to this day that Stockham made a big mistake. He should have gone to one bit. And so Jim will listen to nothing but DST. but it's crazy anyway no but i think today to this day i think that the high rate pcm is the way to go it can be processed if you have to have you abed 88 versus 92 versus 190 whatever the different options are yeah is more always better no no back in the day i recorded principally at 882 only because the end product would be a CD.

2:06:14And it's easy to do the math, but at 192, it's very complicated. And I thought that the end result might not be as good. But if I'm not making anything that's going to go into that medium, I would prefer either 96 or 192. And the difference between 96 and 192, I honestly, my ears are old. I can't hear that at this point. I think there's a little more fluidity. People that I trust, Morton, who's from 2L Records, he's possibly the best recording engineer alive today. He claims that he can hear all the way up to 356 as a difference, you know, or whatever that top, exactly right. And he records everything at DXT.

2:06:59He insists that it sounds better. Who might argue with that? I don't know. But in terms of what the tools I have, also given the bandwidth of the mics I use, that presumes you have microphones that have bandwidth of 200 kilohertz to get a benefit. I don't know. Although the allegation is the higher you get the glassy filters, the more out of the way of the audible, you're better off. But I think for home music lovers, you're hard-pressed to hear much beyond 2496. Maybe I'm wrong. It could be sacrilegious, but... Tell me about the electronics in speakers. Uh-huh. We as a company, Wilson Audio, all our speakers are passive, but we do make everything that's in the speaker, including we wind our own coils, we wind our own inductors, and most importantly, we fabricate in-house our own capacitors.

2:08:00Wow. Daryl got a call about six, eight years ago from the company that was making our capacitors in California and the guy says, I'm 84 years old. I'm ready to close it out. I'm ready to retire. Daryl said, do you mind if I come with a couple of my guys and take a look at your factory? And he did. We bought it and moved everything to Utah. And we've since developed what they were doing and taking it to levels beyond. So we make all our capacitors in-house. What are first-order crossovers? The first order is typically 6 dB slope per octave. Second order, I think, is 12. Third order is 18. I'm not sure.

2:08:42I may have that wrong. But the higher the number of the order, the steeper the slope of the crossover. That means the cutoff, both upgoing and downgoing. First order is considered the easiest to get the phase correctly. At Wilson, we don't have a specific order. I mean, we basically... Whatever's needed for the... Whatever works. You know, it's all about listening, not just measuring, but actually hearing. Because the nature of the slope can alter the timbre of things. And Daryl's view is a continuation of his father. Basically, we refer to our tweeter as a coherent synergy tweeter, meaning that it's not what it does as a tweeter, but how well it mates with the driver below it.

2:09:31I see. That's synergy. This is what we're looking for, is the blending of the drivers. And then we can move them in the time domain. We can correct that physically. But it's the timbre we can't change. and that's a big, big thing is getting that sort of synergy between the drivers and I'm really pleased that we do that. And it comes from, you know, I started, like I say, with quads, electrostatic panels that had no enclosures, so the enclosure material was irrelevant because it did need it. But that planar diaphragm was about as light as air and it was really quick. And so it's a question of getting pistons connected to paper or plastic.

2:10:15For example, we still don't use diamond. We don't use beryllium. We don't use any of those things. The reason being is, as David said, I listen to them. And our highest grade technology at the present time is still something that's been around for 30, 40 years. Soft domed silk. You know, for example, in tweeter technology, the obsession is, particularly going to diamond or beryllium, is how far up it'll go. But David's concern is, look at the tweeter's dynamic capability at its lowest frequency. How loud can it play at the bottom point? And since we're using essentially one tweeter, it has to be a tweeter.

2:10:59and David always believes, and Daryl continues, that our crossover point for the tweeter is typically in the one kilohertz range, which is usually an octave and a half lower than anybody that would use a diamond or beryllium. Why do we do it? Because it allows us to get a better transition to where the meat of the music is, you know, in the mid-range. Hence the term coherent synergy tweeter. It's not how high it'll go, but how beautifully it blends. and our high frequency resonance with our current tweeters are around 24, 25 kilohertz. So it's adequate to say the least. How different do the speakers sound depending on the electronics driving them?

2:11:43Well, I'll answer that question by saying this. When I was a retailer and I was not involved in manufacturing with loudspeakers, the best advice I always gave to any client was make as big an investment you can in the speaker because it is ultimately the foundation. To the extent you can make the room good, do what you can. But I'm opposed to room treatment in the classical set. For example, there's not a stitch of it. This room is fabulous. You don't need no sticky room treatment in here. You've got that bookcase that acts as a diffuser. You've got these beams on the ceiling. You've got solid walls.

2:12:25equally important you have openings that allow the bass to not build up if you went into my living room it would be more like this one than any so-called sound room would be tell me about speaker placement in a room that is really a critical component my mantra to people who sell our product is they're only as good as the guy that installed them the reality is that that when you're dealing with a speaker that has essentially minimal cabinet resonances, is as pure as can be with no coloration in the loudspeaker, then the real big remaining challenge is what is the room doing to it in terms of the resonances of the room?

2:13:16And you want to find the spot where the speaker engages the very least the gremlins of the room the room residences yeah and that's really the art so typically further away from any wall sometimes sometimes though but sometimes you go into other components of the room where further away from the wall the room has all kinds of echoing effects i see they could be more color that could be mitigated by moving the speaker closer to the primary boundary. There's no given answer. You know, we have a, not a technology, just a methodology called the WASP, Wilson Audio Speaker Place, that we've even published, but we trade all of our salesmen stringently on how to do it.

2:14:04It's harder for the consumer to use the WASP because they don't know what they're looking for. They don't know the extent to which the speaker can be pure. Someone who knows what the speakers are supposed to sound like can determine how much the room is affecting and detracting from its purity. And so we contractually, Wilson Audio demands that all our dealers deliver and install them. Otherwise, we feel the customer is paying a lot of money for something they're not getting. We talked about planers. We talked about traditional cones. we didn't talk about horn speakers. Right. Tell me about horn speakers.

2:14:47They can be devastatingly wonderful. They're effortless. Their level of distortion, if properly designed, is a fraction because they're so bloody efficient. So the amplifiers are typically just coasting them. I mean, two watts could drive horn speakers louder than anything we are today. the issue for horns are usually related to timing you've got various large things that can't be adjusted so therefore there's a time smear in most of them there's one model out there that does have apparently some adjustments made by avant-garde in germany there are people who like those a great deal i've listened to them i think at their best in the best room i know of that exist for music playback.

2:15:37And they're very exciting. I, however, don't feel I could mix a recording on them. And the tonality, there is still a signature to that sound. They have a sound that can be very pleasing to people. And certainly their dynamics are very exciting. But that signature that is there to varying degrees, depending on the brand and the designer or the preferences, that signature is always to my ear prevalent. What's the purpose of a rear firing speaker? That can be a very powerful thing because it just adds more ambience into the room. And most good rear firing speakers should be adjustable to the point where they can be turned off entirely or turned up as much.

2:16:24And you just set it as you like it. The idea is just to create more of a sense of space. For example, Bob Ludwig was adamantly opposed to the speakers that I sold him. They were the biggest Egglestons because that was a period between what Joy Wilson and I came up there and he bought the biggest ones. William and I went up there and visited with him. And he had them from the day he opened Gateway to the day he closed it. Wow. But it was considered, in my view, the premium mastering facility in North America. Have you ever heard good-sounding omni-directional speakers? Can it be done? The closest I've heard it being done by far are the MBL speakers from Germany.

2:17:13The soundstage can be wonderful, but it lacks specificity. It lacks believability. And I'm cursed by that because when you're involved in making the recording, your expectations are built, and when they're not fulfilled, no matter how beautiful it is, you can't say it's bad, you just say it's not for me. Yes. And they're not for me. Yeah. They can be very exciting. Regrettably, from what I understand, MBL is, they went into insolvency. Wow. Just recently. I'm going to be a little bit critical, if I could be, of what the state of our industry, the industry by that, I don't mean the recording industry, because I think the recording industry is doing well.

2:17:57But as a consumer of music, I'd sell a$30 ,000,$40 ,000,$50 ,000 hi-fi system in the mid-70s. The client would then turn to me and say, all right, now what do I listen to? These five demo discs that you played? What else is there? And that was a legitimate question. You have to go on an odyssey trying to find music of quality and performance that would justify the expense. We're living in an era now, in my opinion, where the limitation is time. We're overloaded with incredible access to incredible music. And audiophiles, for the most part, they don't realize how good it actually is. And there's so much that's out there.

2:18:47And my big regret is I just don't have time to explore everything that I'd love to. Obviously, I don't listen to my records. I listen to everything. And the world of what's out there to be enjoyed is bigger by a wide margin than it's ever been.

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