Michael Fremer

Apollo is it was the major supplier. We thought of lacquers. Lacquers are needed to make records. So you take a lacquer and you put it on a lathe and the lacquer gets cut and the grooves are in the lacquer. Then that gets plated and it turns into a stamper and you make records. So there was a company called Transco that was right near me in Elizabeth, New Jersey, like in the early nineties, and I went to visit

them and saw they make lacquers. Then Apollo in California bought trans Go and put the two plants in one plant in California, and I said at the time, what if there is an earthquake, What if something happens, then you lose everything. So they didn't have an earthquake. But what happened was there was a huge fire there and it burnt the place almost to the ground. And everybody wondered where the lacquer is gonna come from? And that's

gonna stop the whole industry from making records. But in the meantime, there was a Japanese company that was making laquers and they were making more than we thought, and so they stepped up to the plate and there was no problem with laquers. The big problem today is not enough pressing plants, not enough capacity, because the record business, the vinyl business has just gone gangbusters this year. It's been it's amazing what's happened this year? Okay, so to

what degree does the means of production lagged the demand? Uh, there's not enough presses and so UH for example, Verve and UH and Acoustics Sounds got together and did a whole reissue series of great records on the Impulse and and Verve record label. So they ordered X number of records of let's say, John Coltrane's a love supreme and ballots. That was one month's output. They put two records out a month, so they pressed up X number of copies. I'm not supposed to say how many they were, but

there were a lot, a lot more than I thought. Uh. Those sold out almost immediately, and so Verve asked for another pressing and they couldn't press them because they had other commitments. The guy that owns the pressing plant, which is q RP in Salina, Kansas, um he said he could press doors and beatles seven and keep the praise going. But he can't do that, of course, because there are orders for other things. So the problem now is there are a lot of big pressing plants, but they're they're

completely booked. So how many pressing plants are there in the world. Well, there's a number of really big ones. Uh So this record industry in the Netherland. In the early two thousands, well probably the early nineties, Sony decided this is a this is an elephant for pressing plant. Were records are going away, we have this huge plant. The infrastructure of a record pressing planet includes giant boilers, the heat water piping presses that are big, heavy things.

And they said we've got to get rid of this place and the cost of disassembling everything and probably more than what the building costs. So a guy I know came along and said to Sony, I'll tell you what, let's work out a fair market value for the real estate and the building. I'll take care of getting all

the rest of this junk out of here. And Sony figured they had a sucker on the line and they made the deal with him, and that guy, Taan Vermillion, now owns a free pressing plant in Harlem, the Netherlands, and it's one of the biggest in the world. So they press a huge number of records there every year. So that's a big one. There's a u RP in Nashville, they press a lot of records. There's MPO in France.

There's um so, there's a There's a dozen plants, and then a lot of small ones that have opened up. You know. Jack White, a third man, has a pressing plant in Detroit, so he's got six or seven presses. There's Furnace in Virginia. He just opened a big, big plant. Uh. This q RP in Salina, Kansas. There's r t I in California, so there I'm finding out about new pressing plants all the time. I get emails from people saying

they're pressing records. So I did a survey of of pressing plants and asked them how many records they pressed last year. I didn't get the participation that I desired this year for some reason. But from the pressing plants that did respond, fifty million LPs were pressed from those plants, and so my my estimate is over a hundred and twenty million records were pressed easily last year. Okay, you talk about the number of presses. You say they have

six presses. How many records can six presses produce? Well, again, it depends on the on the type of press It is because some of the presses work faster on the others. Some of them work slower than others. A pressing cycle should be a couple of minutes, so you know, do the math. A couple of minutes to press a record. You keep the pressed running eight hours a day. Um, some presses, some presses are running running three three shifts eight hours a day. You know, so three shifts, eight

hour shifts, that's twenty four hours. You can you can do the math. I'm ath lexics. Don't expect me to do the math and add that up for you. I can't do it. Just to be clear, I've been to a pressing plant Rainbow Records. It used to be in Santa Monica. When you talk about a minute, it didn't seem like it was a minute just to make one record. Are you talking about the whole process? You're literally saying a minute to make both sides. Well, it's both sides

get pressed at the same time. So so what happens is a biscuit goes in a molten biscuit, the press comes down, it stays close for at least a minute, at least a minute, then it opens up. Then the record gets moved off the press. Then it goes to a machine that slices the flash away from a on the record, and then that record goes into a bin or slides down a thing into into a pile of records. It's over a minute. Let's go back to the heyday of vinyl. There was a big issue whether it was

virgin vinyl re grind uh. Some labels like Atlantic were known for having especially poor pressings. Then we had our c A with the dina Flex record to what degree is the issue of purity still in the mix, and to what degree does thickness affect the ultimate recording. Well, you know, records got bad in the seventies when there was an oil crisis, if you remember, and so they were melting down whatever was plastic that could melt, you know, big pens, whatever they could melt to make into a record.

So a lot of bad records. But it's not fair to go after Atlantic because Atlantic pressed records at Presswell at Monarch. Atlantic was one of the only labels that would tell you where the record you're buying is pressed that so you could buy a led Zeppelin record press that Monarch or a press Well. And there were connoisseurs today of press Well records or Monarch records of different pressing plans. But at any rate, most today our virgin vinyl.

But there are some presses that believe that some of the regrind should be used it makes a better record. But what they do is if their record is badly pressed, they don't throw it away. They take the record and they put it in a machine that pops out the label that was created, and they grind it up and use it again. And that's still considered you know, to me, that's still virgin vinyl. Essentially, it's not it's not really used vinyl. Okay, Now, is anybody making new pressing machines. Yes,

there are a number of new pressing machines. So there's a company in Canada making new presses. There's a company in Germany making new presses too. Lex Alpha was one of the big modern presses of the end of the vinyl era. You know, in the eighties they started making these really efficient quick presses, lightweight, and then they went

out of business. And then uh Of, one of the developers started getting requests that started, like in the nineties, getting requests for parts and will you maybe make a new press, and so he organized the company. He got the blueprints because they didn't exist, they were on paper, the blueprints. He got the blueprints and started making presses again. And those are not called Phoenix Alpha. So there are many many new presses you can buy, and there are

small pressing plans opening up all over the place. Of this one in Austin, Texas, there's one that just opened in Asheville, North Carolina. A single press. It's like it's a boutique press. So local bands can go in there and get their albums pressed on vinyl. And these places are all really busy right now. Everything everybody's booked up solid. How about lathes to actually cut the lacquers, Well, that's

that's an issue. Uh. There are no new lathes being made, but right now there are a sufficient number around uh, so that's not a problem. The problem is actually the cutting style. That's a difficult thing. There's not too many people in ad to make those. So the entire infrastructure of record pressing, from the beginning to the end, there are hitches in the line. But so far right now everything's everything's fine, everything's coming along. Just find plenty of laquers,

plenty of PVC, uh, plenty of presses. They're very, very busy. And the ones that have room to from more presses, they're hesitant to to buy new presses and start pressing because they think that maybe this whole thing is is going to go away at some point. But I don't see it happening now, Bob. I think this is this is here to stay and growing. Okay, little backfield. How

much does the press cost? It's pretty expensive. I don't know the exact amount because I haven't I haven't looked to buy one, but it's it's hundreds of thousands of dollars and maybe close to a million. It could be okay. At the end of the tenure of Vinyl, there were big debates whether the Neuman lathe although the standard was actually you know, not good, and there were other things.

What's your view on the different competition in lathes. Well, at this point, you know, the Annyman SX seventy four is pretty much the the industry standard. Unfortunately, that was developed in nineteen four and that is what most places use, the Annoyment SX seventy four, and there was the final one they made, was the SX eight. And there are other you know, there are other cutting systems. There's a the older Scully machines, That's what Rudy van Gelder had,

That's what Bernie Grunman uses. He's got a Skully lathe, which is actually the device you know, plays the lack of spins the disc and cut her head moves on it, but he uses a Hayko cut her head. The Annoyment is pretty much the standard, and nobody complains about Annoyman's. And then of course there's d M M. The direct metal master, which is which was developed by by Tell Deck in the at the end of the vinyl era. And so when another thing that happens, when lacquers started,

people were worried that lacers were gonna go away. Uh, there was a pickup in business of direct metal master that doesn't require any lack er and plants like g Z Media, which I left out of my discussion of the biggest plants. That's one of the biggest in the Czech Republic that I visited them. That's a huge place. They make their own PVC, they rebuild their own presses. Uh, they have many many um direct metal master cutting lathes to cut from. They even make their own copper discs.

They're like completely self sufficient. That's an amazing place. Okay, I certainly remember the direct metal mastering. But for those who are unaware, can you explain that in the difference between like a traditional annoyment lathe. Sure, so traditional lathe cuts on a lacquer. So, a lacquer is an aluminum disc that's coded with what's essentially paint. It's it's a lacquer, and it dries and then it gets put on a lathe and the cutting head cuts in cuts the grooves

into the lacquer, and then the lacquer gets played. It's silver plated, and then it makes eventually makes a stamper and your presser record with with the d MM. The the plate is copper. It's a it's a piece of copper, and it gets cut directly into the copper, so there isn't an intermediate step of making something metal. It starts out as metal and so it makes it. It also makes them more direct and a more precise cut because the metal can be cut more precisely. Some people don't

like that sound. I've got a Wilco album that they sent me. They cut it a d M M and they cut lacquer and they said, what do you which do you like better? And they sound different. And over time the d m M has gotten better because the people doing the cutting have have understood its qualities and have made it sound less harsh and better sounding. Okay, I heard there was a scarcity and d M M machines. Is that true? At one point? And this is you know, I can say this now, but one of the things

I said entire vinyl business were the scientologists. Do you know that story? No, I don't I remember. Once I got my knockam F eighty two fixed. For those who really remember, that was the ultimate you could set some tones whatever, And all these people wanted to buy it from me, and they all turned out to scientology. She had asked a number of questions before they ultimately revealed that. But I do not know about the scientologists in this era. All right, this is such a great story, and it's

absolutely true. And when I tell it to you, you're gonna say, I don't believe you, but it's true. So the scientologists decided that the best way to store information, including L. Ron Hubbard speeches, was not digitally but analog. So they brought up a whole bunch of D M M lathes, and they also had regular lathes, and they brought up a lot and they they saved a lot of lades that otherwise would have been scrapped, and they cut L. Ron Hubbard's speeches to either D M M

or lacquer. And then they bought up they bought a plating plant at R T I, which is one of the premier pressing plants in America in Camrio, California. They spent the money and built a plating facility, which is where you played the laquer to make stampers. They invented a system whereby once the lacquer was plated with silver, they covered it with an aluminum foil covering hermetically sealed

with a tab on the end. And to play back the lacquer, the plated lacquer you peel back like a pop top can and you put it on a turntable. The turntables had solar panels to power in case there was no electricity where the world's exploded, where we're done, and solar panels and cartridges with no elastomer in it. Cartridges to play back record. It has a springy thing and there's a piece of rubber in there that makes

it springky, and that's how you play back records. The cartridges they developed have no elastomer so that it wouldn't deteriorate over time. So this is all stored in the Mojabi desert in a in a vault someplace in the ground. And in the future, Bob, some future civilization will dig up and discover this place. They will unfold the doors, they will find these turntables, they will find this whole stash of plated lacquers and and d M M plated

records covered with this aluminum. They will peel it back. It also has hieroglyphic sione to show you peel back. Put on this turntable, put the solar rate towards the sun, lower the styles into the group, and l Ron Hubbard will play. And so in the future it will be discovered that the most important person in our civilization was l Ron Hubbard. That may end up being true, Okay,

and then to what degree does this affect DMM availability? Um, there are many many places that have record industry in UH. In Harlem in the Netherlands has a has a number of d MM lathes. Uh. When I I visited there, and when I visited Optimal in Germany. That's another present plant that I forgot to mention. That's a big one. They used to just only make c D and DVD duplication and books and they just got into vinyl in the nineties, and boy, that was the right move for them,

because now they're absolutely backed up with whatever comes their way. Uh. They've got a number, They've got a whole house full of lathes, and many of them are d MM and they make their own copper plates also, So there really isn't a problem with with getting the records cut. The big problem is getting them pressed. Okay, let's just assume

that production equals demand. How big can this vinyl market become? Um, Well, as long as there are oppresses that could continue to be built, and there are you know, three or four companies that will make them, and as long as people are willing to invest the money to buy the presses,

and as long as there's the continued demand which is succeeded. Listen, when this whole thing started, when vinyl was going away, and I'd go to Tower Records, and I would see all the beautiful record racks disappearing, and they were just all the CDs on those long boxes and everything. I just couldn't believe it. So I wonder, my my tear about saving vinyl. But I never thought it would come back the way it's come back. I just wanted the infrastructure to be to remain. You know, I this pressing

plant in upstate New York. It made money. It never lost money. Even in the worst era vinyl era, when business trailed off, they made money. And at some point someone at m c A decided that they would make the bottom line look better by closing the plant and getting selling the presses, and they have a big bump in the bottom line for one year. That was worth

it to them. And I said, don't do that, because what's gonna happen is Vinyl is gonna make a big comeback and you're gonna be on have to wait online like everybody else to get a record press And they looked at me like I was crazy, And guess what, now you and me has to wait online with everybody else to get their records pressed. So okay, But I repeat my question, how big is the potential market? It's as big as the demand can grow to become another's.

There's no limitation in terms of production. It really comes down to how many companies are willing to invest the money in presses and setting up the infrastructure. Some of the like you know r T I in in Camearrio. It's a fairly small place. They have like twelve over thirteen presses and they have room to grow. But the guy that owns it, he's like, he's he's happy, he's

making money. Everything's good. U. The guy at Harlem, he's running through three shifts a day, eight hour shifts, seven days a week, and they're just you know, it's also a matter of getting getting young people to want to be pressman. It's not a big it's not a big paying job. Okay, but let's talk. Let's talk the others. Let's talk the other side of what is driving demand? That's the best question. So what's driving demand? Or a

few things. First of all, you have the older audiophile who think records sound the best, and they're buying a lot of the costly reissues. And then you have young people, and a lot of people don't understand why young people are getting into this. They just you know, they can stream for almost nothing. Everything you want to hear is on your phone or you can stream, you can listen on serious exam, you can you can stream, will modify and all these different services. So why are records continuing

to sell? Part of it is the form factor that young people, especially those who grew up with with just digital. They have nothing to hold, there's nothing in their hands, they have a collection of nothing. They like the fact that they can buy a record. They feel a closeness to the artists that they support, They feel some connection to them, they feel the artist that said, here's twelve songs, here's a playlist. I want you to hear six songs on the side. And I hear from those people, these kids,

and they love it. They just love the whole thing. I always it's like books. Books are not gonna go away. Books may become more niche than it is now, but there's always going to be a demand. And young people. I hear these story as well. Young people buy these records to hang on the wall. They don't even open them. I don't buy that. I mean some do that for sure, but the way the market is growing, and when I hear from young people, they get together with each other.

There's something about analog the brain are. I sent you a paper, I think a scientific paper about you know, you get on a telephone call in the digital domain, all our phones and now digital, you jump over each other because everything's pushed in these little packets that come at you, and then the silence and then it starts again. There's something about listening to records. And I always said this.

I always said, if kids can get it, can hear hear this and experience what a record sounds like properly played back, they'll want it. So my neighbor. I have a neighbor whose kid is like nine years old. He was a Bob Dylan fan. He only heard Bob Dylan his MP three's And I brought him down here and I sat him down. I said, what do you want to hear? He said, I want to hear blood on the tracks. I played the vinyl and I was standing behind him and I could just see his whole body heaving,

and I went on the other side. He was crying. He said, I've heard that record. I don't know how many times. I've never heard it before. The first guitar strum cut through me like a knife, and then the whole experience, the emotion of it. I've never heard anything like that. I think that experience is being repeated all over the world as young people here finally hear something that's analog and the way music should be heard. Well, yeah, but I laugh a lot of these people are no, no, no, no.

I laugh at a lot of things. But what I laugh about in this particular case is there buying this expensive vinyl and playing it on Crossley. All in ones are really crappy systems, and that sort of defeats the purpose. In my mind. Now that does and I've I've railed against that. I say, what, there's something wrong with buying a fifty dollar copy of Dark Side of the Moon and playing back on a record player. Yeah, that's a problem.

And you know that is a problem. There are much better turntables now that don't ruin your records, that will sound good, that don't cost more than a couple of hundred dollars to get you started. So yeah, that you know, Crossley got started as a gift shop supplier. That company would supply gifts to like gift shops, and one of their gift shop buyers went to a convention and someone had a cute little turntable and they said, oh, this will be a nostalgia item. Let's we'll stock a few

of these. That became their biggest selling item in the gift shops. And that's how they got into the turntable business. And so yeah, it's not a great way to listen to records. It's not as bad as I thought it was. I've heard a couple of them. A little backfill. The big thing back in the vinyl heyday was you bought a Japanese pressing. Not only was a Virgil Virgin vinyl. It was thicker. Does the thickness of the vinyl let's not forgive For those of us who really remember the record,

it was rare that you got a perfect copy. They warped, they had surface noise. So is the thickness just an image or does that help? Well? Two things. First, you know Japanese pressings are the finest pressings in terms of the quality, and they really are. However, they didn't always get the best source, so it will be a third generation taped that they would use. And their EQ was

kind of weird. They would roll off the base. It was kind of like, because you know, the walls are thin and people are packed together, you don't have to much basic going through people's apartments. So yeah, the quality was about heavier vinyl if it's properly done, can sound better. But doing it well, pressing a hundred a gram record is very difficult to do correctly. Uh So I don't want when they say it's a hundred eighty gram record, the record label say it's pressed on a hundred gram vinyl.

I'm not as much interested in that as a how it was cut, where it's being pressed. Why is it so difficult to gram vinyl because it's a it's a larger biscuit of warm vinyl that's on the press that has to be pushed and spread across the surface of the stamper, and it can start to harden before it gets all the way out to the outer edge of this. Pressing a perfect record is a miracle, it's almost a miracle. But pressing a good record is not that difficult, and

pressing a flat record is not that difficult. But getting it to flow evenly over the surface of the stamper and not begin to harden before it gets to the edge, it's difficult. And so what you get is what's called nonfill. There are a number of issues involved in a bad record, and one of them is is non filled. But we shouldn't get too technical here because you know, well, you know, we got some people who are actually very interested in this. Okay,

let's go. Let's go back to analog versus digital. One of the big things when c ds came out, they had the codes on the back of the product. They would be like A A D D D D you know, D at the end would represent the final iteration like the c D, but their first D would represent it was cut on a digital machine. Second would be was mixed on a digital machine. So the first question I

have for you is if something is cut analog. I totally understand an analog and product, but if something is cut digitally originally, tell me why vinyl would be good as opposed to a great file of that quality. That's a very good question. So first of all, let's say you're buying a CD made from a four bit master. You're going down in quality from K four bit to

six K, so you're losing quality right there. If you cut a record, a vinyl record from a four bit file, and the dacoder that's used to create the analog signal from the digital is the highest quality dacoder you can buy, which is very costly and can be found in some great studios. The chances of that record sounding better than a CD version is great. It's it should sound better than a CD version. Streaming high resolution can sound really good. But the fact of the matter is the d d

A conversion is critical. The resolution of how you convert it back at home is critical. I met just last week. I met a man who I can't mention his name, and I can't tell you the company that he founded and into high resolution digital. And he said to me last week, he said, you know, I invented the blankety blank.

But I still think records sound better. He says, even if a record is cut from a digital source, I think it sounds better if the converter is better than what than when a kid has at home to turn it into into analog to play at home, it can sound better. And let's talk. Let's talk at the super

high end, which you're very familiar with. If we have a file at one two that easy equivalent to the original master, and you have the appropriate equipment to play it back, you have the right converters, it should sound better than the analog version. Well, it'll say, it's just sound different, now, you know. Better is a subjective thing. Everything we listen to is all a distortion of reality. Nothing sounds like, you know, live, when you're a live

and nothing. I have a stereo that's stupidly costly. It sounds great. But if if someone's playing live upstairs in my house, I know it's live. I know it's that my system, you know. So that's the first thing. Every step in the process of making it into a record or making it into a CD, or making it into a high resolution fround. This distortion involved in it. If adding the distortion of cutting a lacquer and making a record out of it adds something that makes it sound

more real, I'm okay with that. I'm okay. You know, when digital recording started, what's the first thing that happened in the microphone business. The studio said, this sounds so harsh and so drabbed, we better start putting some tube

warmth into our recording. So Noyman microphones, which you could buy for a song at first, no pun intended, started getting more costly as as studios and engineer started buying all of these devices that are noisy and distortion producing, because adding that added a certain kind of warmth that was pleasing to the ear. So yeah, theoretically, if I had a high resolution file that was for a bit and I played it back on my deck, which is one of the best acts you can get, that file

should sound as good as it's going to get. If it's converted to a record and played back on my system, it should sound very close to the to the file, and it does because my analog playback system is let's go back, because I was heavily invested in this emotionally in dollars. Wise, okay, there were a lot of issues in vinyl, all of which are still in the game.

One is the balance of the cartridge to the angle of the needle three and I hate to bring this up because it was innovative, but it had way too much friction. The Garrard turntable where the needle moved perpendicularly to the record. Ultimately, Piana Sonic Techniques they did that. Then there's the issue with skating. What those all those issues still exist today to what degree to those affect the ultimate sound? All of those issues still exist, but we are learning, you know, a lot about how to

solve those problems. And so, for example, I'm involved in a stylists rake angle um zoom conference on Saturday where there will be people from all over the world there to how do you set the stylist rake angle of your playback system? And all this sounds completely anachronistic. I know, it's sort of like deciding how to make your Steam

engine run better. But when you have all these records that thank god didn't get thrown away, old records that can sound unbelievable today, and and new records too, and playing it back correctly. We're learning a lot about how to do this better. And there are better and better turntables and better and better cartridges, and all of the material science that's involved in everything we do today UH is now applied to this subject because there's a market

for it. There's a business in it. Um tangent. Still tracking is overrated and not really necessary. I'm I'm in the nine inch pivoted arm camp. I still think them added distortion that that adds, when properly done, is less than gets added by the rest of your stereo system. So all these issues are there, but properly played back, there's nothing like a record. And I I say that, and I have people coming over with total skeptics, and

when they leave, they go, I had no idea. I remember, is a c D C. The original c D was well mastered, never mind the subsequent iterations and which was not the case in the late eighties. And I remember putting on that c D and I have plenty of power, etcetera. Because I never want to hit the stortion and then whipping out the vinyl, which I take very good care of but Back in Black had been played so many times.

If I put on the c D and cranked it up, eventually my ears would start to bleed, so to speak. If I put on the VIR, I would feel something with my body. It would like shake, it would like being at a live show. It definitely sounded different, definitely sounded better to my ears. But then there are other people who say, hey, we've made so many advances in digital that all your complaints of the eighties and nineties no longer exist. Well, it's certainly gotten better, and no

thanks to the people. At the beginning he said it was perfect, and that just drove me crazy. Every time I would hear a CD if something it was horrible compared to the original record. In fact, there's a very famous mastering engineer that I met. I met her through old sobs. Actually that's all another funny story. And uh, he said, I've just remastered the Peter Gabriel catalog. Can I come over to your place and listen? This is nine in their early nineties. This was And so he

came over and we started playing. It was either so or one of the early ones, and to me it sounded horrible. I said, now, I'm gonna play for you the original British Charisma pressing, and I put it on and in three seconds his face fell in. You went, what happened? What? What? What happened? I said, I don't know. You heard what I just heard. That's something that has to be worked out if this is gonna ever sound

really good. Yeah, there's no noise, there's no has All the problems with analog are solved, but the music itself doesn't sound right. And now today it's sounding better, but it's still there's still something you can't measure. But you know, I have I have a fifteen year old kid writing for me, Bob. He's a vinyl fanatic, and what he says is that when you listen to digital, there's noise. And it's not noise on the disc in the groove, but it's something about the process that creates noise in

your brain. And then when you put a record on, your whole body drops and relaxes, and you start bringing the music into your body and your brain relaxes. I can't measure that, but I know I can hear it. Okay, let's go to the equipment itself. Uh, when we're talking about turntables. There's been this endless war between direct rye the belts. Belts look like they want now direct drive is coming back. What's your take on that. I'm currently reviewing. Um, I think I sent you a picture of it. Is

it's a half a million dollar turntable. It's crazy. It's belt drive. And then there's another two others that are direct drive. Again, it's a matter of how the technology is accomplished. So the idea of having a motor that's attached to the platter is problematic because anything that's that's vibrating, that's not smooth, or that's cogging, is going to create problems in what you hear. The best direct drive turntables

today are really really good. And when Techniques got back in the turntable business, they after stopping they had to retool everything over again and they redesigned their turntables even though they look like the old disc jockey turntables, and they're much much better, they sound much much better, and they're already a file quality now, whereas at the beginning they were not. They made they have all kinds of problems. So both technologies are good. You can have techniques. I

still have my SLT hundred. People don't really remember. There was the twelve hundred hundred and four hundred twelve hundred, which is legendary for DJ's fully manual. Fourteen hundred you drop the needle, but it would return it. Thirteen hundred would both drop the needle and return it, and you could dial up a certain number of plays. Our automatic turntables, I'm not talking about stacking. We all know that's ridiculous. But there are automatic turntables just dead. There are very

few being made anymore. Um. There are a few that pick up at the end. That's about it. But it's not really an important part of the market. You know. It's like my my father wants to play his records and he falls asleep before it ends. Can we can you get me a turntable to pick somebody? So? Yeah, you do that? Well, I mean I must say that, you know, it bothers me because the turntable they tend to use now is bell drive. And of course this is another issue how much you can fit on one side.

So I'm listening to the new UH Peter Green tribute album and it's on two c d s and UH six vinyl records. Okay, so there's not much music on each record. See it's going to be released soon. It's not much music on each record. But I'm constantly having to get up, which is one thing if I'm only sitting on a couch, but if I'm working at the computer, you know, it's a pain in the ass. I tell the people in my industry, you need to get up every twenty minutes. It's good for you, it's good for

your heart, it's good fear legs, good fear joints. Get up every twenty minutes. Twenty minutes, as it turns out, is a perfect amount of It's like eating a meal. How much food can you eat in in one sitting? Twenty minutes is a nice amount of listening time before you have to break from what you're doing and turn it over. But you know, the big problem with music over the past forty years is it's become a background source, and listening to music has become almost like like vampireism.

You put the record on, it's in the background while you cook, while you eat, while you exercise. But artists, they don't, They didn't make music for that. They make music for you to sit down and pay attention to what they're doing, and records are really good for that, not just because of the physical nation off you have to sit and listen to it and it's only twenty minutes,

but there's something about it. And I've always said this, when you put a record on and young people are discovering this, it draws you in in a certain way where you want to pay attention to it, whereas digital your brain says, I don't like this, I'm not comfortable with this. I must do something else while this is on. And I really believe that, And I think if it hasn't been proven yet, it will eventually be proven. But certainly the way people consume music has demonstrated that to

be true. Okay, now, in the early sixties, all of us tended to listen on one box radios. Your appearance at a bigger system. The Beatles came in. We went from one track to two track, to four track, to eight track to sixteen to thirty two unlimited, and there was a concommoned explosion in stereo such that everybody wanted to have a better stereo, and the landscape was riddled with stereo shops. In the nineties, they were somehow replaced

by all in one boom boxes. And now except for you know, some stuff that you're familiar with, it is seeded back into the marketplace. We have the tweaks as they call them, with super high end stuff. They can spend a hundred k no problem. On the other hand, we have a lot of people are listening to digital through earbuds. But if you want to get into vinyl, how much money do you have to spend to cross

the threshold of quality. You can get a satisfying system for twelve or fifteen hundred dollars, which, if you think about inflation, is not that your money you can get. It's a small pair of speakers, they won't have a lot of base. You can get a turntable that's gonna play back well and not distort and not ruin your records, and it will sound quiet. And you can get a small receiver or integrated amplifier that will have enough power

to drive the speakers. And there are systems that you can You can go on the right websites and find those systems and they sound great. And when a young person who has only heard earbuds and only heard his phone play music, when they hear something like that they respond to it naturally because it sounds great. It sounds really good. Okay. As you mentioned earlier, it was a big issue in the seventies. You don't want the turntable

to ruin the records first. The thought back then was you should not You should need to let the vinyl rest before you play it again. What's your theory on that. Well, you know, in my job, I have to play a record over and over against to get to know the music well enough to write about it. I don't think it's a problem on a clean record with a clean

stylists tracking at the right tracking force. I don't think and record where is another is another thing I hear a lot about records really don't wear if you take care of them, and I can go back and play any like I had these guys. I went to cross the street to my neighbors when I moved in here twenty years ago, and my neighbor introduced me by saying, you see this guy. This guy plays records still. He thinks records sound better when these guys are laughing at me,

and I said, we're in a hot up. I said, what do you like rolling stones? I said, get dry it off, come on, of course the street. I'll play some Rolling Stones. So I had just gotten the S A C D s of the Rolling Stones catalog, and those are better than CD quality, and I brought them in. I sat them down. I said, all right, let's let's

play Aftermath nineteen sixty seven. So we put the S A C D of Aftermath on and these guys have never heard a really good stereo and they were like, oh my god, that's It's like wow, I'm hearing all these instruments separated in space. It's really incredible. You're telling me the records better? All right? Now playing Merbers Pressing I've been playing since nineteen seven, and I'm gonna play that for you. And I put it on and in two seconds the first guy goes, Okay, I get it.

It's like the other was good. But Mick Jaggett was like, standing right in front of me in three dimensions, I can see him and everything is. I hear all the instruments and yeah, that's much better. How is that possible? I said, let's go back in the hot tub. We'll talk. You know, no one ever comes down here. Okay, let's go back to turntables. You mentioned earlier that there are these cheap turntables that are good enough. Hey, let's go back to the price point. Be what are the brand names? See?

Is that enough? Or really, if you're interested, you should you buy something better that will last you longer, or you're gonna have to replace this initial cheap turntable. If a young person comes to me, I tell them the least expensive turntable that you can get that's going to do the job is made in Americas by a company called you Turn. And you can start at with a hundred and seventy nine dollar turntable and you can upgrade

it as you go. But if you start with that and buy their phono pre imp which is a Pluto, which is you're getting started with something that's well made, relatively well made, and it's gonna take care of your records because you're gonna want to upgrade as you go over time. And those kids are funny. They their tough university graduates. They got their degrees and they told their parents that they're gonna they decided they're gonna open up

a turntable manufacturing company. And their parents were so disappointed with the money, the advantage and these kids did it, and they have like fifteen or sixteen employees now in Wuburn, and they sell a lot of turntables and a lot of phono pre imps and upgrades. That's the basic minimum, and then you can go up to a project or even an audio technica that costs about two and seventy nine dollars. And I spoke to a dealer in in Louisiana a couple of weeks ago who told me that

he had back order of these Audio Nicko turntables. He finally got them in and then he had to wait like months, he found so he called audio technic. He said, look, I want to get more of these, so I have a stock of them and they said, sorry, we're back ordered that that I can't. That blows my mind. And those are being bought by young people. That's not like my generation or even a generation younger than mine. Those are kids buying that. And this is spreading. It's it's

like a virus. It spreads because once okay, let's get down to the bolts though relevant of the pnumbra. Okay, so those audio technicals cost how much to seventy nine? Okay, what's the step beyond that? Uh. Step beyond that is getting rid of the plastic body and getting a project. Um A debut carbon is like three, and that's made in the Czech Republic. That will really get you up there to a to a pretty good turntable and you

can that arm is good enough. You can put any cartridge you want, and you can start with an inexpensive order font and then get a more expensive order on and keep improving the cartridges as you go and the sound gets better and then you're hooked. Okay, if I spend three, is that enough or forever? Or one day I'm gonna wake up said no, I need something better. But that's like saying what a key Is that going to settle it for me? Or do I want to get? Okay,

let's talk cars, BMW, Mercedes, Bins, Lexus, Maserati. Those are premium cars. Okay. Now I don't want to make it totally an analogy, but if you're buying the best Japanese regular car, the best American car without going into the stratosphere,

how much money is what you should spend? Okay? If you if you want to put some serious money into a stereo but not go you know, crazy like uh, five thou dollars for a turntable is you're hitting a point of a really really fine product, well made, that's gonna sound really good it and then the cartridge you can put in there should be a couple of thousand dollars, and so that's about seven or eight. Let's go cheaper than that. Okay, I started at three d and twenty dollars.

If I is it worth it spending twelve hundred or two thousand, or I have to go all the way to five. A two thousand dollar turntable will definitely perform better than a four in a dollar turntable. It will be quieter, it will extract more information from the grooves, and mechanically it will perform better. So in all ways it will it will sound quieter, which is important. You know. One of the things that you records work, it's it's a velocity based thing. The stylust goes through the groove

and it's reading the grooves. If the turntable is well designed, it will suppress the pops and clicks and you won't hear them. If it's poorly designed, the whole thing is gonna resonate like in a canyon. So the more you spend, the better performance. So, but you have to spend that much money for a couple of thousand dollars, you're you're getting a turntable that's going to do a really, really good job for you, and you can put anything. What are the brand names that are? What are the models?

In that case, Project makes turn tables starting at nine going up to fifteen thousand or something like that. So that would be a good brand to look at. Um, you know what, you gotta go on a website and look at different brands. Clear Audio makes some reasonably price turntables. Also, that's a German company. They make good turntables starting at a reasonable price. You have to look around. There's so many different brands. I don't even you know, I'm not

good at Let's go to the cartridge. Back in the hey day in the mid seventies, you had to match everything in your system. You have to match the cartridge to the amplifier, to the speakers. But today, even turntables in four figures they come with a cartridge. What's up with that? Well, some do, but but actually most most don't. You know. Some will come with the cartridge, but not

a great cartridge. They want to get you started. But cartridges today ranging price from ars to a fifteen thousand dollars, believe it or not, And the technology that's in these cartridges is amazing. But you don't have to spend a lot of money to get a decent cartridge. Company like order Fon makes cartridges from to above ten thousand dollars, and you know, anybody that would sit down and listen can hear the difference between them. So, yeah, you can spend a lot of money on a cartridge or you

can spend a little month. Okay, let's just assume I have a set dollar plus a thousand dollar turntable. How much should I spend on the cartridge? I would start out at around five, and then you can go up because a turntable at that price point should have an arm that's sufficiently well built with sufficiently good um bearings in it that it can handle the energy that will

come out of a more expensive cartridge. So that's one of the reasons why you do want to buy a turntable that has an arm on it that can be allow you to upgrade your cartridge. Okay, so like five, what are the brands I'm looking at? Their Um, Order Fun, sound Smith, Clear Audio, Um just just an endless number of brands, but Order Fun and sound Smith, which is made in America. Uh, they've got a whole range of cartridge that very good ones at five UM Audio Technically

makes a whole line of great cartridges. I visited them once and they've been in this business for decades and they've they've got really good quality control and they're the best value. I mean, you can get a fifty dollar Audio Technically that really performs surprisingly well. So okay, how about moving magnet moving coil, Well, I think moving coil moving called cartridges offer higher resolution there they have lower mass so they can react in the groove faster. So

Order Fund makes a two M black for seves. That's pretty much the epitome of moving magnet cartridges. It's very very good. You can put that cartridge in most decent turntables and you'd be surprised how good it sounds. They're moving coil line starting at a thousand dollars and up. They've got a line that the Cadenza line is around and that takes you to a different level of sophistication and timboroil balance and UH and high frequency response. So

there's no endto this. Okay, let's go to the amplification. Yes, in the seventies the big thing was the receiver. Most people were unaware there were three elements. There was the pre amp, there was the amp, and the receiver the FM tunor needle. Say, no one needs an FM tun anymore. In terms of the amp in the preamp a what do you say integrated versus separates? What do you say in terms of price? What do you say in terms of power? Give me some wrap on that. Yeah, you know,

one thing that's happened. We've moved to Class D amplifiers at the lower end of the market, and now it's moving up. These are extremely efficient amplifiers that use a different kind of what's called a switch mode power supply, so they don't require big transformers. You remember the big heavy receivers of the day had these big transformers in it. So like, I've got a PS audio sprout here. It's made in Colorado. It's very very small, very very lightweight.

Yet it's got plenty of power. It's got well over a hundred watts of channel. It's got it built in phono preamp. It's beautifully made and it's it's like under a thousand dollars. So there's a lot of good things for not that much money right now. If you you know, if separates are the way to go, if you have a big sophisticated system, you can buy an integrated amplifier now that it's got the pre amplifier and the amplifier in one box. And some of them have phono pre

umps built in. But I think you're better off having the phono primp as an outboard device and adding your own. That way you have more flexibility and what you're ending up with. But and also all of this stuff is out there. I know. I love reading your column where you say, oh, no one does this anymore, or it's hardly there. It's still You go to the show in Munich is four days and thousands and thousands of manufacturers are there. It's it's packed and the crowds are huge.

Hi Fi is still a big thing. Okay, so there are many people. And this now gets into the tube question. Who believe all these amplifiers have a different sound. What do you think about the sound of the amplifier and what do you think about tubes? So I'm in the solid state camp now tube camp. I still review tube gear. I like some of the sound of that. I think mixing and matching is a good way to go. So, like I was saying, a lot of the noyment microphones that are in the study videos today, a lot of

them use two pre EMPs. Pre EMPs two pre EMPs have more distort, more harmonic distortion, but there's something about them that makes them sound more musical. And so you could have a solid state amplifier and a solid state preamp, and maybe you want to bring a tube phono preamp in there just to warm things up a little bit,

depending upon It's like cooking a meal. You know, you make a make a meal, and the first time you cook it it maybe it comes out a little bit too dry, or it comes out a little bit too hot or a little bit too a stringent. So you change the balance of the ingredients. So as you assemble a system and you listen to it, you can make changes over time. If you want a little warmer, you can add a tube preamp. If you want your speakers to be fuller sounding, you can add a tube vamp.

And I don't get into a fight with people over what they what they like. Whatever you like in hi fi is fine. That that's the best part about it. You got to a hi Fi show, every room is gonna sound different. So if you want a warm sound, you can get with tubes. If you want something that's a little more punchy, go with solid state. Whatever you like. Okay, now let's go to speakers. You know on the low end. What are you getting? And one are the brand names there?

There are some great inexpensive speakers now uh KIF and eLAC and clips, and there's a whole bunch of companies making small, little two way speakers for under under eights that sound incredibly good. I reviewed a pair of Lex and those are designed by a guy named Andrew Jones, who I think is a speaker designing genius. He used to design very expensive studio monitors for a company called T A D in Japan that were seventy dollars, and he went the other way, said I'm going to design

inexpensive speakers that are engineered correctly. So I reviewed these b fives that were three nine a pair, and I wrote, these speakers are not good for the money, They're just good.

And that's what my fifteen year old reviewer uses a pair of eLAC B five's, and if you set them up correctly and take into account in the room acoustics, you don't get a lot of bottom in, but everything else that's there in terms of three dimensionality and transient response and just the presentation of the timberl balance, it's quite good for five bucks a pair. Okay, uh, going back to that era, which is now crazy, there's the two way, there's the three way, there's the base reflex.

If you want to get a full representation of the music, what do you need? Full representation of the music? Full? You need a speaker that goes down to twenty hurts that gives you the all the base that's possible. So you can do that one of two ways. You can either have a par of satellite speakers that go down to a limited response that say, fifty hurts and then add the supwiffer that covers the bottom of the rest of the spectrum. Or you can get a big, full

range speaker that does all of it. And that's going to cost your money. You know, base costs money. Good base costs money. That's where you put the money in. Okay, how much money? Oh? Well, Let's say you could get a pretty almost speaker that sounds good for um, fifteen thousand a pair. Okay, before we get to fifteen thousand, you talk about elocs of four, Right, what do I get in a thousand or and I'm not getting into

the ones of four. You're gonna get a better tweeter, a tweeter that has better or if access response that that sounds smoother over a wide range. You're gonna get a flatter frequency response, I fewer lumps and bumps, and maybe you'll get more power handling so you can play it loud before it starts distorting, which we all like, so you get more of everything. It's like handling on a car. Okay, let's go back. Let's assume you're a rock fan, or even a hip hop fan, which has

heavy base. Okay, how much do I have to spend so I can get speakers that will give me all the sound, fill up a living room, and I won't have to worry about clipping. Again, it depends on how big your room is and how loud you play your music. Let's just assume I'm playing it loud. Playing it loud, well, then you can probably want a base reflex speaker that's fairly efficient, so you don't need a lot of power

to drive it. Um you could get some some clip shorings which should be nice for that if you like it really allowed and they sound good. Again, there are so many varieties. Okay, but most people, many people are listening. We have people who know everything and people know nothing. So when you say for system, they understand that. But today there are a lot of people. We know twelve hundred maybe better as an entry system than all the systems of your But there are many people who want

to invest a little bit more. They don't want to invest five thousand for turntable. They have five thousand dollars for speakers if they want something better than twelve. So there's this company. eLAC is among a few companies that makes floor standing speakers that go pretty low that are

under fifteen hundred dollars a pair. There, they go low, they're well designed, they'll play fairly loud, and I think that's that's that's a reasonable price point to get nearly full range response and get the SPLs that you want without distortion, and get the broad coverage in a room

that you want. And I've heard many many good systems based run upon speakers from eLAC and KIF and UH and some of the others, and Monitor and some of the other companies that make floor standing moderately priced speakers. And then you can always add a subword for later if you want to just get that list. Okay, so let's say I'm buying I got fifteen, but I also have I don't want to waste my money if I go from fifteen hundred to twenty five or three. What brands?

What am I getting that I don't get with those elocks? Well, all of these brands that I've mentioned UH all have speakers that go up in price from the very bottom, and so the more you spend again, you're gonna get more better base response, smoother treble, UH, a smoother mid range. They'll add a mid range driver. Instead of a two way speaker where the where the lower speaker handles the base and the mid range, you have a three way

speaker where there's a separate mid range driver. You get better crossover networks, so the response is smoother from bottom to top. Again, you get more of everything. So what you really want to do when you go shopping for this stuff if you can find a store is start at the best that they got, listen to the best thing in the store, and then go to the price point that you can afford and find the thing that has the performance as close as you can hear to

the top. That's the best way to do it. The stupidest thing is to go on and listen to what you can afford because you don't really know what what you're doing. Okay, let's go back to those law speakers. What how much amplification do I need to make sure I get a loud enough sound without clipping or distortion. I think you need least seventy five to watts the channel, regardless of the of the efficiency of the speaker. And that's why it just cheap. Why did it just cheap today?

Bob Okay, explain the difference between class A class D and why you need a certain amount of wantage. All right, So a Class A amplifier, and you really want to get into this Class I amplifier is one where it's constant bias all the time on the transistors, and it gets warm, and it's inefficient and it's got a very smooth sound. Class A B is a more typical amplifier. But I don't really think this is relevant for this conversation.

What's relevant is do you want a Class A B amplifier and solid state amplifier or do you want a Class D amplifier? And the Class D amplifiers are where you get more power, more of aitiency, smaller size, and more low end umph. So I reviewed a pair of amplifiers from ps Audio in Maide in Colorado. At first

class the amplifiers sounded horrible. They're getting much better. These are I think six thousands a pair and they have hundreds of watch there and the bottom end is as good as I've heard from any amplifier at any price. That's how good they are. Am I sacrificing anything by getting Class D instead of the A B, you're sacrificing a finesse in the upper mid range. There's a kind of a in all of these products that I've heard.

There's a kind of an upper mid range ringing sound, unpleasant sound to me, which you can work around with the rest of the gear that Jubai. But you're getting a lot for your money at that rate. I mean, that's that's the best value there is that I've heard let's talk about the landscape of audio. Yes, you have younger people who are say is my price point? Okay? Where is most of the action? As you say, it

is very hard to find a store. And if you do find a store, generally speaking, they are appealing to the upper edged customer. You know, how are the dollars or the units spread along the spectrum. You know, the foolish store owners are the ones that don't welcome in young people and let them get a taste of the best that there is, because those are your future customers

for the for the expensive stuff. And most of the stores that do exist, I go visit and I see what they're what they're doing, and the smart stores have you know, I did a piece for MTV in the early nineties and they we took a woman, a young girl, shopping at the stores of New York City, and you know what they did. They took that this woman and

they never let her hear the good stuff. It took her to the front and said, oh, you want a rack system, Oh you want you know, it's the stupidest thing you can possibly do, So you want to take them into the back, let me hear the good stuff, and then say how much can you spend? All of these stores have these smaller systems set up, usually in the front of the store, in the entryway or someplace

close to the front, not in the big rooms. And if you can't go to a store, you know, all of retail is challenged right now, Bob, And you know that everything is challenged with Amazon and everything. You can buy a good stereo on Amazon and you can trade it in, or you can go to crutch Field, or you can go to Music direct or you can go to Elusive disc or Acoustic Sounds. All these websites will sell you something and then if you're not happy, you

can return it. And they have people on staff who will talk to you and try to walk you through and do what we're doing now in a less good way because I'm not a retailer really good at retailing. But they'll do that. They'll they'll they'll give you the service and help you find a system that works well together. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna mention certain brand names. I want your take. In the old days, Macintosh was a standard. Even the grateful dead use them. Where's Macintosh today? They're

still in being in New York and uh. They are still making two amplifiers and solid state amplifiers. They make a lot of really good things. They make some things I'm not such a big fan of, but they have They're still around, and they still do it the way they always did it, and they're big all over there. They are a brand ambassador for high fire around the world. And some of their great stuff is still great. What

is what is there? What is there? Great stuff? The big m C two seventy five, which is their classic amplifier. I'm not I'm not a good list giver, and I certainly you know, wasn't okay that I don't even we don't need to go that deep. Bows I have, I have big problems Bose. First of all, Bows tried to get me thrown off a w B C n in in the nineties seventies. They tried to get me thrown off. They I'll tell you that your Bows to me is a litigating company that happens to make some sound products

on the side. They the original speaker that they made the Bows nine O one was a terrible speaker in my opinion, just an awful speaker. And that's what I went on the radio and talked about because I went to Tech Hi Fi and they were selling the nine oh ones. I wanted to hear them. And you know, Dr Bowse said, he's he's a he's a professor of acoustics and he invented this speaker that bounces sound off the back wall on a ratio of eight to one,

because that's what he heard at Boston Symphony Hall. But what does that have to do with any records? You play nothing, and I want to hear them. And when I went there, there was a salesman had a little sticker on his on his lapel, had said, asked me about Bows. And I had never seen anything like that, because Hi Fi in those days was a gentleman's game. There was There was Edgar Wilture from Acoustic Research, Henry Close from from kl H, and these guys were not

mercantile based guys. They were like inventors and and idealists. I said, why do you why do you have a bows sign on your lapel? There are you're pushing one brand? He goes, well, if I sell enough nine oh ones, I get a free trip to Hawaii. And I went on the radio and talked about that, and they tried to get me thrown off, but they didn't get me thrown off. But you know, Bows to Me is a company that is a brilliant marketing company. You'll see there

their microphones all over the NFL, all over television. I don't think their products sound very good. I think I refute for The New York Times Cambridge sound Works, Bows and an esoteric brand of computer speaker. That was the assignment. And they said to me, pick one expensive esoteric computer speaker, which was an eminent technology of planar magnetic pick an

inexpensive one on under a couple hunderd alls. I picked the Cambridge sound Works, which was Henry Closes company, and they made me do the Bow's acousta mass and I cut them some slack because I didn't, you know, it was a mainstream publication. I tried to say as many good things about it as they could. But they're speaker protection device, and their speaker is a light bulb in series with the output that that saves the money, so all the energy goes into the light bulb so it

can never blow up the speaker. Because when too much energy goes into bulb glows, it's ridiculous. Anyway, I wrote the review, and I tried to be I didn't mention that I tried to be a younger. I said, it's not too bad, but the Cambridge sound Works was half the price and twice as good. But I didn't say that. Nonetheless, I never wrote for The New York Times again, even though they told me it was very good copy. And

I'll have more work. Okay, if I'm buying computer speakers, what's the price point that I need to pay and what's the equipment to get adequate sound. I have a pair of the of speakers called by a company called Van two V A N A T O O. They're self powered, they're really good for the money, and they're under firefront at allars. But A Z Fox makes some good, good computer speakers. I don't consider myself to be a computer speak expert, so I can really give you much

information on that. But you can get great little speakers and put them next to your computer and get good sound powered speakers. Okay, let's go back to the brand names. H J B L. You know, back in the day, we you know what J B L stod for. Back in the day, it's stood for junk. But but they make great speakers. Obviously, that's that's the West Coast, you know. Jb L was the West Coast Sound and Acoustic Research, and kh for the East Coast Sound and j b

L and Harmon they still make great speakers. They've got a retro speaker that looked like the old Orange Cube speakers. They're really good. Those are great speakers. So that's a good company still making good stuff. Harmon makes. Let's say I'm going vintage Henry Klaus went from company to Acoustic Research to kl H to Advent to Cambridge Sound Works. If I'm laying my money down, which are those products? Do I want? Get a pair of Advent one hundreds that are where the foam is still good? Uh, And

you can get him on eBay or wherever. Those are great speakers by any definition, at any time. And I think the same is true of of original A R speakers if you can get them where the foam hasn't gone. And the same with Boston Acoustics. That's another company that's still in business making great speakers that are not that expenses. And Polk makes the genius of Matthew Polk. They still make some good speakers, Okay, Now, there were companies and

technologies that seemed to have fallen by the wayside. Doll Quist and Lick should be electrostatic, what's up with that. Doll Quist made great speakers in the day, and those were not electrostatic speakers. Those are like flat kind of speakers, but they were an electrostatic They went out of business. Uh, there are companies making electrostatic speakers now and and good ones. If if you like that sound, um, it's not my thing.

But Martin Logan still in business making electrostatic speakers. And the problem with electrostatic speakers is that the mid and high frequencies sound phenomenal, but then you have to chip with a whoofer that's gonna be a big cone and it's gonna be slower than the rest of the speakers that they have to finesse that in. And the big ones they make sound pretty good. But it's not my sound. What I like doesn't I always tell people, But what I like doesn't matter. What My job is just to

tell you what something sounds like. And that may be your sound and not my sound, So you know it doesn't matter to me. Okay, Now, if all the stereo magazines that our mainstream merged into one sound Envision. We'll see how long that last. But you cannot open the magazine without seeing an ad for Golden Air. What's up

with Golden Air? Right? So, Golden Air is is a company that was owned by a fellow named Sandy Gross, who I know very well, who's a very serious audiophile and loves music and he's an art collector too, and he he was involved with um with Polk from any years and then he started Golden Year. And Golden Year is a high value, high quality, relatively inexpensive brand of speakers. So, uh, if you can hear Golden Ear speakers, by all means, listen to them. It's it's a serious brand that makes

good products overseas well designed and they sound good. I have only good things to say, but not because I know Sandy Gross, but because it's good. Where does that leave us in terms of speakers? Well, I just finished reviewing a pair of Wilson x v X speakers that sell for three dollars a pair, and you know, Bob, I bought them, And you could say, where do I get the money for that? Okay, So you know I was I was an expert witness in the trial of

Quincy Jones versus the state of Michael Jackson. And if I got fass, which side were you on? I was on Quincy side. And uh, I was really well paid for that. And and that's the whole story. I don't know if you have to have time for that story, but I put that money away and in the meantime, I've been buying and upgrading my system. So my last speakers were Wilson Alexis, which sells for selling about a hundred and five and I get an industry discount. And

if anybody has a problem with that, too bad. I work in the business and I think I'm entitled to get the same price that a dealer gets. But that's all. I don't think anything for free. I don't get free bees, I don't get stuff given to me. And over time, I keep investing. And yeah, I had the money to get these speakers at the dealer cost minus the trade in for the speakers I had. And yes, it's taking a chunk out of my my out of my retirement account, but you know what, I can look at my bank

account and hear nothing. These speakers are so incredible. I'm up every night to two in the morning. I do this for a living and I'm up every two in the morning and listening to this these records I thought I knew and like, do you know there's an eighth note handclap on the birds? Mr tambourine man in the background. I've never heard it before. All of a sudden, put Mr Tamboin on here an eighth note. Now that's not

important musically, but there it was. And uh so, yeah, if you if you can spend a couple under thousand dollars on my pair of speakers, there's lots of good brands, lunch Reiker, Magico, Um Endless Numbers are well designed speakers that give you everything. And if you've got the money, you should take a chance and do it. And I talked I go around the world to meet these people, and they're well, I've been to the Philippines, I've been Japan.

I've been all over the world listening to people's stereos and they love their music and they love their stereos and it's the great pleasure they get in life. And then close recording engineers too. So okay, when you look at these Wilson's, they're very expensive, but they look like items for children. They have a plastic surfaces. Can you explain what makes a Wilson so great? Okay, so it's not it's not plastic, it's automotive paint finishes. So it's

very well finished. So Dave Wilson, who passed away a couple of years ago, his his whole idea was that he you know, sound reaches you at different points in time, and we are very sensitive to when sound gets to us. That's one of the issues with digital that was bad at first. So we're very sensitive where things are in space. That's how we survived. You gotta know where that tiger is if is it behind here, in front of you,

to the sides of you? Uh he His his position was that the transgance coming off of various drivers, the transgiance should reach your ear at the same time, which is different than phase response, is transient response. And so the bigger Wilson speakers have the driver's in separate boxes aligned in time so that the transgiance from each speaker reaches your ears at the same time, and that's moves out the frequency response as well as producing this sense

of overall coherence. The cabinet has to be totally inert. The more that a cabinet vibrates when you put low frequencies into a cabinet, and it's vibrates that produces boom and boomy base. And that's that's the worst of all worlds.

So these speakers are inert, essentially inert. They made out of this this phenomic and other kinds of material that's very inert, and then they're stacked up in this device that allows you to adjust each of the drivers, the mid range, the midrange, and the tweeter in three dimensional space, both forward and back and um rake angle towards you. And it's all mathematically aligned and delne you sit down and no one who sat down and heard these My wife sat down and said to me, you have to

have these? What does that happen? It never happens, but it happened. Okay, they send someone from the company to adjust them. Correct. If you buy a pair of speakers for three and thirty thousand dollars, they better send somebody from the company to set them up because you can't do it yourself, and they do. That's part of what you get when you when you buy a speaker for that kind of money. Okay. You also talked about trading. That's a big thing amongst high audio. Uh purchaser's high

end plenty of it. You know, what kind of return on a dollar does one get in a trade in. It's very similar to cars you's driving at the lot. It's worth half of what you paid. You don't buy hi fi as an instrument of investment. You buy it for the listening pleasure and um so, yeah, you're not buying it for its investment value. But if you buy the right stuff, it'll still have hold its value pretty well.

So a company like Wilson has a has a division now that does what BMW and Mercedes do with used cars. You know, they both have programs where you trade your car and they send it back, they refurbish it and they say it's it's like new now and you get a aren't with it. They do that and they can't get enough of their old speakers back to do that to everyone that they get back and refurbished gets sold

immediately because there's a market for it. So if you buy a good brand, and a brand that's gonna be in business in twenty years that's been in business for a long time, like McIntosh or even Morants, which is you know, traded hands numerous times. If it's a company that's been in business a long time, UM, it will if the product is good to begin with, and the company services what it sells, Like like Audio Research that the company in Minneapolis that makes tube gear, they've got

stock of every product they've ever made. If you need a knob for an sp one, they got it. If you need a capacitor that's no longer made, they've got it. So before you buy any of this stuff, you should know whether it's a company that's been around and it's going to continue to be around, and whether you can still get service for what you're buying. Okay, in audio, there tends to be one genius. Sometimes their name is on the product. So if Dave Wilson died, is what

is keeping the innovation and quality uh moving forward? That's such a great question, and it's always an issue because you go to a high fi show and there's one man who started the company whose name is on the product. When the guy dies, So the guy is at a high F show, he shows it to you, and after a couple of years he passes away and the company gets sold the next year, you go back and there's twenty guys in suits walking around and they have no

idea what they're doing. They don't know any think about music. They know what they bought the company because it had a name. In the case of um Wilson, Dave passed away, but his son, Darryl, turns out is at least as good a designer as Dave, if not better as it turned out, and he's designing the products now, and their line of products is stronger than it's been in in years. And so you can buy a pair of Sabrina's for seventeen thousand. Now. Rick Rubin did not like Wilson speakers forever.

He he didn't like them. We go to high fight shows together and he sit there and he wouldn't like them. But the Sabrina came out and he actually bought them because he really liked them. So the bottom of their line at about seventeen dollars, and that's a lot of money. I'm not trying to, you know, say it's not a lot of money. But what you get for the money is a speaker that goes down down low and has really good base and goes up the ladder smoothly, and

it's a great speaker. And if you were a pair of those, you'd like them. Okay. What's the markup in high end stereo. It's usually forty points or fifty points. It's high. Okay. So a company like Wilson, you know there'll be people at home saying if I sold one pair of three thousand dollar speakers, I don't have to work the rest of the year, if not longer. How many units can these companies sell. That's an interesting question,

more than you might think. For example, the speakers I got the x v x is I got to review because of COVID. They were met, they were built and then built in the over the over last summer, and then they sat at the factory and uh, they couldn't be delivered to me until the fall. And they were serial number seventy nine and eighty. But their way into into the hundreds and hundreds. Now they've sold hundreds of

pairs of the speakers. Hundreds. It's a bigger market than you think, and and uh, and it's growing, especially with the pandemic. What happened to our industry over this past year. I started getting in Boks clogs with people saying I want to upgrade my speakers. I want to upgrade my turn table. I got nothing to do but sit around and listen to music. I wanted to sound better than I got. What can I do? So okay? So you personally in the system, you want what are you using

for amplification and reproduction at the turn table? Land? Okay? So uh. The amplifiers I owned are called dart Zeals. They're made in Switzerland and their solid state and they're very beautiful and they're very good. Um the pre amplifier has a dart Zeal pre amplifier, which is battery powered and it sounds very good. And the phono priump I have have to phono priumps. One is called c H Precision. It's also made in Switzerland, and it's a current amplifier.

It amplifies the current that that a low up moving coral cartridge puts out and that I don't want to talk about prices because it's it's all ridiculously costly. Um well, you mentioned the price of the speakers. You gotta mention the prices of this other stuff. You're killing me. You're gonna kill me. I'm gonna hate mail, you know, there's a there's a video on the STERIFI did a video of my room a couple of years ago and the prices as I went through the room, and I said,

I I own this. Because people think that audio reviews are on the take and they get the stuff or nothing. I bought everything in my system. And then the anti semitism starts on there. You would not believe the things that are on on the other that I have to respond to. But or they say I look like Jerry Springer, or oh Jerry Spinker as a stereo, or oh Lou

Reed has it's it's pretty ugly, but um, okay. The amplifiers are about a hundred and seventy K a pair, and the pre ampts, so you're saying, yeah, because you have one reach channel, Yeah, pair up mono blocks. The c H precision phono preamp is another fifty thousand. Uh. Then I have another one called yip Salon, which has made in grease, which has got tubes in it. It's got military grade tubes in it at last, almost forever.

And that's probably another fift K. And this is stuff I have acquiet over thirty years of doing this job and putting all my all my spare money into this because I love this. This is all I do. It's you know, I drive the same car I've driven for the last twelve years, which I love, but I don't have a new car, and this is where my money goes into into my high fight and into records. So and if I sound defensive, it's because the amount of guff I get online from people. Where does your money

come from? Well, you know, okay, inherited some money. It's not of your business. Um. The turntable I had was to Continuum CALIBERN which sold for a hundred and fifty K. And now I'm going to get a new turntable. I'm not sure of what I'm going to get at, but I have a couple of them that I'm considering, but not the half million dollar one. That's too much for me.

The arm I have started at thirty thou dollars. And you know, I have a lot of people around the world that depend upon me for my advice and what I hear, and I take my job very seriously. And um, I got this arm sent to me by this designer in Sweden who has graduate degrees in material science and mechanical engineering, and his other work was working on the Ariana rocket project for the European Union, and UM he was involved in designing parts for Volvo and other car companies.

And he set his sights on designing a great tone arm. And it was thirty thou dollars and I got one to review. I stuck it in my system, and the performance was better than anything I'd ever heard by a wide margin. They I've never heard a bottom in like that. I mean, like Donovan Live. There's an uncle Donovan Live, which I've known for years, and it opens up and there's a person playing the viola or a cello in that album. I never heard it. I thought it was

just a little low frequency noise. And all this other musical revelations happened from listening to this arm, and I made sure I knew I was hearing what I thought I heard, and I reviewed it and said what I heard, and he sold seventy of them off that review for thirty thod dollars apiece, and everybody that bought one sent me email saying thank you. I wouldn't have known to buy that. I heard about it, but I wasn't. I wasn't spending thirty thousand dollars and something I didn't know

you wrote what you wrote. I trust you. I bought it. It's what you said it was. And thank you very much. You know that's important to me. Yes, And the cartridge, the cartridge. I I have a number of cartridges. I have a Lyra Atlas LAMB to s L that's uh, that's about thirteen thousand dollars. I'm very careful with it. I have a orderfon and a D which is about eleven thousand, and I have a an exquisite cartridge from

um Switzerland that sells for about that much too. I just I just reviewed that a couple of months ago, and I wrote a great review of it, and people that bought it emailed me and said, you're right, it's just what you said it sounded like, and that's the sound I like, so thank you. And what about headphones. I live in a house and I can play music as loud as I want, and I think headphone listening

is you know. And I have a pair of Jerry um what's his name, I can't remember his name, a guy in Florida that makes these headphones for any year. He makes a lot of studio monitors. Uh, I forget his last name. Unfortunately, he's gonna kill me. And those are great. You put him in your ear and they're

molded to my ear. And so when I travel on an airplane and I do ice do a hundred thousand miles a year, uh, and I hope to do that again, and I put those in my ear with a good I have an Astlin Current player that has high res and and DSD quality files on it, and that sounds fantastic to travel with. Can't beat it. But okay. Then there are many people who say the people at the super high end are more into the equipment than the music.

What's your take on that? You know, that's like every prejudice, every racial prejudice you've ever heard, and it's really awful and it's not true. It is really not true. There was a time, I'll admit, there was a time when having a big stereo was your you know, fatique, Philip watch or whatever it is. You know, it was your status symbol. Uh. And there were people that had that and they weren't that into music as they should have been.

But that's gone now because there are other things. You can have a status symbols, and you can actually wear them on your wrist, or you can walk around with them. I travel around the world, Bob, and every home I go into, it's people who love music and that is the passion of their life. And it's true here when

I go visit people I got. I was in Bulgaria and I visited a lawyer and he has a room full of records and tapes and he's got these big Wilson speakers that had to be carried up by hand five flights of stairs by piano movers on their backs. And these people are all deady, and it's the most

fun to meet people who love music. That's what they love, and they have the means and and they have the wherewithal to have really fine stereos, and they especially in this pandemic, it's been a lifesaver for a lot of people to be able to sit there and turn the lights out and uh. Like people say to me, your stereo. I could have live music and your house for the same kind of money. I said, you get Miles Davis

to come to your house. I'll be there. But I could put on Miles Davis live at the Black Hook, And it doesn't take much for my say, wow, I'm in the black hook and Miles Davis is right there in front of me, and I see his horn and I see it moving around the microphone, and it's as

thrilling to me now as it was forty years ago. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the music you recently reviewed varying iterations of Aqualung And what is interesting to me is having talked to Steven Wilson, who recently remixed the album and also said the original was uh, master tape was stretched and not representative of the sound. Hey, did you hear the Steven Wilson version and found it inferior? Or was it not on your landscape? And what's going

on there? Um? That wasn't on my landscape. And because that record has never been a good sounding record, and you know, after a while you don't want to hear it anymore. I have I have a big problem with all of these reissues at a certain on a certain level, some of them deserved to be reissued, and some of them do we have to hear that again? And that one never sounded good. I have an original British chrystalis pressing.

I have the original French Pink label Island. I have the American reprise was never good, and I have the one, the recent one done in the box, which is probably as good as the original can sound. And that's it. I haven't heard Stephen Wilson's thin any of that. This is one of the rare cases where there's a problem, and Ian Anderson agreed to be interesting to get your take on that. What if someone has a high end stereo.

What are some of the great records? You know, all these records are And there's so many elements in the chain of a record, the recording studio, the matate machine, the master, the reproduction. But I used to always say, you know, super Tramp, Crime of the Century, half speed Master. That's that's how I bought my n Camici five eighty two because I was comparing it against some more expensive Iowa. That was the top line MUTI. But I could hear things I couldn't hear reproduced. So what are your go

to records? The first one I tell people to buy and is to buy Duke Ellington Masterpieces. It's a mono recording from N and it was reissued by Analog Productions and I got an original pressing of that. I was at a at a record fair, and you know when there's a guy at the record fair who looks like Elvis Presley and he's selling rock and roll on on the top tables, and then there were tables underneath where he puts the junk. That's where I go, because that's

the stuff he doesn't know anything about. And that's where I found this Masterpieces and I didn't know what it was. I looked at it and I thought it was gonna be a bunch of seventy eight's that were strung together to make an LP at the beginning of the LP era. And I bought it and I put it on and I hate to use the expression of my jaw dropped because I don't like that. I don't use it, but I almost wet my pants. It was like, what is this?

And then I read more carefully, and what it was was it was the first one of the first times that Duke Ellington could go into the studio and record to tape and not do a three minute dance single, which is all he could do previously. So he was traveling the world with this incredible orchestra and doing these long suites, these twenty minutes suites and people were hearing this incredible music, but there was no way that you could hear it at home because it was three minutes

singles on a seventy eight. And they said, Duke, bring the orchestra into the studio. We're gonna record this on a tape at the thirty Street studio and we can now sell your your suits. So they made that record. Was at a time when nobody had a thirty three and a third record player. So it came and it went, and that's what I found, and I called it. Chad Cassip at Analog Productions and I said, Chad, you have to reissue this mono record from Duke Gillington. And Chad,

who was, you know from New Orleans? He goes, He goes, I don't know, man, he is old, regged Duke Gillington mono. I said, Chad, just do it. And he did it and it became the biggest selling record for a while that he ever had, Bigger than T for the Tillerman, which is another one you should get as as a great sounding record to tone and it's an amazing I bring this record, this reissue that he did, which is better than the original much better, and I bring it

around the world. I brought it to Japan and played it and in front of a large crowd of people at the end of the mood Indigo, they stood up and they applauded as if Duke was right there. It's the most amazing sounding record. So I recommend that first. Then uh T for the Tillerman, the Supertramp record. Um if you can find of the original think label Island Traffic albums are amazing, the first one, especially Elvis and

Roy Orbison records. The originals are absolutely stunning, and I can recommend those any of the Blue Notes that are coming out now. You know this Tone Poet series they were doing on Blue Note. The whole catalog was well record well. Rudy Van Gelder recorded those things, and those tapes of Scotch one eleven and Scotch one eleven is like bulletproof. It doesn't shed, it doesn't stretch, It's Joseph bulletproof. And those records are amazing and they're selling in numbers

that just blow the minds of the Universal executives. They just had no idea that this could happen, because once you hear one and that's classic, you know that's classical music of the of the twenty of the twentieth century is jazz, and those records so those are incredible. Whatever whatever still exists of the Impulse catalog, all the jazz records of the fifties were wonderfully recorded. And if you can buy go on discois and buy used copies, that's great.

By the reissues, if they're cut from tape, those are great. Um, Chad just reissued Tony Joe White's Black and White. You know, Tony, are you familiar with Tony Joe White? Of course, Posy, of course, that's that's the one song. But this record that he did, Tony Joe White black and White. Black and White refers to the cover, but it really refers to him doing a song about racial harmony at a time when no one was doing songs about racial harmony

down South. And it's a wonderful song and it's a beautifully recorded album and it just came out and he's such a natural singer. You feel like you know him and he and the recording is so good. You sit there and it's Tony Jerrowhite sitting in front of you playing these songs. So that's a great one. What else I bring? I brought some other new records here. But brether Than talk about particular records, the just categories of records, you know this stuff that. Yeah, So why are records

so expensive today? Is it pure markup or is that what it costs? I mean, I remember Tom Petty bitching about the increase of the by universal of the price of his record and all of them the list prices below ten dollars. Now records list price seems to be twenty five or thirty dollars. Okay, So first of all, take out your old copy of Sam Goody's Sunday New York Times supplement and look at the prices in the in the sixties, and then extrapolate to what it caught.

What that isn't in terms of inflation. And you're talking that's and it's hard for some of us older people to say, what, how can that be? But that's what it is. So it is that the actor that I buy, whether it's on Amazon or whatever, that's not an audio quality record, is eighteen dollars twenty dollars. Like I just got the new Black Puma's record. It was like eighteen dollars double record set nicely packaged. So that's that's reasonable in my world. And you know the audio follow records

are more costly. But okay, let's go back to the other side of Michael Frehmer. What exactly is your job? Where are you talking about all this traveling these reviews. How is it that you make money? What are you providing? Is it something with corporations and magazines or is it

one on one? How does it go? Alright? So, so I'm a senior editor at stereofallaw magazine, and I run this website, Cold Analog Planet, and I have a YouTube channel, and I used to publish magazine and I decided not that I wanted to make a living, so I stopped doing that. But I actually make a living at this, not that many do make a living at this. And I think part of the reason why I do make a living at it is because I think I have a good sensibility about what things sound like and I

can describe it well. And uh, and so I become valuable to the company, and companies respect me and they run advertising around my column. And you know, I don't pay any attention to that. I really don't. And somehow I've been able to make a living. I made a DVD on how to set up a turn table? Did I ever send you a copy of that? Uh? You can send me another one, but I think you did,

but a long time ago. So I'll tell you what I said to myself, and I started pushing vital in the eighties when it was really what are you crazy? Is going away? Shut up? I told Universal to keep the pressing plan open, and they wouldn't listen to me. I went to I went to Specialty Records in olif in Pennsylvania, which is the Warner Brothers plan. Went and they had this big pressing plant and they had they had c D duplication and they were just getting started

in DVD duplications like early nineties. And the guy who ran the plant set to us, see those press record presses. We're gonna scrap those that's going away. We're gonna make room for the DVDs. I said, don't do that. Record is gonna come back. And it looked at me like I was crazy. Crazy at any rate, I made the DVD. I borrowed twenty thousand dollars to make this DVD, and I figured if I sold a couple of thousand copies. I maybe i'd make my money back. But I did

it not for the money. I did it because I thought you should see how it's done rather than reading about it, because you can't really follow it reading about it. So I spoke to a educational DVD how to Company, and I said, what what do I What can I expect to make on? How many copies can I expect to sell of an instructional DVD? He said, unless you're Jane Fonda, you can figure on a couple of thousand, and the shelf life will be like three or four

years for something like that. I see. He said, what's the subject. I said, it's how to set up a turn table? And he said, well, half that number. So I said, all right, I'm doing this anyway. So I did it and I've sold and in order to make my money back, I felt I had to sell it for thirty dollars a disc wholesale fifteen and if I sold three thousand copies, I make my money back and make a couple of bucks on it, which I thought I was entitled to make. Thank you very much, Capitalist Society.

So it's still in print and I've sold like seventeen and a half thousand copies. So do the math. You know, it cost a dollar to press up a DVD, so I make like fifteen or sixteen bucks a piece time, seventeen thousand. That's where my stereo came from, a lot of it. So good for me, okay. And so mostly your money comes from reviewing or is there consulting to companies or is there consulting to individuals? I can't do that. I'm not allowed to do that. I cannot consult. I

can't do beta testing for anybody. So you know, I make a nice salary. My wife, she works in I T for back clearing of stock trading. She makes a good, good living, and I make a nice living, and the two of us together, you know, I I do not live extravagantly. All my money goes into my stereo and records, and and some nice clothes for when I travel. And when I travel, my expenses sometimes get picked up sometimes, but most of the time the company pays for my

travel and I take no I do no consulting. I don't get paid anything extra because I'm not a journal I am a journalist, but I know that how The New York Times New York Times is like you have to wear a hair suit to come listen to stereo. I had a writer for The New York Times over here and he said he got records sent to him from the electric recording company in in England, but he had to send the records back. And if you're work for consumer reports, you can't even sit and have a

meal with other people. I mean, it's just it's that's a level of separate you know journalism that I but that's what it is. Fine in my business because it's a small business. I can get taken out for a meal. That's allowed. Now if anybody thinks that I will review something positively in exchange for a meal, it's crazy. I wouldn't. My capital is my credibility, and I have credibility because I write what I think. I don't give all positive reviews.

I've given negative reviews. I'm not afraid of giving a really negative review and then walking into a hi fi show and having someone screaming yell at me. That's okay, I don't mind, And that's where my credibility comes from. And so I get well paid and my DVDs still make money for me and whatever, So I do, Okay, sounds great. I know that as much as we've talked on some level, we've only scratched the surface. Don't you scratch.

But for those people who are new to frem Her, you can go to his site, Analog Planet, and you can go down the rabbit hole. As you can tell, he's a verbal guy with opinions. You can get caught up in his word text to your benefit. Michael, thanks so much for doing this. Thank you so much for having me about I love reading your newsletter. It's on. It's one of my highlights of my days when it shows up. Whether I agree with you or not on everything, but I agree with you more than you think, and

you're a treasure to yourself. Wow. Thanks so much, Michael. Until next time, this is the Bob Left Sex Podcast