Positive Feedback's comments on our rooms
Wow, how much fun is this, the critic critiqing other critics 🙂
They liked our all Audio Note room (what is not to like), but had an interesting take on our other room.
This is so funny, because we quite worried that the system would be overly loud. This system had a tendency to play at really high volumes, and with such amzingly low amounts of distortion it was sometimes hard to tell just how loud it really was.
And I quote:
I think maybe that CSNY is not the best match for Dave and Carol…. 🙂
It was my choice to put on “Suite Judy Blue Eyes”, which is what I think I put on from that album at that time (one of my all time favorite songs – along with most of the other songs on that LP – along with most of their other LPs – and all of Neil’s LPs. I know we played Cinnamon Girl but I do not remember Down By the River… Oh well, next show :-)).
I also played a whole album side of Abbey Road. which I also played at pleasant volumes (you had to talk loudly to be heard over it but not shout). And Peter Tosh ‘Legalize It” [THAT we played LOUD]. Yes, they are somewhat compressed and my playing it was to some extent risky. Why? Because they aren’t AUDIOPHILE SHOW APPROVED.
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED volume.
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED artist and track list (somewhat dependent on the particular audiophile).
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED song length.
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED recording quality.
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED drum solo length (OK, we all have this :-)).
There is an AUDIOPHILE APPROVED amount of Partricia Barber and Diana Krall (which now rests at zero :-)).
Personally, what I wanted to show at RMAF is that our systems can play music people actually want to listen to. And we did and it worked. The room was packed just about the whole show (re: lack of pictures I was able to get out of the room to take this show – but we did take around 1000).
We played Stevie Ray Vaughn at live show levels.
…and we played Holst the Planets where you soemtimes had to strain your ears to hear what was happening (and hold on to your seats 30 seconds later).
But *if* you evaluate systems largely on their dynamic capabilities, then you should evaluate the systems when they are playing dynamic music. [Dave and Carol requested to hear more dynamic music, but left a scant few seconds later. ??? ]
As this post concludes itself, I want to talk about how much fun it is to DJ at a show.
First, a show is like one gigantic party. I mean, 1000s of like minded people kind of mill around, wandering from room to room amoungst 100s of rooms, listening to tunes, chatting with friends, playing their own CDs her and there, hearing new music, getting to play it louder than their situation at home may allow… It Is A Blast.
Now imagine you get to DJ in one of these rooms. A room is like a Club. The DJ gets to play music they like and that they think the Club goers will like. There is a lot of “Oh, I bet people will think this is cool.” or “This is such wonderful music, and it brings back such memories and it sounds amazing better now that it did on my old plastic turntable (or 1st generation CD player for you younger people out there 🙂 … or first IPOD for you even younger people out there :-))”.
Often, I like to play quiet peices between pieces that rock out – kind of like Led Zepelin albums, or even Deep Purple [although some albums are just one long intense nuclear rocket-powered roller coaster ride :-)] . Have you noticed that they interperse quiet or acoustsic tracks in amongst the adrennilin-inducing ones? Well, people at a show are no different – sometimes we need to recover a bit after a particularly emotional, or aggressive, or delicate, or nostalgic …piece. So as a newbee DJ, I practice the “Mix It Up” technique of realtime playlist generation.
We all have our personal tastes… We can’t play AC/DC or Sonic Youth, or… with Neli in the room, We can’t play anything from Hell Freezes Over with either Steve or Neli in the room, we can’t play hip-hop or rap with anyone else in the room but me (and Ben 🙂 ) ….:-) etc. etc.
Anyway, being DJ at a show allows one to play not to a captive audience, but an interested one, which is much more fun, much more challenging, and much more rewarding.
We want to thank everybody for visiting our room. We hope you enjoyed your stay. Thank you and good night.
It’s a real challenge. I don’ quite see the crowd as like-minded, though. Some folks are seriously aligned with one kind of music, or become apoplectic at hearing one kind. This leads me to stick to short cuts so that there’s a good chance that any one person will hear more than one kind of music. I alternate types and volumes for the same reason, and also for palate cleansing/recovering, as you do. Classical music makes this tough. When a movement goes on for 7 or ten minutes, it’s hard to cut the artist off just as they’ve established serious musical tension and not let them resolve it. It’s also tough due to dynamcis, as you noted. In a whispering passage people in the room who don’t know the piece start signaling “turn it up”, and when the crescendo arrives, the other half of the people in the room signal to turn it down.
Mario Binner of Audio Note UK has developed and polished his show presentation skills to an extraordinary degree. He alternates CD and vinyl as well as type and volume so that there is scarcely a silent second in an entire day. And people are almost continuously asking him, “What was that last cut?” because his selections are musically wonderful and eclectic as hell.
The comments on volume seem funny to me too. As you know, by the second day of the show, I wasn’t even walking into the rooms that were loud from the hall, even if they had equipment I wanted to hear. The Kharma 3.2 room was an example. I only spent 30 seconds in it the entire show because they were playing TOO LOUD. I don’t see how that’s impressive. My old PA system would play louder than anything at that show, and once the volume overloads the room, what are you gaining? I brought a friend on Saturday who is just getting into the audiophile thing, and he was complaining about high volumes in most of the rooms too. This leads me to wonder if most audiophile gear doesn’t sound good because most audiophiles listen so loud they can’t hear the difference anymore.
I got to play DJ for about four hours on Sunday, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I even think I might have done a reasonably good job, since people seemed to stay a while. I played a few classical cuts, and a few jazz, but mostly classic and modern rock. I alternated between digital and analog as much as possible, mainly to try to eliminate gaps in the music. No Eagles though… if I ever hear Hell Freezes Over again, I think my head might explode. I tried to play things that would sound good, but most of it wasn’t “audiophile approved” in the traditional sense. You’ll never please everyone, so I guess the only thing to do is play what you want to hear and offer to take requests. Too bad the reviewers aren’t willing to take the time to listen to more than one track if they have doubts. I guess it doesn’t cross their minds that people might play a quiet track because they just want to hear it.
Hi Dave,
Yeah, we played about 50% Rock and Roll and Pop (and techno), 30% classical and 20% Jazz. Usually we play a lot more Jazz – but this year I wanted to focus on playing music people were familiar with (kind of the opposite of Peter Q. :-)), so that they could more easily determine how good the system was in comparision to other systems they have heard in their lives.
In some ways you had it easier (you didn’t have a half-dozen other people staffing the room second guessing your choices 🙂 ) and harder (you didn’t have a half-dozen other people staffing the room playing music that reflected THEIR tastes which helps mix it up even more).
Thanks so much Dave. From what I am reading on the Net, as well as all the feedback we got at the show – your selection of music in the Audio Note room, along with the your love and deep expertise of the Audio Note products, was a real favorite of showgoers, even those audio reviewer types :-).
Mike, your comment on your blog about us requesting “more dynamic music” and then leaving is simply not true.
[Dave and Carol requested to hear more dynamic music, but left a scant few seconds later. ??? ]
We never spoke to you or Nelie about a request… we arrived anxious to hear the room, took some images, said hello to Leif and Jorma, had a brief listen, thought it sound okay but rather ho-hum – the music was not to our taste (though we do know CSNY from way back when we were WAY younger – saw them live) and it would be better served at a volume that was more appropriate for the room and track. Of course, that is our opinion and our preference. We have found that all cuts and whatnot do have a “right” volume… we just felt that what it was set at was not “right”… perhaps a bit louder would have been better.
If we had requested something more dynamic and reflective of what we like (we did have a bag of CDs with us) we would have gladly stayed…
Dave Clark
Ah, that explains it. You must have expressed your displeasure to Jorma because he came over and said you two wanted to hear something more dynamic. I can see how your, or any visitor’s, expression that the current selection was not dynamic enough and in general not to their taste would be intepreted as a request for something more dynamic. We aim to please, and I guess we can all see where the disconnect occured.
And, before more embassment occurs, as Neli has now pointed out to me, we are both talking about a song by CSN, not CSNY. Jeez, it sometimes seems like we go out of our way to make it easy for the significant others in our lives to make fun of us.
…. and your show report….OK, I get it. You are not saying the system sucked, you are saying I sucked as DJ 🙂
If I remember correctly, last year you played a new ENO CD. I own most of ENO’s catalog, along with Fripp etc. This year we played a lot of The Merkin Dream which is kind of like ENO on steroids, ambient yet melodic, and usually with more going on. And we should have brought some of our Ozric Tentacles CDs (and in a ‘somewhat’ different vein, I want to bring Dolly Parton next year too). I would bet that Steve and I would have loved to hear one of the CDs you brought this year. Don’t be so shy 🙂
As far as their being a “right” volume for each song… I understand what you mean, but… looking at how to define the ‘right’ volume might be interesting (or might not :-))
If that right volume is the volume the piece is recorded at, well let’s ignore studio cuts for a second – because those have no ‘real’ effecitve volume. But say the piece was recorded live. The CSN cut was an acoustic piece, the volume they play it at was about what we were playing it at. A non-acoustic piece, say the ‘Stones, a live cut played at the exact volume it was recored at, in such a small space like a hotel room, would make us all deaf.
So *that* ain’t a good definition.
I can’t help think that what most people mean by ‘right’ volume is ‘as loud as possible for a given system in a given space without them personally feeling uncomfortable’. Discomfort almost always occuring when system and/or room distortions reach a level that they personally find objectionable.
Many systems must be played at a large volume to start sounding dynamic. This wasn’t one of those. That CSN cut was just not going to sound dynamic, no way no how.
I guess it comes down to what a DJ wants to demonstrate at an exhibition, whether it is to A: demonstrate just how loud and dynamic their system can be, or whether it is B: to demonstrate that it can play music of all types, at all volumes, and do it well – something I think most people want from systems they want to take home. That particular CSN cut showed that somewhat compressed music that (most of us) love can be played on that system at an ordinary volume, and be quite enjoyable.
I believe really good systems, of which there are usually a few at a show, can have ‘B;’ as a goal.
However, it is an AUDIOPHILE RULE that the goal of a DJ is ‘A:’, and some people in our entourage felt uncomfortable with some of my selections (Neli doesn’t like a lot of the music I like, and I don’t like some of the derivitive folk music sung by people who can’t sing that she likes – funny, it is the ONLY kind of music I do not like… 🙂 ). But the people in the room seemed to love it… offhand, I would say that the average stay of a visitor was about 15 minutes. But I wasn’t the only DJ – people were just as likely to hear Neli’s mostly classical and jazz selections, or Leif’s folder of wonderful sounding music from opera to jazz, or Steve’s modern selections mixed with rock and roll.
And a lot of people bring their own music. I learned that I really like a number of songs by Keith Jarret, someone who I though was only ‘OK’… Two of the times during the show when I asked people who was the musician we had just heard and it was him (!).
[I have to admit that some of my approach is derived from that of Elina and Vladimir Lamm and the oasis their room has become at shows where most other systems are trying to shout louder than their neighbors about how loud they can play audiophile-approved music. We mix up our music a lot more than they do, and we mix up the volume as well, but our goal is to provide an enjoyable, magical, sophisticated, emotional and natural musical experience for each of our visitors, in addition to impressing them with spectacular sonic feats].