Soundlab Audiophile G9-7c: a 30-year odyssey fulfilled

[godofwealth]

Ok, we now turn to Coltrane’s blockbuster album recorded in the span of just three days whe he was at the height of his creative powers. The title track of course refers to the famous song from The Sound of Music. Coltrane improvises on this melody on his alto sax for ten minutes, weaving in and out of the melody to show you how his mind works. One is reminded of the famous scene in the movie Amadeus when Mozart is given a welcoming jingle on the piano by his nemesis, the court composer Salieri. When Mozart has paid his respects to the Emperor, he hands him a gift wrapped score of the music that Salieri composed in his honor. Mozart declined the gift saying it’s already recorded in his mental tape recorder. When confronted by the Emperor, Mozart then proceeds to play the original tune — a harmless ditty from memory — and then begins improvising in real time turning to Salieri each time seemingly mocking him for not choosing a better variation. One feels the same here about Coltrane’s improvisation. He begins with the main tune and then starts improvising and begins to produce all shades and nuances that the original composers of The Sound of Music would have been horrified to hear. Coltrane’s genius was showing that the saxophone could be made to sound really discordant and off key, and yet it produces beautiful music as he weaves and twists around the original melody. A great album and an amazing feat of composition as the whole album was produced in record time. It has stood the test of time for over 60 years. On the big SL’s each track sounds different as Coltrane changes his instrument from alto to tenor and his style of playing.

 

[godofwealth]

Ok, here’s a first for WBF, I’m going to try to describe in as simple a way as possible some highly esoteric research in quantum AI and then try to relate it to how John Coltrane improvises. I’ve been fascinated by the human brain for well over 40 years. We have 100 billion neurons in our heads, each a powerful little computer that together lets us do amazing things like write music or play the saxophone. An assumption in AI since Alan Turing, the British genius famous for cracking the German Enigma code (see the movie Imitation Game) is that the mind is basically a digital computer implemented in biology by neurons. But increasingly many in my field have been calling this assumption into question. It takes a phenomenal amount of energy to do generative AI, the technology that’s sending Wall Street right now into a tizzy. So much so that Microsoft is paying to have the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor that was mothballed after the worst nuclear accident in US history restored so they can harness its power for their data centers.

Yet our brains run on a tiny amount of power in comparison, allowing Coltrane to compose and play his masterpieces. So, something’s not right with our model. The answer may lie in quantum computing. Nature it seems likes to play dice, much to Einstein’s chagrin who refused to believe this was what the Lord had in mind. But quantum computing does seem to be the operating system of nature. Nature doesn’t like digital bits, it prefers qubits or quantum bits. Qubits are not in one of two possible states, 0 or 1, like the bits in your CD or flac files. Qubits are in a superposition of all possible states between 0 and 1. Think of the flac file storing Coltrane’s My Favorite Things album. You could open up this file in an editor and look at each bit. Sure, there’s lots of bits, millions of them, but they are all either 0 or 1.

Now, qubits are like every possible combination of bits that could be in any state between 0 and 1 at each position in the file. When you look at the file, that is you measure a qubit, it snaps into either a 0 or 1. So in the great analogy of the physicist Erwin Schrödinger who founded quantum mechanics, imagine a dastardly experiment where you put a cat in a box that’s equipped with a canister of poison gas that if released will instantly kill the cat. The canister is controlled by a qubit. Is the cat alive or dead in the box? It’s actually both! But only when you open the box, you discover whether the cat is actually alive or dead. Till then it’s both.

Now, if you’re still with me, a growing view in AI is that our brains are made up of not digital bits, but qubits. It turns out that if you can harness the power of qubits to be in multiple states or in a multiverse, quantum computers can do a calculation in 5 minutes that would take a regular supercomputer a septillion years — that’s longer than the age of the universe. That’s exactly what Google’s Quantum AI lab showed two days ago, driving a market frenzy over Google stock that increased their market capitalization by 250 billion dollars. Now we are far from having quantum computers on our desktops but it’s getting closer with every day.

So, imagine Coltrane’s brain as having a huge amount of qubits where he’s working out a gazillion variations of My Favorite Things. What he actually plays on his saxophone is something even he perhaps doesn’t know until the sound emerges. That’s like observing a qubit and turning it into a real bit.

Ok, hopefully you get an idea of the crazy stuff I’m involved with at work! Back to music!

 

[godofwealth]

Here’s a seemingly impossible pairing, John Coltrane with Duke Ellington, each a genius in his own right as composer and performer, yet here forced to play with each other. Who wins this mental arm wrestling contest? No need to guess, the Duke makes Coltrane act nice and play most of his tunes without the highly discordant improvisation that Coltrane liked to do. It’s like Beethoven and Mozart were forced to play together and Beethoven had to sound like Mozart. A lovely recording made in 1962, when Coltrane was at the height of his experimental phase. Here he controls his discordant outbursts and mostly plays nice. Every once in a while he can’t resist himself and goes off on his solos. One can imagine the Duke grimacing and soldiering on. Not that the Duke himself was not in favor of writing discordant music. His famous film score I reviewed earlier was replete with Stravinskian notes. But this album is a bit tame as if two tigers were put in a cage and spent an afternoon circling each other, neither wanting to land the first (musical) blow. Disappointing in a way as this album could have led to real musical innovation. The recording sounds gorgeous on the big SL even given its age.

 

[godofwealth]

We end our musical evening with John Coltrane with his performing with singer Johnny Hartman, from 1963. Hartman had one of these drop dead gorgeous voices that could melt hardened steel. So Coltrane matches his playing to make his tenor sax sound as drop dead gorgeous as Hartman’s voice. It’s a minor miracle to hear the usually strident and discordant Coltrane sound as rich and chocolatey as Hartman’s baritone. What an amazing recording it is. I have several versions, one on SACD, one on CD, one on vinyl and the streaming version I’m playing. A weird artifact of the streaming version is having both the mono and stereo versions. It’s a relatively short album at 30 minutes. The producer realized too much chocolate is bad for your health. But they decided to fill it up to an hour by doubling each track into two. You pick the version or hear both. The big SL renders Hartman’s voice in a magisterial way, big and rich but not too bassy like my Harbeth’s do. Coltrane’s tenor sax sounds drop dead gorgeous. He’s never sounded better than this recording. Oozes with charm and elegance as if to say I can dress up too in a tux.

 

[godofwealth]

Decided to listen tonight to my Quad 2905s driven by the Mola Mola electronics. They sound great, of course, but everything is scaled down compared to the big SL’s. Of course the 750SE’s spoil you immensely. Once you hear what 750 tube watts buys you, it’s hard to listen to even really good class D amplifiers. I’m enjoying this last recording of Oscar Petersen made in a studio in Toronto. After his stroke his ability to play the piano was not the same. But he gets the essence of the music. The album opens with Tin Tin Deo, which has a nice bouncy tune. My favorite is Blues for Stephane. The supporting cast does a lot in making this recording work. Telarc engineering is first rate.

 

[godofwealth]

Listening to my Klipsch La Scala driven by a First Watt J-2 class A amplifier from an Eversolo DMP-A8 server and media player. We have descended from the heights of a tube driven system to a more modest system, but it sounds really nice as well. The J-2 uses just one high voltage FET that has very low distortion without feedback compared to regular FETs. As with all of Nelson Pass’ First Watt amplifiers, it doesn’t sound like tubes or solid state, but some convex combination of them. Listening to a lovely Gerry Mulligan album from 1962. This is West coast jazz, suave, cool, relaxing and meant to put you into a relaxing frame of mind. Mulligan is no Coltrane. He doesn’t push his baritone sax into dizzying discordant phrases or engage in Mozartian variations of a tune. He tends to play songs straight and without a great deal of artifice. It can sound a bit boring if you like the fireworks of Coltrane. But Mulligan weaves his magic, easing his way into the soul of a piece without sounding like he’s tearing himself apart. Perfect with a glass of red wine, a Petit Syrah 2018 from my neighborhood 100-year old Italian winery. His soothing baritone will ease all your anxieties away and you start to chill out. Great recording for its age. The La Scalas present music with a higher grain structure than the big SL’s. But they can sound gorgeous with a low power class A amplifier, even a solid state one. The Eversolo DMP-A8 is the bargain media server of the decade, a small fraction of the cost of a Taiko, and its measured performance leaves most audiophile DACs in the dust.

 

[godofwealth]

Who hasn’t listened and come under the spell of bossa nova Brazilian jazz with Stan Getz and Carlos Jobim. This recording compiles all five of his breakthrough albums from the early 1960s, including The Girl from Ipanema. We are moving from west coast jazz to South American influenced jazz. These Brazilians can teach us a thing or two about how to swing.

Stan Getz’s sax is ultra smooth and debonair, chic and the sort of music you’d expect at embassy ball. This recording presents a very wide soundstage on the La Scalas with Getz’s sax sounding well to the left of the left speaker. Definite a weird out of phase sort of effect, but not too unpleasant. A great compilation of memorable Latin jazz that hit many bestseller lists. This complete compilation is redbook resolution, but individual albums have been upsampled to high resolution releases on Qobuz. A full three and a half hours of the most gorgeous and relaxing jazz music you can listen to.

Again, we are far removed from the high voltage sounds of John Coltrane or Charles Mingus. Much more Mozart or Haydn rather than Stravinsky or Shostakovich. Perfect for the very rainy evening here in the Bay Area, where we had a very rare tornado touchdown down in nearby Santa Cruz flipping police cars and downing trees. Fortunately we were spared the worst.

 

[godofwealth]

We turn from 1960s jazz to two centuries earlier, to the late 18th to early 19th century music of long forgotten German composer, Ferdinand Ries, who was more famous as Beethoven’s pupil and long-time secretary than a full-fledged composer in his own right. Ries made life much more comfortable for the maestro, such as giving him a gorgeous apartment called Pasqualati house in the heart of Vienna where Beethoven spent many years living in.

His flute quartets sound absolutely divine, with shades of Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn combined. Ries was no mere clerk for Beethoven, but a brilliant composer in his own right. Fortunately his music is now being recorded with great vigor and we can enjoy his many delightful compositions such as this one. It reminds me immediately of Mizart’s flute quartets with a touch more Beethoven in them. If you like a bit of variety in your classical music, check out the music of Ries. He was no Beethoven of course. He stuck to the well-trodden path of Haydn and Mozart. No dissonances here, like the late string quartets of Beethoven. This is music meant to relax and soothe you, not raise your blood pressure. Nice recording if a bit low level, so you’ll need to crank up the volume. It’s a chamber piece, so it can be enjoyed at a softer volume.

 

[godofwealth]

Sticking to the theme of relaxing music today, we finally turn to the music of another genius from Vienna, Franz Schubert. Here we have his lovely Impromptus composed in 1826. As with almost everything Schubert wrote, it is tinged with sadness and pathos. Just listen to the first Impromptu, and you hear the soft opening, followed by a brief outburst of louder chords and then its pathos writ large. Beethoven’s music had an aura of heroism about it, his legendary Fifth Symphony opening with those famous four chords liked to Fate knocking at your door (or was it the Grim Reaper). With Schubert, the grim reaper is a much more intellectual creature who perhaps more with charm than authority beseeches you to follow him into the metaverse.

John O’Connor plays beautifully perhaps with a touch less class than Murray Perahia who recorded this music for CBS. Why was Schubert’s music so sad? He was forever consumed by the blues although by all accounts he was a jovial fellow surrounded by his many admirers. He died tragically at 35, but that was the average life expectancy in the mid eighteenth century.

Hearing this album, I’m reminded of the haunting poetry of Emily Dickinson, my favorite American poet, who lived from 1830-1886. She wrote this haunting poem

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—’tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity—

 

[Ron Resnick]

Sound Lab interview!

 

[godofwealth]

Great video, Ron. Thanks for sharing this.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Great video, Ron. Thanks for sharing this.

Thank you!

 

[godofwealth]

I’ve so far not used rock and roll recordings to evaluate the G9-7c SL’s largely because to me rock is not ideally suited to high end audio reproduction. The sound is largely made from electronic instruments like electric guitars, engineering standards are pretty poor and rock is recorded in studios on multitrack machines. But it’s undeniable that rock is essential to many audiophiles choice of music. In my case I listened to it a lot as an undergrad 50 years or so ago! So my choice of a rock and roll recording here will not be surprising— it’s CSNY’s famous DejaVu here a high resolution 24-bit 192khz remastering on Qobuz. Not sure what high res really does for rock and roll when there’s so little to work with. But this is is a relatively clean recording with not much electronic glitz, it’s not a Pink Floyd extravaganza. The sound is pleasant and the voices are reasonably natural. The age of the recording obviously shows and the recording was clearly engineered on bargain basement microphones and studio electronics. But it’s surprisingly nice sounding with little of the usual post-processing that mars many rock recordings that add unnecessary treble emphasis. The reality is that rock and roll is engineered to sound good on car stereos, or cheap earbuds, not high end audio systems.

CSNY do not have song writing talents of Bob Dylan or even the folksy lyrics of Jethro Tull. They try to pretend to be a rock and roll group on some tracks and a folk group on others, and end up doing neither genre as well as the best in that class. But they’re pleasant to hear, if not very profound in what they sing. The recording is ho hum, but that’s not surprising. The big SL’s do as well as you can expect a high resolution loudspeaker to do with inferior material. There’s no bass boom, which helps make such recordings enjoyable on car stereos. There’s no treble splash from hyper bright metallic tweeters. No midrange brightness. It’s a transparent window into the original sound. The voices often sound muffled as if they’re singing in a closet. The acoustic guitars sound reasonably nice. I imagine they were recorded separately and mixed in to the main vocal track, as is often done in rock and roll. Voices are clustered in the center in mono. That’s probably how it was recorded before post-processing.

 

[godofwealth]

Here’s a rock and roll album I heard a lot as an undergrad played on a cheap cassette tape car stereo hooked up to my dorm loudspeakers. Ian Anderson managed to genuinely infuse rock and roll with a folksy bluesy sound and his energy in this and similar albums is inspiring to hear. The backside of the vinyl album had the great picture of a turntable spinning on a tree stump, perhaps the best rock cover of any album I’ve seen. The version I’m listening to is the high resolution 24-bit 96khz remaster. The original vinyl sounded far better to my ears. There’s an electronic residue on the remastering that was not present on the vinyl. No matter, this is a hugely enjoyable album due to Anderson’s innovative lyrics (try Jack in the Green for a woodsy folksy tune that would gladden the heart of many environmental activist since it decries the destruction of natural forests by motor roadways). Ian Anderson’s lilting voice and style of singing helps elevate this album from humdrum rock and roll. The engineering is quite good. The recording was obviously made in a studio on bargain basement electronics with cheap microphones, but there’s definitely some dynamic range and not too much compression. It’s rock and roll, so there’s no hall ambience to reproduce. On the big SL’s driven by the massive ARC 750SE’s the energy in this recording is clearly reproduced. Bring back memories, for sure, it’s a trip down memory lane.

 

[godofwealth]

I must admit that Songs from the Wood sounds great on my G9-7c with the huge power of the 750SE. Far cry from my cheap car stereo dorm room system from 50 years ago! I wish my ears were as good as back then! Can’t have it all. But I do hear little details that were obscured before, ni doubt due to the very high resolution of the electronics and loudspeakers.

 

[godofwealth]

Bohemian Rhapsody won major acclaim as a movie that showed the creative growth of The Queen, better than any movie before or since. Freddie Mercury, the genius behind the group’s success, was both a highly gifted songwriter and singer. It was a surprise to learn his Asian heritage in the movie. Freddie Mercury is not his real name, obviously. Their album A Night at the Opera was one I played a lot in my youth. It’s a high energy rock and roll album, but its brilliance comes from the amazing versatility in the songs. Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon sounds like a parody of many other folksy songs. The engineering is obviously dreadful as in many such rock and roll albums. There’s no pretense here of high fidelity. The voices are sometimes recorded as if they are talking on a cheap landline telephone. But the power of the music lifts this album from humdrum rock and roll to a different class entirely. One can hardly expect high fidelity in such a recording, here listened to on the 24-bit 96khz remaster. The song I’m in love with my car has the dreadful revving noises of a car engine. This is hard rock and roll special effects, like Pink Floyd’s cash register machines tinkling in their song Money. The Queen was writing these songs to be heard on cheap boomboxes, not the Soundlab G9-7c driven by ARC 750 SE’s. But the music still grips you, and the creativity in the songwriting is undeniable. The acoustic guitars in the song ‘39 sound nice indeed.

As I said earlier, rock and roll is not intended to be heard on a high end system, any more than the Mona Lisa is to be viewed on a smartphone. But the music is still enjoyable even if the sonics aren’t.

 

[godofwealth]

It’s hoot to hear the Seaside Rendevouz on the G9-7c’s. It’s a densely mixed track, with plenty of special effects, all laid bare in this very high resolution loudspeakers that takes a microscope to the sound. In this album, every track was recorded on a different session and the vastly different sound is vividly reproduced. This is not high fidelity, since there’s no fidelity to anything real. It’s all an electronic creation. But it’s fun to hear what I wasted my life listening to in my youth!

 

[godofwealth]

The song Love of my Life is clearly Freddie Mercury’s vain attempt to rescue his failing marriage for reasons documented in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s a powerful song and his voice has a great dynamic range in the high registers. It’s listenable despite the poor engineering. Par for the course in this genre.

 

[godofwealth]

The song Bohemian Rhapsody is the masterpiece in this album, written by Freddie Mercury who was largely estranged from his family due to his choice of profession and his indulgence for stimulants, all of which led to his untimely death. But this song highlights the sheer creativity in the group’s dizzying lyrics. They’re not boring in any sense. CSNY sound so boring as a rock and roll band. If you want to do rock and roll right, The Queen shows you how to. A tour-de-force album because of the power of the songwriting and the music.

 

[godofwealth]

Moving from The Queen, we turn to the greatest rock and roll songwriter of the 20th century, certainly the only one to win the Nobel Prize in literature. I speak of course of Bob Dylan, who’s still singing and performing and made the august Nobel prize committee wait till he was ready. Shock and horror ensued in Stockholm, I’m sure. Here we are listening to his Blood on Tracks, Dylan’s album written during the throes of his breaking marriage as well. Like Freddie Mercury and many decades earlier, Frank Sinatra Sings only for the Lonely when his marriage to Hollywood actress Ava Gardner broke up, creative artists hide their anguish in music. When Beethoven learned he was going deaf, he contemplated ending his life. Through sheer willpower he pulled himself out of his depression. So did Chet Baker whose early European tour was marred by his band member’s death of a drug overdose.

This is not Dylan’s most powerful album as a songwriter. For me, that would be The Freewheeling Bob Dylan. Here we have a musician gripped by sadness but trying to navigate between his early blues music to his later rock and roll career.
The engineering is surprisingly decent and the instruments sound reasonably natural. Of course the studio acoustics and cheap microphones means there’s no pretense of high fidelity here. But a great album, nonetheless. Not one of Dylan’s finest. He hated stereo versions of his albums, preferring his mono vinyl records that captured his true sound, as he would say. A high resolution remaster, for whatever that’s worth gave the low fidelity of the original.