Review of "Tipping Point for Planet Earth"

I won this book as a part of the Goodreads Giveaway and was very excited to receive it. Reading “Tipping Point for Planet Earth” was like watching a lioness take down a gazelle, the miraculous beauty, grace and proficiency of the story stand toe to toe with the calculated, merciless gore and horror of the message and I could not look away.

Anthony Barnosky & Elizabeth Hadly interweave professional acumen and personal experiences to tell a tale that both educates and fascinates. Reminiscent of 19th century adventure novels that packed practical science teaching between the slats of exciting experiences (“20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea” listed genus and species of hundreds of fish and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” was practically a geology textbook) this book recounts the author's’ adventures and uses them to illustrate their scientific conclusions, but unlike M. Verne’s missives, the adventures were real!

Very much in the vein of Elizabeth Kolberts “The 6th Extinction”, this style adds interest, readability and accessibility to the work, albeit not quite as successfully as Ms Kolbert’s wonderfully compelling book did. Still a relatively low strain read, “Tipping Point” is packed with supporting statistics; there will be no claims of cherry picking data as it was harvested with the breadth of a combine. As a casual reader with a strong interest in the subject matter and science in general, perfection would have been less statistics with more of the anecdotal prose instead. It read more like a scholarly paper, whereas Kolbert’s read like a book.

This book could join “Silent Spring” in importance and be looked back upon by future generations as the clarion call that saved us all, or the harbinger raven on the mantle, whose warnings went unheeded until our downfall. I loved reading “Tipping Point” and will recommend it to all whose hands I can pry from their ears, eyes and mouths…

Chuck Hinton 5/6/16

“How to Handle a Defective Product” or “Big Fun at the Customer Support Desk”

“How to Handle a Defective Product” or “Big Fun at the Customer Support Desk”

By Chuck Hinton

Originally published in Home Toys Magazine, April, 2010 Issue

SO, you got some new do-dad for your stereo, once you hook it up, you find you have: Hum, buzz, distortion, no power, or some other issue. Here are the best ways to handle the situation and the order in which you should do them:

1. Blame the most expensive unit in the system (top quality gear should never break, like Ferraris, Harleys, or i-phones)

2. Make a judgment as to the cause of the failure (do not check your connections or read the manual, you have been hooking up stereos for years and you can tell what is the exact cause from across the room)

3. Write a scathing report of the product on one or several Audio Forums, let those irresponsible manufacturers who never test stuff before it leaves the factory know what scum they are. Be sure and call the unit a “Piece of S%*T” so readers can understand your level of disappointment.

4. Contact your lawyer

5. Write letter to the president of the company threatening to sue him.

6. Send an email to the general mailbox of the company, be sure and tell them you have already posted this all over the net and contacted your lawyer (those folks only respond to force, if you were to call them and ask nicely and reasonably for a solution to your problem, they will know you are a wimp, pass you around the company to voice mails of people who are on vacation and eventually send you to an extension that no longer exists).

7. Call the Main office of the company at 3AM on a Saturday, or any time you are reasonably sure the office is not open, leave a scathing voice mail with lots of colorful adjectives, exclaim you cannot believe you can’t get a human on the phone. (do not leave your name or contact number. )

8. Go to your dealer and demand a full refund, be sure and tell them you, nor anyone you know, will ever set foot in the store again.

9. If all this fails, check to see if the unit is plugged in.

McIntosh labs and the Grateful Dead Wall of Sound, An Interview with Richard Pechner

Richard Pechner's site:

McIntosh Website
Home Toys Magazine


First published in HomeToys Magazine,

 this ended up being their most read article of 2009,

now finally on my blog, 10.16.14

April 2009

Wall Of Sound

Author: Chuck Hinton, McIntosh Tech Support and the Hi Fi Insider

We at McIntosh Labs were pretty impressed with ourselves when we realized the McIntosh 2K reference system weighed in at close to one full ton. It never even occurred to us to imagine what kind of McIntosh system might weigh 75 tons. As it turns out, our imagination was not required. Nearly 32 years earlier, Owsley ‘Bear’ Stanley, Dan Healy and Mark Raizene of the Grateful Dead sound crew and Ron Wickersham and Rick Turner of Alembic Sound dared to dream of such a system.

Shortly before the 35th anniversary of the official March 23, 1974 début of the legendary Grateful Dead Wall Of Sound P.A. system, I had the great luck and honor of spending some time with photographer Richard Pechner. From 1969 to 1974 Pechner worked on the Grateful Dead sound crew, helped build the wall and chronicled the adventure that was the Grateful Dead in photographs.

The McIntosh/Dead connection started with a PA system the then local San Francisco band had in their house at 710 Asbury St., which included several McIntosh MC240, 40 watt stereo tube amps bolted to a piece of heavy plywood, dubbed “The Lead Sled”. At that time, Richard was a student at San Francisco State and worked with a group called The Diggers that distributed free food and similar activities in Haight Ashbury. “I met Danny Rifkin, who was managing the Dead… the band wanted to play for free in the park (Golden Gate) so the deal was, we (the Diggers) would get the flatbed truck.” Richard drove the flatbed to the Dead house, picked up the gear and took part in the now infamous free concert.

As the band became more popular and started playing large venues, McIntosh MC2300, 300 watt per channel stereo amps were used. Mr. Pechner says “ When we started, they were just sitting there on floor, it was ones and twos, but as we got more, then we got into racking stuff, so we used to go down to Palo Alto to some surplus supply houses. Dan Healy used to pride himself on knowing where these places were, we would go down there with a van and there were these racks with wheels and we said, “This is what we need”.”

By the early 1970’s, the band had accumulated quite a bit of gear and, by combining 3 current and previous systems, plus a lot of acquisition and fabrication, created the wall of sound. Consisting of 11 separate mono systems, the Wall of Sound gave each instrument its own set of amplifiers and approximately 40 foot tall stack of speakers. With each system directly behind the performer playing through it, the band was able to hear what the audience heard, and, with only one source of sound per instrument, created a natural stereo image in the same way a group of un-amplified instruments, like an orchestra or string quartet is heard, with sound coming directly from the acoustic instruments. The obvious problem of feedback from speakers placed directly behind the microphones was solved by inventing a noise canceling mic system, consisting of 2 out of phase matched mics per vocalist and some sophisticated associated electronics.  

 The completed wall sound consisted of 586 JBL woofers and mids, 54 Electrovoice  tweeters driven by 48 McIntosh MC2300s and two McIntosh MC350 mono tube amplifiers for a total of  29,500 watts.

“We were told it was the most powerful touring PA system in the world at that time” said Pechner, “it occurred to us that we, well nobody, had really seen what it looked like (with the band on stage)  because, during shows, you couldn’t see any of that stuff, it was just too dark.” Richard convinced a fork-truck driver to lift him up to stage height and just keep backing up until the whole system fit in frame of the standard 50mm lens of his camera. Via 2-way radio, he instructed the light guy to bring the house lights up, much to the band’s chagrin, and took what is now the iconic image Dead Heads around the world associate with the Wall of Sound. “It was one of those opportunities that just come along and you go, “Oh, I know what to do”.”

Ironically, McIntosh was partly responsible for bringing Richard Pechner’s career as a roadie to an end, when an amp rack, thought to be empty, was slid to the back of a truck and He tried to take it off the truck. The rack turned out to be full of MC2300s, gravity and McIntosh jerked the rack and Pechner to the ground, injuring his back and effectively removing him from the equipment handling part of his job. “I stayed on for a couple of tours, mostly doing photography.” When the band took it’s hiatus in 1974; Richard and the wall of sound moved on after the Wall’s last show on Oct. 20th 1974.

Mr. Pechner continued work as a photographer, getting shots of rock bands and other related work. He now works freelance out of his home studio, doing commercial photography and shooting folks like Lance Armstrong and the San Francisco Giants. His work can be seen at his website: www.pechner.smugmug.com 

21 things we would not have believed in the already Orwellian 1984, a grum rant.

In the dozen years that passed since a pop culture reference from Allan Parsons or someone had prompted my 10 year old self to imbibe the truths of Orwell, I noted each Calendar flip, acknowledged its advancement toward Winston Smith’s year. When 1984 arrived, it seemed dystopian enough, continuous military conflict and cold war kept the poor from questioning power, cocaine was socially acceptable for white people, the rich were getting much richer from the introduction of Regan’s  trickle up economics and, as a poor young adult, I was unemployed, had holes in my shoes and lived on government cheese.

I could not have guessed, 30 years ago, that vegetables would become carcinogenic, the water from the faucet could be lit a fire, and that the ice caps could melt. Would we have predicted a tsunami that killed a hundred thousand? A hurricane could flood New York City and destroy the Jersey shore?

Who knew worker real income would be down %30 and CEO pay up %300, that social security would be known to have numbered days and the poor of the first world would start to look like poor of the 3^rd world. The late night streets peppered with shopping cart pushers, scuttling like crabs in competition for returnable, Iron green gold mines of nickels. One could not have imagined the Wall Street crime wave that, in a single year, cost 6% of the USA population their jobs, 9 million people out of work and over one million homes stolen by the mortgagers. That not a single criminal would be sent to jail, and banks broken by their own crimes were bailed out with taxpayer money, too big to fail. How we would have laughed if you told us the Supreme Court would rule corporations were people and money equaled speech. Or that the people could be duped into thinking Unions were bad for them, that teachers were to blame for small school budgets, and one family could trade all the manufacturing jobs away so they could sell the cheapest Chinese sneakers, but  Americans would still buy their lies and their sneakers.

The environment did look to be in danger in those days, but the great lakes had been cleaned, superfunds tried to heal the earth, CFC’s and DDT outlawed to heal the hole in the ozone layer and bring the American eagle back from the brink of destruction. So how could we have guessed that every conservative would vow to close Richard Nixon’s invention, the EPA. That the EPA could receive a half million letters including one from 60 Congressmen asking to not approve a pesticide but they do it anyway AND the conservatives still think the EPA impedes progress. In 1984, would you have believed ubiquitous, innumerable, uncountable entire Genus like Bats and Frogs could be in danger today?  That huge swathes of coastline would qualify for the moniker of ‘Ocean Dead Zones’?  Bees and other pollinators may well fail, potentially causing  a %30 drop in the worlds food supply and, as a coup de grace, nearly one half of all species alive in 1984 are now extinct.

The first of my Children were born  as Halley’s specter last rode the heavens. That phenom of such a period that nearly everyone will only see it once, but you, my first born, like Mr. Clemens, were supposed to mark its twain.   Now, in 2014, I fear the comets 2060 return may greet no living human eye.

The one thing that really surprises me is; no one seems surprised or alarmed by all this.

Chuck Hinton 10/08/14

"I Like the Name" A Political Sci Fi Vignette.

                                           "I Like the Name"  A Political Sci Fi Vignette.

I must admit, ladies and gentleman, I did not think it was possible. After all, there were only five of us; Jaybee, Emem, the two brothers and myself. We were sent to an alien planet, tasked with terraforming and readying it for habitation by our people.  Now, most things I can do with half my brain tied behind my back, but this place was totally unsuitable for life. It was too cold, had unbreathable air and was teeming with life-forms incompatible with our needs. Worst of all, a sentient life form had evolved and taken over the place! They were not primitive either, bristling with weapons, highly aggressive and maybe even capable of reaching and destroying our planet! Luckily, they were too divided, self-centered and violent to have even bothered to look around this part of the galaxy and were completely unaware of our overcrowded world and our need for new home.

Our imperfect but functional disguises worked pretty well. The Brothers’ roles kept them out of public view, so other than rare occasions, only head-shot photographs of them were seen. Jaybee and Emem had it the worst, with much in-person contact with the locals. Despite one having a bit of a coloring problem and the other’s look getting close to a lower order of amphibian around the face, they were never suspected. I managed to mostly keep my exposure to my voice, (and a lot of exposure it was) so my somewhat blobby costume rarely came under scrutiny.

Job one, finance, belonged to The Brothers. Not surprisingly, greed is the lever with which one can lift worlds. The Brothers found an enormously wealthy but terminally ill man, whose ailment was one that could be cured by our slightly more advanced technology, and struck a deal to become his heirs in exchange for extending his life by a few decades. Using his nest egg and significant leverage supplied by Jaybee and Emem, upon which I will expound shortly, they embarked on a campaign of strategic acquisition. 

The Brothers had a unique bargaining advantage, while all their competition maneuvered each transaction with the sole motivation of profit, the Brothers only long term goal was control. If you structure a business deal in such a way as the other side makes a lot of profit, you can have any other consideration you desire and the other side does not even notice. By the time our plans started to come to fruition, the brothers owned or controlled nearly every important industry on the planet.

We found a fuel source whose consumption would result in a slow, subtle warming of the hideously cold planet, and arranged for it to be the least expensive energy source. Once again, greed was our true friend.  When alternative energies were invented or touted, the Brothers bought them, let the companies run for a little while and then close them, proclaiming the methods to be impractical.

Many forms of vegetation existed that would be toxic to our people or exuded gasses and chemicals that made the air nearly unbreathable to us. A solution was needed,  guess who was our friend once again? That dear child named greed. Our companies bought food production facilities and farms. We manipulated the food plants to create more yield and so more profit for the farmers. Make the deal so they can have lots of profit and anything else you want is no problem. We made the plants in such a way that any seeds they produced were sterile, the farmers had to buy seeds every year and could not produce their own seed, but they made lots of profit so nary a peep of complaint was heard. Land had to be cleared and weeds removed to grow food, which was a lot of work, so we fixed that. The crops were designed so they were not effected by herbicides that killed all other plants, farmers soaked all the land with the very reasonably priced herbicides we sold them, so they could cover all the ground with crops and nothing else grew.  Profits increased even more, the farmers loved and praised Brothers and the companies they owned.

Eventually, some of the locals, (namely the ones that did not greatly benefit from inexpensive plants and energy or get rich off it) started to catch on. Governments  proposed laws that got in the way of our plans. We had anticipated this, so, using The Brothers money, Jaybee and Emem got to work insinuating themselves into powerful positions in the most powerful government around. Whenever laws were proposed  counter to our goals, those two arranged for the legislators to receive large sums of money from The Brothers. Not only did the legislators block any regulations that got in our way, but they jumped right on the band wagon and continually passed laws that facilitated our plans, and thease lawmakers were not even that expensive to buy!

Of course, It is impossible to have infinite growth in a finite system, so not everyone could be bribed with actual riches. That is where I came in. My compatriots will have to admit, they could have never pulled it off without yours truly. I seduced nearly all of the rest of the planet with the PROMISE of wealth. My conniving voice assured them that they would be the ones who would benefit from our movement. I convinced the people that our naysayers wanted to take away their toys and vices, and told them the toys and vices were their freedoms!

They Bought it! Hook, line and sinker, they manically repeated my supposed truisms, chanted my catch phrases, adopted my slanderous pet names for the brightest and most honest of their politicians and worshiped our toadies as well as Jaybe and Emem, exactly the way I told them to. While the masses starved, struggled and slaved, they simultaneously sympathized, shouted and supported every aspect of our plan. Each one wholeheartedly attending my voice, believing my words, embracing my assurances that they would reap the benefits, they would be the ones on the top of the pyramid and soon have the riches and luxury their greed told them they could not live without.

It really did not take long at all. Conspicuous consumption of the cheap energy sources filled the atmosphere with carbon and the temperature rose. The greedy farmers killed every plant except our patented, certified, modified crops. Oxygen levels dropped and air filled with delicious methane, nitrous oxide ozone and carbon dioxide. Since the government had been convinced there was no need to label or regulate the food crops, the inhabitants of this soon-to-be-our world had been eating poison filled food and burning dirty fuels for decades. Soon they all had, diabetes, COPD and cancer, but, the medicine was all owned by The Brothers corporations who told the world the medicines were no longer effective or available. Then the supply of seeds for food crops became suddenly unavailable too, and the current crops seeds were all sterile. Every one of those dangerous, parasitic humans died before their ( I mean our) planet  made one more trip around the sun.

And there you have it, perfect atmosphere, perfect temperature and climate and no competition, our race could move right in and enjoy the new Earth. We did it, The Brothers Charles and David, Senator Mich  (Emem), Speaker John (Jaybee) and my self. I still think my role was the most important, even though the others made fun of me because I could not come up with an Earth-normal sounding pseudonym for myself, but I disagree, I LIKE the name Rush!

Chuck Hinton, 09/17/14

Home Toys 11/2012 - Introducing: The Erudite Audio Verbositor mkIV

Introducing: The Erudite Audio Verbositor mkIV

From their lofty headquarters at 12358-13^*a Hedera Rook^*b, Ithaca, NY, the magnificent Mensanites  at Erudite Audio recently unveiled their new unit, The Verbositor mkIV.  An unparalleled achievement in its category^*c, the Verbositor delivers more attributives^*d per dollar than any device I have ever been paid to review.

No supererogatory^*e expense was spared in the selection of the all designer brand internal components and their application.  The lush, loquacious low end is attributed to the Ligament ®Illuminator^*q, %100 helium-free copper wiring^*f, enabling detailed, deep voicing. The Bednorz^*g power supply transformer, wound with super conducting ®Niven^*h Wire, requires regular reapplication of liquid nitrogen for its operation, (Erudite nitrogen compressor sold separately), allowing it to deliver extemporaneously clean power.  A micro processing section including a bushel of Solanum ®Tuberosum^*i chips and proprietary software is employed in the creation of the five custom surround modes: Pedantic, Authoritative, Submissive, Sublime and Ridiculous. All this europhiliac^*r finery is housed in a hand-made chassis of copper clad skrith.*^h

Erudite’s lead design engineer, Esobrev  Ylsuolucidir^*j, a native Ithacant^*k, waxes poetic on the unit’s specifications. “An Occum’s razor-flat frequency response extends down to negative five Hz^*l, with an unheard of lack of deviation at zero Hz^*m. Phase variations are fully adjustable to 370 degrees^*n, with a noise floor exceeding the maximum output by 18dB^*o.”

All this Orwellian technospeak superseded this reviewers understanding, but I can assure you, dear reader, that the Erudite Audio Verbositor mkIV sports the most impressive display of buttons, knobs and blinky lights this Audiophile poser has ever had the privilege to drool over. With a retail price less than what you might expect to pay for a couple of pounds of neutronium^*p and performance far exceeding expectations, this unit is my newest obsession and I hereby nominate the Verbositor mkIV for this publication’s “Component of the Year”.

Chuck Hinton

(many references are for Audio heads only, others for science heads or botanists, most folks won’t get ‘em all, so I have narcissistically annotated it)

*a: The Fibonacci series

*b: Hedera is Latin for Ivy, Rook also means tower, a reference to Cornell

*c: note the review never actually says what this box is or what it does

*d: another word for adjectives, the darlings of audio reviewers

*e: another word for spurious or unnecessary  

*f: Oxygen free copper is an attributive often spouted by speaker wire companies, as Helium makes your voice sound like Mickey Mouse, I figure Helium free wire should provide deep ‘voicing’

*g: Mr. Bednorz invented super conductors

*h (2): a nod to Sci Fi writer Larry Niven, who’s writings often involve materials that can’t exist, like skrith, a theoretical metal that would have the tensile strength for Nivens “Ringworld” to be made of

*i: Latin for potato, so the unit has potato chips inside

*j: “Esobrev  Ylsuolucidir” is ridiculously verbose spelled backwards

*k: In my home town of Binghamton, NY, Ithaca and Ithacans are referred to as Ithacant(s), you can’t smoke on the commons, you can’t drink after 1AM, you can’t drive a big car without getting dirty looks…ect…

*l: Hz ( Hertz) is how many times something vibrates per second, obviously, stuff cannot vibrate at less than 0 times a second

*m: A loudspeaker at 0 Hz is not moving, so it will not deviate from a state of not moving of course

*n a circle is 360 degrees, so adjusting phase to 370 would be a bit silly

*o the noise floor should be BELOW rated output, so this statement says the noise generated by the unit is almost twice as loud as the music coming out

*p: Neutronium is what a Neutron star is made of, so far, no one has managed to go into space and mine stars, also, due to the super density of Neutronium, a couple of pounds would be a sub-microscopic spec, a piece of neutronium with the mass of the earth would be about the size of a small house

*q: “Ligament ®Illuminator” synonyms for cord and lamp, ‘lamp cord’ is what we all used for speaker wire back in the dark ages and is considered laughable by aficionados of stupidly overpriced speaker wire

*r: “europhiliac” a word I just made up for someone who uncontrollably bleeds Euros

“Get a grip, it’s not all about the chips!”
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. An all too common illustration of this axiom is how consumer electronics customers think about Micro chips. The truth that leads to the lie is “not all chips are the same”. True, all things being equal, some chips are better than others. It is undisputable that certain ultra famous brand twenty dollar D.A.C.’s (digital to analog converters) are much better than two dollar, off-shore D.A.C.’s. It then stands to reason that that all products using the 20$ chips are better than ones using less expensive ones, right? Wrong! The missing piece to the puzzle that most consumers lack can be summed up in one word: Implementation.
“Little plastic caterpillars”
We have all seen said chips, little plastic caterpillars with a plethora of tiny, tin legs or a square, black Necco wafer fringed with a skirt of little metal knees. Powerful as these devices are, on their own they do nothing. First of all, they need power, with all the ‘clean power’ rhetoric bandied about these days; it should come as no surprise that the quality of a power supply design can affect the functionality and reliability of these tiny miracle workers. Even more important than the power is the accompanying circuitry. The analog output stage of a portable CD player is no match for a mid-fi home audio unit, whose performance is no match for a high end player, even if they did have the same D.A.C., due to the care and skill of the circuit designer, as well as the money spent on the associated electronic components.
More complex integrated circuits like surround processors and video scalars have scores of features available to the engineer designing the unit the chip goes in. It is unlikely, and probably unnecessary, for any one unit to utilize all those features; but to what good use and how many of the useful features end up in your setup menu all depends, once again, on the skill of the engineer.
“How many hardware engineers does it take to Screw in a light bulb? None, we’ll fix it in software!”
Once the features, uses and complementing circuitry are determined, a software engineer has to make them all work. The software to control a chip is often custom done by product and not something you buy off-the–shelf like the actual chip. Any home computer user is all to familiar with endless software updates and patches, often continuing for years after a product is released, sold and assumed to be ‘done’, because software can be pretty darn complicated. The chips them selves are unfathomably complex devices, their internal schematics resembling an all-inclusive map of Manhattan. The operating software must not only navigate the streets and buildings, but the rooms within those building and wires and pluming within the walls of those rooms, starting to get the picture?
“All things being equal”
All things are never equal. A famous and once revered video scalar chip company decided they wanted to sell more chips and get their name more out in the public. They sold their scalar chip to companies making low cost, poorly designed video processors, who proudly stamped the chip makers’ name on the front of the units. Some of those scalars performed terribly and were notoriously unreliable. Word got out and the consumers, albeit wrongly, blamed the chips. Shoddy implementation destroyed the only real asset any electronics company has, their brand equity.
“I’m in love with my car”
Automotive illustrations often ring true when talking about electronics, so here is a little story to further illustrate my point. An auto repair shop I once frequented had 2 very cool things lying around the place, a 1950’s MG roadster with no motor and a Jaguar V12 engine. The boys decided they would merge the two and customers ogled their progress over the months as they moved back the fire wall, modified the frame and basically completely re-built the car to accept the V12. One fine spring day the project was finally done and the pushed the car out of the garage to fire it up for the first time. No matter how gently the clutch was released, the car just sat in one place while the tires slowly spun at the idle speed of the engine. Even the slightest feathering of the gas pedal simply caused the rear of the car to jump up and down while it slowly rotated around front end, the car completely unable to gain traction. The mechanics had taken two fabulous car parts and created a vehicle that did not work at all. Poor implementation had done them in.
“There is more than one way to skin a cat”
The A/V industry is fraught with urban legends of electronics, units w/ this chip or that technology are always better, negative feedback is always bad, Class “A” amps are always better. There are many different ways to design a device for a specific purpose, if there were not, all stereos would sound the same, all TV’s would look alike and only marketing departments would be needed in our industry. Before you make a buying decision based on a touted technology, design class, a must have connector or a phantom surround mode, remember that none of that stuff is worth is worth a dime with out proper implementation. In our world full of false universal axioms, there is one you can take to the bank: All things are NEVER equal.

Nickle Creek Concert Review

Nickel Creek: Veteran Sound from fledgling troubadours.

The Broome Community College Ice Rink, located in Binghamton, N.Y., housed 1,600 filled seats for its’ first ever concert. The stage was set up on the long side of the oval, looking across the ice at the bleachers. With seats on just one side, the management apparently felt it only necessary to remove the Plexiglas barriers used in hockey games from less than half the rink. This forced critical midrange components of the sound to reflect back at the floor-seated portion of the audience. Despite this acoustical faux pas, the Nickel Creek sound man, utilizing the bands own mixers, effects and monitor system, did a good job of dialing in the sound and sending it off to the expertly placed and very clean-sounding front-of-house provided by Binghamton based Sound Concepts. The result was relatively good sound on the floor and exceptional quality in the bleachers, very full but never too loud.

The fairly conservative audience, made of more middle-aged folk and families than college students, roared thunderously when the band took the stage. They opened with my favorite cut off the new CD, “Smoothie Song”, and although it was a bit spoiled by some hurried sound tweaking during its’ first few moments, it quickly settled in to a premonition of the evening’s heart-warming musical feast.

The group looked comfortable on stage, the guys in T-shirts, violinist Sara Watkins looking most fetching in a spaghetti-strap top and all wearing blue jeans and sneakers. Sara played well to the audience, often strolling out of the main spotlights to get closer to the crowd, leaning forward and throwing bow flourishes like kisses to the crowd. Many songs elicited cries of recognition from the onlookers and the group moved and danced with the crowd as well as each other during especially passionate jams. Chris Thile was the most animated and led me to wonder, why do mandolin players tilt their heads when they solo? Some stage patter did sound rehearsed and stilted though, and a few stage movements looked a bit contrived. I suspect someone had chastised them for not being visually entertaining enough, like you would expect them to grab themselves and moonwalk or something.

My introduction to Nickel Creek had been their 2002 release, “This Side”, a tightly controlled, somewhat commercial product produced by Allison Krauss. That album, I guessed, had been born of the group’s desire to explore the more pop side of their creations and made me wonder if they knew where their strengths lay. Later, those very songs, heard in the context of that concert, kept their folk roots and blended seamlessly with the band’s more traditional tunes and inspiring instrumentals. I had also wondered if folks so young, (Sara Watkins and Chris Thile are a mere 21 years old) even with eleven years of playing out, would exhibit the musical maturity that often makes a seasoned performer far outshine a child prodigy. By the third song my words were eaten whole, as the quartet raised the hairs on my neck and brought a smile to my face with expertly executed and beautiful music.

What I saw was not the package for sale Ms. Krauss had created, but boundless, unstoppable musical joy. Rising and falling, first sweet, then nasty and grooving. At once a simple ballad, then suddenly metamorphosing through intertwining melodies combined in a way they had never quite been before.

Conversely, vocals were not the band’s strong point, with most of Sara’s and Chris’s vocals sounding breathy and almost falsetto. The players are aware of their vocal sound and apply it well in their songwriting, but the quality of the instrumentation points up the difference. Guitarist Sean Watkins, the elder statesman of the band at 25, has the strongest voice, but the most shy personality of the group, keeping him from using his voice often enough or to it’s fullest potential. Only on the fifth song of the evening, “The Face of Trouble”?, did Sara show her vocal mettle and Chris did not get his voice warmed up until late in the show with a blues tune and a Dylan cover. The whole group had better projection on harmonies than lead vocals as evidenced on a raucous cover of the Beatles “Taxman”.

Eleven of the thirty tunes were instrumentals, all every bit as fine as the creations of the elders of newgrass. Chris Thile's “House of Tom Bombadil” was a warm bluegrass tune, not the staccato sonic assault of traditional bluegrass. Flowing yet well defined by implied percussion born of chunky rhythms supporting arpeggios flying like wild winds. Late in the show they played “The Opening Song” featuring Sara’s fine fiddle work in a Mark O’Conner/Yo-Yo Ma style creation. Other instrumental tones ranged from the dissidence of modern jazz to technical acrobatics like those in The Dixie Dregs’ “Chips A’Hoy”. The second instrumental of the evening opened with a guitar/mandolin duet with obvious classical inspirations, morphed into a two-step, then flowed through modern jazz style dissidence and back again. A recent interview in the fledgling ‘Frets’ magazine had Sean commenting on taking inspiration from classical lately and this tune illustrated that quite well.

Nickel Creek played at the Country Music Awards on Nov. 6, 2002 and were nominated for the Horizon award and Vocal Group of the Year. They took home no awards, but to be nominated is surely a good thing for a group that I would not even call country. With Jerry Douglas taking home Musician of the Year, the CMA show they are there for more than just Alan Jackson fans, (who swept the awards) and know quality when they see it.

What lies ahead for Nickel Creek? Already on CMT, how about VH1 or even MTV? Will there be Creek-heads, following the band to every venue and selling out every show? Can we expect Chris Thile lunch boxes, Sean Watkins cologne and ‘Barbie’s fiddl’n friend Sara’? How about Nickel Creek tribute bands with names like ‘Penny River’ and ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’. Assuming they avoid the many pitfalls of young stardom, the sky is the limit for these fledgling troubadours.

How equipment was Placed in "The Departed" movie

Anatomy of a Placement

Tuesday, March 22, 2005
An industrial style window, placed high to foil the occupants’ attempts to have a view, let in the spring morning sunshine at a crazy angle. Segmented by horizontal blinds, the light threw stripes of glare and shadow that ran across floor then bent wildly up across the figure behind the desk, striping her blouse and face like masked bad guys in an old Disney cartoon. She looked up at the sound of the knob turning on her closed door; a silhouette was visible through the frosted glass pane with the etched letters, ‘ffoG yllaS’.
A figure in an open, rain-spotted trench coat and Fedora stepped in, a woman with a face that could silence a stereo salesman, hair finer than the strands in a high-end speaker cable and voice like a lunch-box filled w/ toy cars… no, wait….that was the phone….
O.K., so life for Sally Goff, Director of Marketing and P.R. for McIntosh Laboratory may not be as exciting as a Mickey Spillane inspired film noir, but the call was about a detective story…
Jennifer Chalhub, Sr. Account Executive for Warner Bros Pictures had a request. She was currently working on a ‘little’ Film for Warner Brothers, “The Departed”, Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson. Set Decorator Leslie Rollins had requested McIntosh for the set of Matt’s apt, where a scene takes place involving a stereo system. This was not unusual, the timeless, classy look and bright, illuminated meters and faceplates make McIntosh equipment look great on film and a favorite of set designers. Sally assured Jennifer we would be happy to help. Ms Chalhub promised to get back soon with an equipment list.
After a long look at www.mcintoshlabs.com, Departed set decorating personnel went on a field trip to a McIntosh dealer to check out the toys. A month later, they came back with the ‘wish list’, and it was not small. An MX119 Home Theater Preamp, MVP861 DVD Player, MA6500 Integrated Amp, C2200 Tube Preamp, MR85 Tuner, MHT200 Home Theater Receiver, MC207 Multi Channel Amp, MCD1000 CD Transport and five XLS320 Bookshelf speakers.
The Production Resources Agreement arrived from Warner Brothers.
Obviously designed for paid placement, the contract stated that McIntosh agreed to pay the sum of Zero Dollars for placement of the equipment in the movie, there was no guaranty that the equipment would appear and that McIntosh was not obligated to pay the Zero Dollars, should the gear not ‘recognizably appear’ in the final cut of the film. McIntosh does not pay for placements, despite the fact that it shows up in several TV shows and movies each year. With the paperwork completed, the search for the gear began.
2005 was a very busy year for trade shows, dealer events and equipment reviews. Nearly every piece of show stock equipment was spread out around the globe at about 10 different events, including a good size pile of gear down in Florida on the set of “Miami Vice”, so it was time for ‘Plan B’. Usually, McIntosh units used in movies and TV shows simply need to light up and look pretty. McIntosh Service Manager John Messemer had several of the listed models , either untested or yet to be repaired units that lit up just fine, we could simply tape over the inputs on the back, label them “do not use” and be all set.
Just to be sure, Sally flashed off an email to Jennifer Chalhub, would they be expecting the gear to play music or would it be OK if they just ‘lit up’?
“I’m just a little afraid Jack or Matt will want to turn it on and listen to it. I’ll just have to let them know in advance they can not play anything on it.” Ms Chalhub replied. Sally had heard Jack Nicholson liked to play with everything on set and wanted it all to work. They knew Jack was a McIntosh owner and had previously requested McIntosh as set dressing for “As Good as it Gets”. The decision was made; the units would HAVE to work.
Turning a pile of new stock into “B” stock is not a desirable business practice, but it became obvious that at least some of the units would need to come from new stock. Sales and Sales Administration were consulted, they gave the green light to use some new stock and by the first of June, 2005, the shipment was ready to go. A combination new, show and engineering stock provided the 13 units for the departed. More complications arose as time went on, The Departed requested old Mac boxes for set dressing, and in June, 2006, whole scenes needed to be re-shot, so some pieces had to be re-gathered and reshipped, but eventually, it all came home, in excellent shape and perfectly re-packed.
On Fri. Oct 6, 2006 The Departed opened in the U.S., at one point in the film, the big, blue MA6500 VU meter covered more than 60% of the screen, presenting viewers with a 40 foot McIntosh Meter during a tense moment in the film. At the final cut, only 4 of the units and 2 of the speakers were visible in the flick, but they played a visceral part. As the female lead character ran to the Mac stack to turn it on, she makes three obvious turning-on motions, and three loud, poignant ‘clicks’ ring out in the sound track. As the camera pulls back, only two units appear to be on, but a slow motion viewing revealed the editors loved the look of the MA6500 turning on so much, they basically showed it turn on twice, giving the dramatic beat of ‘click’, ‘click’, click’!
By the following Monday morning customers were mentioning in web-site emails and tech calls they had seen the gear, and it was fabulous! In February, 2007, The Departed received four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, the perfect Hollywood ending, or was it?
In preparation for this article, a letter was sent to Jennifer Chalhub, requesting permission to use some stills for it. Jennifer replied she was working on it and, by the way, the set decorator was now working on another Warner Bros. feature, “Get Smart”, starring Steve Carell and “The Rock” and was interested in using a similar system. And so, here we go again!...

What IS High-End?

What is high-end Audio?
The 60’s Art-Rock group “The Moody Blues” best album was a movie for your mind in the form of an LP entitled “”In search of the Lost Chord”. This may well sum up high-end audio. In same way listening to a song on a clock radio may never reveal the bass guitar line to you, the stereo systems most folks listen to will seem to reproduce all the music, yet subtle details you never miss are never the less there for the hearing, given the proper equipment.

One of the greatest complements one can give a system is “I’ve heard that recording hundreds of times and I noticed things I’d never heard before.”. Even with a system so revealing as to elicit that praise, it is unlikely to trick you into believe there is a marching band in your living room.

What are the elements in live sound that elude the Sound reproduction system? One is frequency range.. sound is created by moving air, when you consider the bass drum in that marching band is a 24 “ membrane hit by a cloth-wrapped hammer, it is obvious that deepest fundamentals in music such as the 16 Hz (largest) pipe in a pipe organ is not going to be accurately reproduced by the 4” speaker in your Bose wave-radio. It requires many, large drivers (woofers) working in unison to move the equivalent amount of air.

The next hurdle in accurate reproduction of live sound is dynamic range; this is the difference between the softest and loudest passages in a piece of music. An orchestral piece can range from the sound of quiet conversation, at around 50dB, to the volume of a police siren next to your ear, around 126Db. An efficient loudspeaker can produce 90dB, about the noise level of a busy NYC street corner, from one watt. One would imagine said speaker could easily reach the 126 db to recreate the peak level of the aforementioned orchestra, an increase of only 36dB. Herein lies the rub, it is commonly assumed that a doubling of watts in an amplifier yields a doubling of output, but not so, twice the electrical power (watts) yields only the smallest easily noticeable increase in volume, 3 dB. We need to gain that 3dB 12 times to hit our 36dB increase, and so have to double our mere 1 watt, 12 times! 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024, 2,048, 4,096 Watts!

This leads us to yet another impediment to realistic reproduction of live music, the dreaded distortion. The smooth rising and falling wave of a pure tone as seen on an oscilloscope is bent out of it’s smooth shape by the effects of normal amplifiers and speakers, the wave is distorted. Only the finest components, with the most expensive materials, designed by brilliant engineers through thousands of hours of labor can reduce those distortions beyond the point where the remarkably sensitive instrument the human ear is can detect.

Not only do we need a battery of huge woofers and gigantic, multi-thousand Watt amps, but they must be built with precision akin to the technology in the Hubble telescope. I half jokingly tell customers that, just as it takes 10 times the power to double volume, it takes ten times the money to double sound quality, but this is no joke, as even the finest sound systems in the world, costing a few hundred thousand dollars, still fall just a bit short of the ultimate goal, truly reproducing the sound of live music. So the struggle continues and the worshipers of high-end audio diligently continue their quest, no matter what it takes, and that, is what high-end really about.

Leo Kottke, Mike Gordon "Clone" Review

Like a scene from “That Seventies Show”, we sat in someone’s basement, smoking Marbs or Luckies and watching the stack of wax fall every 22 minutes while the fight raged on:
“Ritchie Blackmoore is the greatest guitarist alive”, one ranted.
“Way not, man, Steve Howe SMOKES him.” This discourse raged on while the godfather of the eighth grade, known as ‘Wacky’, rocked back on the hind legs of his chair and smiled smugly.
“You guys have no idea what a great guitarist is.” Wacky waxed as he scratched the needle off Peter Frampton and removed the pile off the record changer. He pulled out an album with a funny looking guy in black and white juggling orange balls on the cover, Leo Kottke’s “My Feet are Smiling”, we never looked back.

Leo has just recorded with Phish bassist Mike Gordon, which at first glance is a fractured, almost schizophrenic work that divides itself into four parts, songs penned by Leo, by Mike, by both and covers.
As a bass player with 27 years experience, I would know better than to try and play with Leo Kottke. Mike finds this out, especially on the songs penned by both, where two busy instrumentalists sometimes ram each other with conflicting rhythms and unintentional discordance.

The Covers seem to be chosen by Leo and sound tight and smooth, with Leo getting less busy to concentrate on vocals and Mike getting tasty and simple like a good sideman.

When the Mike Gordon originals come around, one gets the impression the album is named “Clone” because Mike sings harmonies over his already mediocre voice, giving us two of a bad thing. These tunes are self indulgent and silly, though pleasant, and “The Collins Missile” is a cute story.

The Kottke originals are excellent, and Mike starts to ‘get it’ on these, sounding like the alternating thumb-played bass lines Leo uses on his ‘sounds like two guitars’ solo stuff.

I suspect this disc was burned in the order the tunes were recorded, as the first song is a bit of a train wreck, with both Leo and Mike lacking musical understanding of each other. As the disk progresses, both players learn and grow until, by the end they seem to trade places. On the Gordon instrumental “Whip” Mike thinks like Leo and the chugging , staccato, finger-style tune could have easily been penned by Kottke. On tunes toward the end Leo ‘steps away from the box’, lets some notes ring and plays a few jazz chords. He seems to get the Phish thing and it adds a new dimension to his style. I suspect future releases from both these gentlemen will reflect the lessons they learned here and we, the listeners, will reap that harvest.

I think that many listeners will just burn three or four songs off this disc, (different ones for different folks) but I believe I will always play it end to end, enjoying the twists and turns of this little sonic trip, and going where it wants to take me.