Greetings friends, and Happy Holidays! I hope you are doing well!

My Positive Feedback review of the Audio Note (UK) AN/K-SPe loudspeakers has been published, and you can read it HERE. 

Audio Reviewing and Listening to Music

During my time with the Audio Note (UK) AN/K-SPe loudspeakers a few ideas came to mind about hi-fi performance attributes that current audio reviewing terminology doesn't really address adequately.

For example, as stated by Audio Note (UK), a main focus of the Audio Note (UK) AN/K-SPe loudspeakers design was to deliver the "life" and "emotion" of music. 

The AN/K-SPe loudspeakers certainly do deliver the "life" and "emotion" of music from albums in an exceptional way, but how do you address those "life" and "emotion" performance attributes other than in a entirely subjective way?  

I mean, what design attributes contribute to the sense of "life" and "emotion" from recorded music? Is it related to an ability to deliver a vivid aural presence, or perhaps to convincingly reproduce dynamics and tempo? Or what?

Fidelity Tolerant Hi-Fi Kit

Here's another observation: some audio components are very good at providing an engaging and emotionally involving music listening experience regardless of the fidelity of the recording, hinting that the performance attributes that deliver a sense of "life" and "emotion" from recordings are not entirely dependent upon the recording quality of an album.  

This is a particularly important point for listeners who desire to listen to a broad variety of albums from different periods in the recording arts.

Generally speaking, early recordings are lower fidelity in terms of bandwidth, noise, resolution, etc., than are later recordings.

As one progresses through the eras of the recording arts acoustic (1877 to 1925), electric (1925 to 1945), magnetic (1945 to 1975), and digital (1975 to today), the technical parameters of recorded music have generally improved. 

Although, within a given era of recording there are rather large variations in recording quality. Within the magnetic era of recording, for example, there are some recordings that are stunning in terms of fidelity, and they have become the favorites of many audiophiles. Then there's those magnetic era recordings where the recording quality pretty much sucks, but the musical performances are sublime.

Occasionally I'll enthuse about the musical performance of a low-fidelity recording, and I'll get the inevitable response from a hi-fi enthusiast that when they got a copy of the album and listened to it on their audio system it "sounded terrible" and it prevented them from enjoying the music. 

I always cringe when I get that sort of response because of what it implies: a person's audio system is not really very good except on a very narrow range of albums with excellent recording quality, and that limits their ability to enjoy the majority of albums that have varying fidelity.

Some audio components / audio systems seem able to easily deliver engagingly musical performances regardless of the fidelity of an album, and they don't do it by decreasing the amount of resolution, "candy coating" the presentation, or something else that dumbs down an album's sound quality. 

If anything, I find that systems that easily deliver engagingly musical performances regardless of the fidelity of an album, are actually delivering more of everything from those recordings, like my Tannoy Westminster Royal SE based system, for example. 

Systems that do this well tell you everything about the recording quality, low-fidelity to high-fidelity, the period the recording was made, yet are able to deliver the musical performances in a way that makes me feel like I am hearing albums at their musical best, regardless of recorded fidelity. 

Herb Reichert (Stereophile) recently posted on Facebook a link to a review of the AMG Giro Mk II turntable by Michael Trei (HERE). One of the comments Michael made really caught my eye:

"As your system becomes more capable, it should be able to extract an enjoyable musical experience from an ever-expanding range of records of varying quality as opposed to whittling down your playlist to a few carefully selected sonic spectaculars."

All I can say is I wholeheartedly agree with Michael Trei on this point, the better a system gets, the better it is able to play albums of all fidelity, and thus allows the listener to enjoy a much wider swath of our recorded music canon. 

Norbeck, Peters & Ford - An End of an Era

Norbeck, Peters & Ford have been providing music lovers with access to important recordings from early in the recording arts for 50 years.

I am sorry to report that Norbeck, Peters & Ford have closed their doors. I received this email from Jim Peters a few days ago:

"Fifty years in a non-stop and profitable business represents a great achievement and one which I enormously enjoyed - until this past 13 months. As most of you know, I lost David four years ago, followed by the loss of Peter who died at the end of September, 2021. Peter's incomparable manner of dealing with our large list of satisfied clients is a severe loss to so many with whom he had established many long-term relationships. Peter had the patience of a saint and thoroughly enjoyed his numerous conversations. Peter's death was only the beginning of a downward spiral in our business to which the post-Covid economy contributed very considerably. Now, Norbeck, Peters & Ford has been reduced to our remarkable Gail and myself, and Gail is leaving today to follow her own pursuits. This leaves me with no choice other than to close down the website and Norbeck, Peters & Ford as we all have been known during all these many years."
 
"But I must be prepared to evolve, so while Norbeck, Peters & Ford will cease to operate in the first days of December, your collecting needs will continue to be met by me as I will be selling items from my vast personal collection of CDs, 78s, LPs, Books and Ephemera. Please contact me at the addresses at the end of this message."
 
"It is with the greatest sincerity that I appreciate and have enjoyed your faithful patronage during all these years. My hope is that we all may move forward together. When you phone, if you do not reach me directly, please speak with the delightful Renée who is now joining me as I reduce my personal collection. As you already know, my collection of offerings harkens from a time when the astute listener could identify the conductor of a symphony from the style of its performance before the cookie-cutter conductors became globe-trotters leading homogenized orchestras in far-flung cities, and when instrumentalists and singers lived, emotionally, entirely onstage, rather than rushing back to the green room to check text messages. Their lives and their music were thus entirely entwined. They performed in the manner in which they lived – with balance in their lifestyles."
 
"In appreciation and warmest regards, I remain."

A big "Thank you!" to Norbeck, Peters & Ford for all their years of bringing the best of historic music performances to music lovers.

You can contact Jim Peters as indicated above.

Ok, that's all for now. 

As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!