Ha. Mapes address is #1 Wire Mill Road. Been in business since 1912. I had never heard of them.

A full set of strings for a Steinway D is only $273. That's pretty cheap compared to the price of the piano. But there's the labor to install and tune....and retune.

With the TRefs I can hear the most subtle differences in piano setups. Some pianos are regulated bright, others mellow. Some -- usually older -- recordings reveal distinct piano setup problems, with semi dead- or strange-sounding keys in parts of the keyboard range. It would be interesting to know the history on some of these.

Horowitz in Moscow is a great recording and performance, and they shipped his personal piano there for the performance.

Charlie

Wayne and Charlie,

Ear Tech Music is a part of Ear Technology Corporation. Dr. Dan Schumeier, founder of Ear Technology is an acquaintance. My former assistant at Epic Technologies now works for Ear Tech. Their facilities are about a mile from my house.

Close to Lynchburg TN is the town of Tullahoma, TN - home to George Dickel, another good Tennessee Sour Mash sipping whiskey.

Best,

Art

Cool Bro Art, my contact there at EarTech is Richard Trent, seems to be a real gentleman.
As are the Tennessee whiskeys!!!

Interesting about the strings and piano sound Bro Charlie. Piano sound varies hugely in my experience, whether it is from the piano, the artist, or the recording.

God Bless,
Wayne

Speaking of piano recordings, did any of you listen to Stereophile's recording of the month Feb 2018? Robert Silverman playing Chopin "Last Waltz" and recorded by none other than Ray Kimber with his ISOMIKE setup.
I am sorry Ray, Robert, Fredrick, I don't hear it.
Quite a poor recording to me and not so great a performance either.
Lifeless is how I would describe it, for the most part. It does have its moments.
Anybody heard it, comments?
God Bless,
Wayne

Wayne,

I haven't listened to this recording. I looked for it on Tidal, but it's not there.

I hadn't heard of the IsoMike. I did find this YouTube description of it.


Basically, he's concentrating on time delay to produce the imaging while keeping both channel amplitudes about the same. What a beast!

A few weeks ago I did a similar experiment where I created a stereo track (of woodblocks in an orchestra) and delayed one channel by 5 samples (at 44.1 kHz), then delayed the same channel 10 samples, etc., until I got to 20 samples. In all cases the volume was kept constant. For my setup, that was equivalent to about 1.5 inches of speaker-to-ear distance for each 5 sample delay. (I was trying to see how sensitive imaging was to speaker/ear distance differences.) So, basically, this was equivalent to pushing one speaker directly away from me by 1.5 inches per test.

I found that it was hard to discern a difference with only a 5 sample delay, but I could easily detect an image shift with 10 samples or more (3 inches of speaker/ear distance difference or more). But a funny thing happened. As I got to 20 samples, the image had shifted nearly to the opposite speaker, but the sound became increasingly "phasey", like you hear when speakers are hooked up out of phase. By doing this experiment with both channels (successive delays right, then successive delays left), I was able to hear a slight asymmetry in behavior, which led me to measure my speaker positions. I found that one speaker was 1 cm closer than the other. After I moved it, the test was symmetric and the imaging seemed better. (After all that work, it may have just been my imagination!)

I did another test where I kept phase constant and successively reduced the volume on one channel. I found that the image moved toward the louder speaker, and it was more coherent all the way over.

I think our ears work on a combination of amplitude and phase differences. Phase can get you some information, but amplitude is better and, probably both amplitude and phase is best. Like binaural recordings.

I think IsoMike, by concentrating on phase only, is going to be limited in it's ability to create a coherent image and may produce a more defocused image. Maybe that's what you heard?

Charlie

Thanks Bro Charlie, Interesting.
I think this MIGHT work better, the Isomike thing, for his LP, but not sure. To my ears, it did not help, did not make as good a recording as MANY piano concertos I have, I mean, not even nearly as good.
Maybe that explains why I never liked Kimber cables. Maybe the man and I just have a very different idee of what sounds good.
Who knows?
God Bless,
Wayne