From Clark Johnsen's Diary: A Life In The Arts
Clark Johnsen

"Who has won the most Grammies ever?" I have often quizzed people. Few possess the answer, but many are properly astonished that they lack it. I do give hints, however: This person surpasses the jazzman runner-up by four awards; next comes Vladimir Horowitz, followed by Henry Mancini and Stevie Wonder. Despite the multi-culti lineup, those hints never seem to help! Then, this first week of September 1997, already significant in the annals of death, I add another one: He just died.

"Huh?" they all go.

Indeed, in our fascination over the two deceased women (one the world’s most famous, the other the world’s most respected), the death of conductor Sir Georg Solti caused scarce a media blip. Even The Boston Globe, an admirably music-oriented paper, marked the event Friday with only ten column-inches on page 31; it took until Monday, after Diana’s funeral, for a full appreciation to appear. The local classical-music station too, ever obnoxiously full of themselves and the service they perform, ignored the story in favor of constant updates on the lady celebrities.

For whoever may be unaware, Georg Solti was the conductor who ushered in the modern era of stereo recording. His 1958/1959 taping of Wagner’s Rheingold, followed by a traversal of the entire Ring, appeared under the new Decca Soundstage marque, in which every aural contrivance was utilized to convince the listener that he was "there" — not just there in the opera house, but really there. These recordings have proved durable to this day and over the decades have enjoyed considerable sales and frequent reissue. A veritable mint was spent to make them, and that investment has been handsomely recouped. Even their producer, John Culshaw, gained a measure of fame.

Truth to tell, however, for all their reputed sonic merit — and even today I expect we’ve not heard the best from those tapes — the playing was hard-driven and the singing utterly pallid, compared at least to earlier, more golden perhaps, eras. Thus did many first-time listeners to grand opera (the famed sound suckered them in) eventually reject the whole genre. And rightly so, because what actually endures after the latest sonic fad fades, is the musical artistry. And in this instance that aspect was notably deficient, leading hi-fi hobbyists to become unsuspecting musical savants who recognized singing that failed, whatever the language, to convey emotional or intellectual content.

Fierce, relentless, shallow and brilliant, were only several of the epithets that Solti collected from most critics. Others, especially the English who later titled him, doted on Solti as they did on von Karajan. His star thus rose and eventually he joined the roster after the mighty Reiner as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The recordings that ensued were fierce, relentless, shallow and brilliant. Richard Dyer in The Boston Globe even accused him of making the orchestra sound like the CDs — shrill and glassy. Yet Solti managed to take the band to Europe for the first time, and sales zoomed. Ultimately he was memorialized in bronze in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, as the man who had put the city on the international symphonic map (pace Fritz). The Queen already had lowered her sword upon his shoulder, a British subject who had done another sterling performance.

Then, a veritable miracle! Sir Georg found his musical sea-legs and began to sway with the beat, producing an exemplary late-era series of recordings (and a TV documentary) of the Beethoven symphonies, some of which stand muster with the best that worthy revisionists like Roger Norrington and John Eliot Gardiner can offer, in rhythmic springiness and authentic wood-and-brass-band sonority. (Check out the Eighth. Or even, the mighty Fifth.)

And in that TV documentary Solti was revealed as, not the martinet conductor of yore, rather the gentle papa coaxing his beloved children to give their best. And so they did, even better than for Reiner, who, truth to tell, was an ironfisted taskmaster — although, like Solti too, from Hungary.

Now the great man is dead, his only misfortune having been to pass on in the same week as two more world-reknowned mortals.

I recall a similar coincidence from my pre-childhood, when composer Sergei Prokofiev’s death was totally eclipsed by Stalin’s, the butcher of forty million. With news reports concentrating on the brutal Soviet dictator’s welcome demise (Although, he was our guy in the war! Explain that!), Tovarich Prokofiev’s end went generally unnoted.

So it goes, for a life in the arts.

Tonight I write in grateful recovery from a horrifying experience, although not one so terrible as this morning’s, when 911 was called to get an associate hauled off to the loony bin. But let’s save that one for later.

History story: Back on a mid-Eighties winter Saturday evening I was sitting in my comfy kitchen, playing the table radio and absorbing a novel. Heat, was why I was there, the kitchen being my only room that can get toasty. Downing Black Angus and ale, I slowly realized that the sound had faded so I turned the volume up. Then again, later. Damn cheap transistors!

Along about midnight there was no longer any denying it; I was going deaf.

So! Well, better deaf than death! I thought, guffawing at my private joke and pouring another one. Besides, there are some things I’d probably hate to lose a lot worse!

By one o’clock the silence was complete. I found this condition eerily comfortable. Wrapping myself up, I took a stroll outdoors. Nary an acoustic vibration penetrated. My body floated on an aural void. Sounds of the city and of nature too were entirely absent. The only reflections occurred inside my head.

And what occurred to me was this: Hell! If Beethoven, the greatest composer, could go deaf and become world-renowned, why not an audio engineer? That made me laugh too, long and loud... and wonder whether anyone heard.

Next morning my hearing miraculously returned, but now accompanied by a high-pitched whirring that dug a ragged furrow through my brain. Covering my ears did nothing to help. Later I knew this affliction as tinnitis, to avoid the worst cases of which, people have killed themselves.

My own story has a happy ending, however. The condition departed almost as rapidly as it had come, but I was left without a clue as to the origin. Until, that is, a few weeks later when the same thing happened in my left ear alone! This time I saw a doctor, who removed an alarming amount of ear wax (which I still possess as a trophy).

God! You don’t suppose that poor Beethoven only had...

After several such incidents I learned the signs of incipient wax over-accumulation and began to take preventive measures, some effective but many, I now know, contra-indicated. That means, any procedure involving Q-Tips, tweezers or fingers. The hydrogen peroxide, the warm water, the white vinegar, the flushing bulb, OK; but not the solid implements which only serve to pack it in tighter. Gentle dissolution, be the name of the game. Gentle, and regular.

(The Straight Dope, by Cecil Adams: "The wax coats the outer parts of the ear canal, trapping germs and debris and preventing them from reaching the eardrum. If you didn’t have any your ears would, at a minimum, itch like hell.")

Even still I do occasionally get caught out, like last week when, visiting family and business friends in Iowa and Nebraska, I stayed in motels with outdoor pools during warm sunny weather and for several afternoons played the human amphibian: Reading, diving, swimming, reading... With that amount of imbibition at the very moment when the wax was poised to swell, it swoll magnificently! This happened on my final morning away and plagued me on both flight-legs back to Boston. I seriously considered whether I should ground myself in St. Louis, the discomfort was that great, and airliner pressure variations (or worse, the possible loss of pressure) were no consolation. I was half scared, I admit.

But I soldiered recklessly on and before nine o1clock ended up back home with ears throbbing in pain and suffering severe chills in August. Ever the self-reliant sort, I popped a brewsky and contemplated my predicament: ER or self-treatment. Dashing upstairs I grabbed sleeping bags and pillows; down in the kitchen I turned the oven on full blast, swallowed four aspirin and bundled myself up on the floor.

The radio played as before and again I could barely make out its tune. Lying on one side then the other, dribbling peroxide and warm water into my ears, I was soon lost to the world.

Next day I awoke with a start: Christ! It’s hot in here! Who turned the goddam heat on?! ... Oh! But the chills and the pain at least had subsided, although the hearing was still dim.

Now tonight I’m home from my medical health-care provider (p.c.-ese for nurse) fully suctioned by a torturous-looking tool of the trade — I actually cringed upon seeing it! Also I’m stabilized with antibiotics; an infection had developed, which in adult ears can be severe. And I’m thinking about how best to tell people to care for their own ears, and about that dreadful incident today where I helped commit a woman I confess I hardly know, to the maws of the "mental health" system. And I have been trying almost hourly to contact her new protectors. They aren’t returning calls.

Quite the thing. I can’t imagine which I would rather wish on anyone, having recently experienced both: The agony of tinnitis and deafness, or watching a good, kind person of whom you have become temporarily in charge, go bonkers.

One more thing: My health-plan person informed me that I have complicated ear canals. Of course! That explains everything! But... what, exactly? Why I am more interested in timbre, than in "imaging"’? Why I do however hear the bird fly overhead and down around inside, in this very special record I have (a rock’n’roll version of Peter and the Wolf, Brian Eno the keyboard player), when others do not?

Could all variant aural opinion be just undue wax accumulation and curlicue canals?

A final word to the wise: KEEP ‘EM CLEAN!

One happy outcome: A new audio product! EAR-BRIGHT!™ Spray it into both ears weekly for finer results! Only $24.95! Dealer enquiries invited.

Years ago a letter was circulated to high-end parts makers, informing them in vague terms of several ideas for improvements in areas never before addressed and would anyone care to discuss these with a view also towards monetary compensation.

I heard back only from George Cardas. And even he, left me with a, "Well, whatever." So never did I disclose any of my concepts.

Now here’s one for free!

In nearly every amplifier today one finds two devices in the current path that, now you think about it, surely must impede fidelity. Imagine: Every Krell and Cary have these dull gray metallic things inserted directly into the electron stream and who knows what that color might mean? Iron? Steel? Nickel? Aluminum? Nor are they connected by solder, but metal pressed to metal! Bad!

Introducing: Fuses and fuse holders.

Astoundingly, these aren’t even gold-plated yet!

In your mind’s eye push and twist that cheap plastic fuse-holder out. Look at it and ask yourself, Is this component in my He-man amplifier an iota better than what I can buy at Radio Shack? Look at it, all dingy and gray. Yet through these tinny connectors flows the power you’ve paid $99, $180, $240, $600, $1800 or even (blush!) $3000 for special AC cords to deliver!

Fool! (Never mind I may have advised you to buy some.)

The truth is far worse, however, than surface conditions imply. Now in your mind’s eye peer inside the delicate little fuse itself and tell me you don’t feel faint.

Some amplifiers have many more than one of these parts, often in the outputs as well. And just think what speaker cables cost, those hawsers that anchor heavy tonnage to kilowatt generators — with all current passing through a wire the size of a spider’s web.

Corollary issues arise. If most audio cables are directional — why not fuses? Do brand differences exist? What about, susceptibility to mechanical vibration? And those nearly-visible, current-induced filament oscillations? Where are the sonic spec sheets? The detailed analyses and reviews?

(Also, what about back at the junction box? We may boast "dedicated wiring," but where are our high-end circuit-breakers?)

Gentle reader, I suggest to you that designers and academics and writers have failed us miserably once again, this time in an elementary (and, they wish, but cannot prove, trivial) area. If such persons had ever thought it thoroughly through, these critical applications would have been addressed and solved by now.

And aren’t these also the same people, many of them anyway, who push five-thousand-dollar amplifiers in four-color magazines with three lousy gray 10 cent fuses in the way?

Today Jerry brought in the Parasound C/BD-2000 transport to hear how its CEC-made belt-drive feature might be improved by placement on the Vibraplane isolation table. For reference we had my G&D Transforms unit, which for $695 knows no nearby rival. G&D, by the way, claim that their electrical fixes obviate any need for mechanical modifications; in truth the unit benefits both from Vibraplane and Black Diamond Racing or Golden Sound cones underneath.

The Parasound ($1500), an impressively heavy thing, was placed nearby the G&D on my width-extended Vibraplane. Both units were outfitted with ElectraGlide power cords and correct AC polarity orientation for each was determined. Twice then we ran through the cycle of G&D/Parasound and Vibraplane up/down. (Note that "down" still affords some isolation.) The results were not long in forthcoming.

In "down" mode the G&D handily held its own; with Vibraplane full on, while both units were markedly improved, the Parasound gained ground, exhibiting a very noticeable ease of "pace and rhythm," as they say, and in other departments too becoming the equal or better of the (much cheaper) G&D.

It would seem that Vibraplane is one component to survive the digital evolution! At least until all those blinkered designers and manufacturers begin to listen and understand what isolation does, and why.

PS: This response comes from nice-guy Tony DiGiovine of G&D: "The belt drive on the Parasound only deals with one aspect of mechanically-induced jitter. The rest of the design is fairly generic — standard clock with a cheap crystal and no jitter correction at the output. The Parasound is still susceptible to all other forms of mechanically-induced jitter, including acoustic feedback. This would explain why changes in the Vibraplane had more effect on the Parasound. I suspect that vibration has little effect on the data error rate, only on the clock. Remember, the crystal is a mechanical oscillator, and with 5 volts across the wafer it is also a ceramic pickup."

"It seems you must spend an awful lot of money (Parasound + Vibraplane) to approximate the performance of our entry-level transport."

Well, yes, OK, but, that combination was better! And should point the way, perhaps, to anyone who dares to try! Meanwhile, I agree with Tony: For the money, buy the G&D!

For whatever reason — hum reduction, AC polarity correction — it often becomes necessary to eliminate the ground connection that comes on most UL-approved power cords. One of course may agreeably snip that little hollow prong off, but most people employ a cheater. Some systems I’ve seen use half-a-dozen of these, leading one to wonder, what about degradation in sonic quality?

Glad you asked! As best of the lot I now recommend the Eagle #419 (59T - 79T), all-brass and quite tight. For this discovery we are indebted to Brad Lehnert of Virtual Mode (203-929-0876), who offers a long list of inexpensive aids mostly of his own devising. Call today!

And the irrepressible Bob Crump of TG Audio & Bubba’s Barbeque in Dallas highly esteems Eagle’s wall-outlets as well. Mine not to question why a $1.99er (from America’s oldest maker of such) should outperform an expensive hospital Hubble, I took it on authority and installed them throughout the Studio, to good effect.

Words to the wise.

4. A True Story

I lent an AC cord out. It was not broken in. I told the guy to warm it up 24-hours-a-day on an auxiliary system. He did so.

A week later he called back. The results were striking. Descending to his basement playroom to retrieve the thing, he sat down and listened for a moment. His old Sansui ‘6000 receiver now had width! ... depth! ... body!

"Clark, if I had known how good my old equipment could be made to sound, I’d never have gotten involved in all this high-end stuff."

Take a bow, HSR-I ($220) from TG Audio.

AC cords! More important than any other cables!

5. It Came In Through the Bathroom Window

Recently I was discussing with Bill Gaw — he of the immense Edgarhorn/Electraprint system in New Hampshire that serves as my quality reference — the weekly and diurnal variations that inexplicably affect sound reproduction. And he remarked, "You should have been here last night, it was really glorious!"

To which I exclaimed, "You always say that, about when I’m not there!" To which he replied, "OK, wise guy, next time I’ll call when it happens. It only takes you an hour to get up here!"

Point taken. But as to the chief mischief-maker, we are both convinced of airborne ingress. "It certainly can’t be just Edison Company generator junk," I observed for the nth time.

"Certainly not," Bill said, who then delivered this zinger: "Not when you’ve got the world’s largest antenna farm hooked up to your system!"

Never before has one single writer so dramatically altered the audio literary landscape. Corey Greenberg burst upon us in a blaze of off-color glory, fresh from the Internet where he had previously appeared, much to the consternation of those stolid types. Stereophile Editor John Atkinson had been lurking there to scout wayward writing talent, thus a new prose style was midwifed: Gonzo Audio.

After Corey, no longer could one say plainly how anything looks, works and sounds; one must also entertain, and vastly, exuberantly, profanely. To Corey’s everlasting credit and curse, audio text now must read like Corey Greenberg, to excite the audience.

Alas, Corey was eventually sacked for insubordination (surprise, surprise!); but can it really be three years this month since classic Corey-style disappeared? How times fly! Meanwhile our boy has been passed around from Home Theatre Review to Audio to Stereo Review like so much jailbait. Poor kid! A prison punk! Listen to him now, vastly chastised:

"AC-3 is a much more neutral and revealing audio format than analog Dolby... I think even hard-core audiophiles will be surprised at how most if not all of their current objections to data-compressed audio simply vanish."

(Stereo Review, March 1997)

Julian Hirsch, anyone?

Or, in a more confessional vein:

"Why I wrote about these things [triode and pentode modes of a tube amp], I have no clear explanation except that I was so caught up in the audiocrap rat race that I jumped the tracks and was too far gone to know it."

(Audio, May 1997)

Not so inimitable, eh?. And what a revoltin’ development too! The man must make a living, however, fallen opportunistic spirit though he be; but because we all miss his daft, original, scintillating, over-the-top Stereophile style, this magazine has undertaken to sponsor:

Do something to mitigate your sense of loss! And be the lucky winner of space in an underground publication! In 300 words or so, equal or excel Corey at his own former game. To give you some idea, here’s how an entry might read:

Feeling suitably inspired? Winner receives a one-year free subscription to Positive Feedback and an unexcelled opportunity to appear in print. Decision of the judges is arbitrary, but final. Residents of Texas are disqualified, including Joe Bob Briggs and Joe Roberts; anyway they’re too funny already.

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