Peter McGrath

Peter McGrath is a recording engineer, photographer, and longtime advocate for high-fidelity sound reproduction whose career has spanned more than five decades. He has worked extensively with organizations including Harmonia Mundi, the New World Symphony, and Friends of Chamber Music. In addition to capturing performances by leading orchestras, chamber ensembles, soloists, and vocalists, he has also served for many years as a Director of Sales at Wilson Audio, acting as a key voice for the company’s approach to music playback and loudspeaker demonstration. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 https://Lectio365.com ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Rick Rubin?

  Tetragrammaton.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Given the nature of how I record, more so perhaps than most, because, Rick, I have always believed in minimal miking, which means that I'm sort of using the sound by positioning instruments relative to each other, by position, to try and get a balance with a pair, or maybe four mics, or whatever, but as minimal as possible. So therefore, how they're interacting with each other and the room becomes an incredibly important component. A lot of times with multi-miking, you can minimize the effect of the room. You just go in close and, God forbid, even add a room to it later, you know, vis a vis whatever DSP you want.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  But my approach is born out of maybe ignorance or simplicity, but it's what I've always done.

• 1:14Rick Rubin?

  If musicians are used to playing in a certain position, but the recording would benefit from them being in a different position, how do you approach that?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  If it's in a concert situation, I try not to mess with it. Because the primary purpose of their doing what they're doing is for them to be comfortable in the concert setting. And I don't want to get in the way of their doing what they do. So I have to make decisions about altering my technique of what mic to use or where to put them. I just did a recording of the Jerusalem Street Quartet. Normally, I would do things with a pair of spaced omnies, because they give me a beautiful sense of air, but they were really, really, really tight. And the room was not a good room.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  And so I went in, Rick, with a AKG C24, which is a classic blue blind mic. And I almost put it inside of them. And when you hear the playback, it's like they're right here.

• 2:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  There was no room to begin with.

• 2:19Rick Rubin?

  The room wasn't additive in that case.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It was not additive and frankly, in some ways best ignored to minimize the effect of it. And that's a totally different sound of a string quartet than typically I would capture in a great room. And sometimes they sit a little bit too close of an arc. I might ask them to expand the arc if they are comfortable. And if not, I'm fine with that. I'll deal with it because they're not there to serve my recording. They're there to perform. In a recording session, however, we could spend hours moving people around because I'm chief.

• 2:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  You know, you're going to have to figure out how to do this because I need you there. And typically, that's how we did it. I mean, we did a Messiah, Handel Messiah, Robina Young, my producer from Harmonia Mundi, with Phil Harmonia Baroque from Berklee and chorus and organ and soloist with two mics.

• 3:21Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  You would never guess that it was done that way. But it was a question of doing it, you know, making it work. And I think today singularly remains one of the most beautiful Messiahs. It's on Harmonia Mundi and it featured a wonderful soprano by the name of Lorraine Hunt, now known as Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. And years ago, I don't remember how many, we were doing a project with the Phil Harmonia Baroque, with the conductor Nick McGeehan, who is now their conductor emeritus. That's how far back this was. But he brought along this beautiful woman.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Who wanted to be auditioned by Robina Young, my producer from Harmonia Mundi. And she was a former violist, but she also happened to have a talent for singing. Little did we know the level of that talent. And Nick, the conductor, brought us and said, "We finished our session." We were at Lucas Skywalker. "We finished our session. We had a few hours left." And Nick said, "Do you mind, Robina? I'll play the harpsichord and just let her sing. We'll sing a few handle pieces." And Peter, "Make sure you let the tape roll." You know, because I was doing analog tape back then. And I did. And she came out and started singing. And Robina's partner, Renee, you know,

• 4:48Speaker 01

  he's very typically French. "No, no, Peter, we have a dinner reservation in Spanish and we don't have time for this." And Robina says, "No, no, no. Nick brought her here. We're going to listen to her." And I sort of said, "I'd love to hear her too." Because she was frightfully, stunningly beautiful. It was just... So I was influenced. And she started singing. And all I remember, Rick, was about a minute and a half in, I had to restrain from leaning over the tape recorder so that my tears would not fall on the tape pack.

• 5:21Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Then I look over at Renee. His eyes are streaming with tears. And Robina has this incredible smile of discovery on her face. It was just the three of us in the back there. And that was Lorraine Hunt Lieberstein. And she went on to become one of the greatest singers of our time. We lost her too early. Then she went on way beyond us. She was singing for everybody. She married the son of Goddard Lieberstein and she put out an album of songs by Neruda. She was breathtaking. And people who know of her consider her one of the greatest. And then we did The Hallel Messiah with her. And it was a challenge only that we didn't know

• 6:06Speaker 01

  if we could actually make it work with just this purest approach. But we were able to do it. And she just drives this thing to the highest possible level. And yeah, that's one of the great, great experiences of my life, recording an artist of that level.

• 6:20Rick Rubin?

  Can we listen to that?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. I found this. This is the Messiah. Lorraine Hunt. This voice. Forgive me if I start crying when I hear it. Two bikes.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  He was despised,

• 7:15Speaker 02

  despised and rejected,

• 7:27Speaker 02

  rejected and murdered,

• 7:37Speaker 02

  a man of sorrows,

• 7:49Speaker 02

  a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

• 8:52Rick Rubin?

  Was that recorded in front of an audience?

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I have the commercial one, which was not. But we did a concert and then we did the record.

• 8:59Rick Rubin?

  Is it ever a problem with an audience in terms of the sound?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Depends, sometimes, but it's part of the real thing. It's part of the real thing. Actually, my recollection with Lorraine, we took that whole aria in one take.

• 9:13Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the reality is that when I started my record label in 1979, my partner in that label was a gentleman by the name of Julian Krieger. And I had the pleasure of recording people like Leonard Shure, Ivan Davis, Earl Wilde. I did the last recordings that Earl Wilde did. It was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. And the reality was that Julian and I came from the approach that we're dealing with masters. We're not asking them to record something they probably haven't performed 200 times in their lifetime. We would rather that they not rely on editing.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Obviously, if something had to be cut, we would cut. And we were doing this on tape. You know, scissors and splicing and actually cutting the master, 30 IPS master, and taping it together, not, you know, some edit point on a computer. And so we encouraged them and discouraged them from doing a lot of retakes. Or we would do like a whole movement and pick the best of the three whole movements that we did. Because we felt that it was more musically legitimate. And the ones that we worked with came to rely on that. And they actually, it was not easier for them, it was better for them.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  And I think that resulted in recordings that more realistically approached a musical event, rather than something that's pastiched and put together that would never have been able to exist in real life. And that was the approach that Julian had, and I couldn't have agreed more with it. And so, now, sometimes, some of our actual commercial recordings might have an occasional slip or wrong note, and we left it in, because to go in and correct it, Julian and the artist would agree that that would destroy that kind of spirit, that was the momentum that was already happening.

• 11:19Rick Rubin?

  And the humanity in the recording. It's a human playing an instrument. It's real.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  And if a piano bench made a noise, so be it, you know? It was okay. And our recordings, the label is still in existence. Unfortunately, we lost Julian last year. I had a partnership with him for 40 years. He was my closest friend. He married Elizabeth, and his wife is a judge. She actually performed the ceremony. So it's how far we go back, you know? And his organization, Friends of Chamber Music, that organization still continues in Miami, and I'm now helping with his sons to continue to drive it. And I'll be recording all their recordings as long as I physically can. So, this is the thing with the, I referenced where I put the bike inside of the Jerusalem Street Quartet.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Again, they were fairly tight in a circle. This is not a great hall, but tell me if you don't think that they're here.

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• 19:17Rick Rubin?

  Explain to me about time alignment, both from a recording perspective and from a playback perspective.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  That's a good question. The time alignment here, this mic, by the way, which was designed by AKG, I think in the early 60s. It's a vacuum tube design. And this is what subscribes to what's called the Bloomline technique, which means that the two capsules are in virtual coincidence. The capsule is what's called a figure of eight, but they are in precise coincidence with each other, and they are opposed at 90 degrees. So the left channel is this bottom capsule looking over there, and the right channel is the top capsule looking over there.

• 20:04Rick Rubin?

  In one mic?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  In one spot. They're literally physically within millimeters of each other.

• 20:11Rick Rubin?

  Inside the capsule, there are two microphones aimed at 90-degree angles.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Exactly correct.

• 20:16Rick Rubin?

  Left and right.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  And that is considered, in many ways, the classic stereo approach, meaning that you don't have any time delay, you don't have any cogging effects, any kind of cancellations. You're capturing essentially the essence. In that regard, the time alignment is essentially what the microphone is doing. Now, in time alignment of the playback, which you're achieving here with Andrew Jones speakers, and we worked very hard to do that on our Wilson speakers, is that as the various frequencies come out of the various drivers, you want all of those frequencies to be arriving at your ear in the same time sequence that the recording actually captured. He has done this very cleverly

• 21:02Speaker 01

  by using a dual concentric driver, so that the time alignment is essentially done.

• 21:08Rick Rubin?

  So the high-end tweeter is inside of the mid-range speaker?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Of the rest of the driver.

• 21:14Rick Rubin?

  The full range speaker.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this is a two-way driver, and the high frequencies are coming, along with all the other frequencies, are starting at the same place and time, so that there's no smearing of the various frequencies arriving.

• 21:28Rick Rubin?

  And this method limits it to... One two-way speaker essentially.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Precisely, exactly. Which is clever, the way he's done it. He's mastered this.

• 21:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  He's a very bright guy. He knows what he's doing.

• 21:40Rick Rubin?

  Absolutely.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  And it's very difficult to make drivers that work this effectively.

• 21:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  The way Darryl and David, Darryl Wilson, David's son, have always done it is using bigger drivers, more of them, to achieve a more expansive approach, but to be able to physically move the drivers relative to each other so that the ICHD, the actual start of the sound, by moving it forward or backwards, it's like a lens. We can change the focus of the lens.

• 22:10Rick Rubin?

  Understood.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  So that if you want it to sit 10 feet further back, we could adjust them so that all of the drivers give you the sound as if it's coming to one point.

• 22:20Rick Rubin?

  And that happens physically. It's not a rendering.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  It's a physical fact, yeah.

• 22:24Rick Rubin?

  So the speakers are essentially in separate boxes.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  In separate boxes in different places. And then we can move them forwards and backwards independently of each other. On our biggest model, we could actually get the timing down to almost four microseconds.

• 22:40Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  And the idea is to mimic what the microphone does, to make the speaker a point source. Now, not many recordings are made the way the one you just heard. There's a lot of time smear, but that's okay. You don't want the speaker to be adding. And many times, the time smear in the recording is part of the artifact of the process. It could be very delightful. You know, it gives you the sense of depth, that it gives you all of the other wonderful things that delight the ear when you're playing back reproduced music. What's kind of interesting, Rick, is that I feel very privileged to have been involved in the aspect of music reproduction.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Both in terms of capturing it, and also in terms of how to reproduce what has been captured. By no means a recording engineer of great training or a speaker designer, I don't profess. I'm an interloper between these two incredibly massively complex technologies. And there aren't many people who've done that. I mean, most engineers, because it's a daunting process. You know, their job is to make recordings.

• 23:52Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  And by the way, one of the things that attracted me to David Wilson was David Wilson, first and foremost, as a recording engineer.

• 24:00Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know that.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, he started as a recording engineer. He started with purest principles, two microphones. I'll tell you a wonderful story about that is that I was working on my graduate degree in photography, which is what I've studied it. It was 1971, I was in Chicago and attending the Illinois Institute of Technology, where at the time they had the finest graduate photography program in the country. And I went there to study with Aaron Siskind, who had just left to teach at Rhode Island. And I was really upset. And they got in this character that I'd never heard of before to be the chief teacher for the incoming year, fellow by the name of Gary Winogrand, who I'd not known.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  And you know how life can be. You have expectations of one thing. Well, Gary came in and he became the greatest influence of my life.

• 24:53Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  We would spend time listening to Mozart Arias together. If you don't know who he is, he's, I think, one of the greatest photographers of the 20s, Gary Winogrand. He kind of, he took the genre of Beaux-Arts to another level of street photography and had a profound. And again, simple techniques. One camera, one lens, how you approach the world, you know, and no modification of the image, just translate with the negative capture into a print, you know. And these are sort of the guiding principles of how they overlap in the world of recording and making images. Because after all, you're capturing events. And you're trying to reproduce those events.

• 25:34Rick Rubin?

  In both cases, you're a documentarian.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think I am, yeah. Although I don't have a real narrative. I let what has been documented be the narrative.

• 25:44Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  I'm letting people bring their minds to see the story that has been captured.

• 25:48Rick Rubin?

  Absolutely.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  And not dictate.

• 25:50Rick Rubin?

  Well, all the information is in the recording.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  It's there. It's there. And words that you attempt to apply to them sometimes can weaken it. So I'm suspect of that, you know, always have been. Anyway, I was, I was working at a high-end audio shop while going to graduate school. And this character wanders in one day. He had a beautiful wife following him. He walks in. Back in the day, Rick, people walked into hi-fi stores with a stack of LPs that they wanted to hear. So he came in with half a dozen LPs and and he announced that I'm in the market for a stereo preamp. I have everything else. I just need a good preamp. And the store I was working with was a precursor to what later became known as high-end audio stores.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  They didn't exist back then, although this one was run by two gentlemen. They both had doctorates in musicology. And their training of me and my wife was, here are tickets to the Chicago Symphony, second row balcony. And if you don't show them to us as having been snapped, don't bother coming back.

• 27:03Rick Rubin?

  That was your education?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  That was my education.

• 27:05Rick Rubin?

  To work in the store?

• 27:06Speaker 01

  To work in the store. It's to attend the symphony, train your ear, listen to what sound is, become passionate about it. That's how they started me. And that was really back in the day, that's what audio was.

• 27:19Rick Rubin?

  How old were you at that time?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  I was just coming out of the university. I went to the University of Notre Dame. I would have been 22. I worked through college as an audio engineer, doing recordings. That was my college scholarship at Notre Dame. So I'd been exposed to the technology and so forth. But so I, I kind of knew my way around it and had a natural proclivity for it. I actually got off on a tangent, then another tangent. But I'd like to go back to, this guy came into the store with a bunch of records and wanted to buy a preamp and so. I played him three different things and he finally selected one. And it was an audio research, SP something or other, of that era, one of the very first ones.

• 28:02Rick Rubin?

  A tube preamp.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  A tube-designed preamp. He took the preamp home. And I'm at work at one night, and I see him carrying it. And he walks in the door and sees me and says, "Oh, no, Peter, it's not what you think." I said, "Okay, I wanted to show you something wonderful. I hope you like it." So he puts it down on the counter, whips out a screwdriver, takes the cowling off. "Look inside," I saw. There's this green card, these green card holders that were part of the original thing. Reaches into his shirt, puts in a card. He says, "This preamp is now exactly what it was when you sold it to me." "Oh, okay. Now, I'd like to show you what I did to it."

• 28:48Speaker 01

  I said, "Well, you got to understand, it's no longer under warranty." I said, "I get that, I get that, not a problem." He puts the card in, says, "Now, this is what I was actually after." And I have to confess, I wasn't really looking for a preamplifier for home. You see, I'm starting a record company. And I've been shopping the world for microphone preamps. And the thought occurred to me that none of them can be as good as the world's best photo preamp. But the problem with photo is the RIA, which is an equalization for the cartridge. So when I put this card in, it has the RIA.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  When I take this card out, put my card in, it bypasses all of the circuitry of the RIA. And I now have 60 dB of gain. 60 of the most beautiful dB of gain. So this will now become my microphone preamp.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  For the start of my recording company. That was David Wilson.

• 29:54Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  I didn't know him from Adam back then. He didn't know me from Adam. And a thought went through my brain. I said, this guy is someone I have to know. And I will follow him.

• 30:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  And it turns out, we hit it off. We became friends. He moved to California. I moved down to Florida to start my audio file store. David then started his recording company. He left. And then we met up again at hi-fi shows. He had these little tiny triangular speakers that he was showing his recordings. Because that's what he was selling. He had organ, chamber music, various ensembles that he... He actually did some beautiful choral recordings at Trinity Cathedral. But what really struck me were the little tiny speakers that he was playing. And people like me started saying, Dave, you should maybe find a way to build... Oh, no, no, no. That'd be way too expensive. No, no, there's so much that I have to put into them.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  And then Cheryl, his wife, said, you know, Dave, there might be an opportunity for us. They went through three bankruptcies. Then he got to a point where he no longer made recordings. But he came from that background, and that's unique. Is that his whole goal was to make speakers that reproduced recordings that he made.

• 31:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  And that he knew intimately. And many of them involved his wife singing. So it was one of the things that really attracted me to him and him to me. Because at that point, I was starting to make... I got very serious. I'd also had the degree in photography. I'm still, now that the kids are gone and I've become very seriously involved in it again. And one of the joys of working for Wilson is I get to travel a lot. I get to photograph a great deal.

• 31:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  And wherever I go, I have my camera. But back in the mid-'70s, when I was getting serious about making recordings, it was Mark Levinson who posed the question to me. He said, Peter, do you want to be a master at what you do? And I said, yeah, of course. We all strive to do the best we can at it. He said, well, what kind of credibility would you have as a photographer?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  If you didn't know the first thing about what goes on in the darkroom, and all you knew about was looking at pictures, and looking at other people's pictures and so forth. He says, "In order to really understand the medium that you love so much, you have to understand the process." And he said, "The same applies to music. If you want to capture music, you have to not only know about the playback, but you have to become intimately involved as a master with the process of capturing it in the first place." That struck a chord with me, literally. So, "Come with me." And then, for two years, I accompanied him with all of the recordings that he made, while running my store.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Then I ventured out and I started doing more and more local recordings. This is before I started Audiophone Records. Then it got established. But I also started doing recordings for friends. And one of the loudspeaker manufacturers that I loved back then was a company called DCM, Time Windows. And Bob Waterstripe was based in Ann Arbor. And his father was involved with an organization called Something or Other Baroque Orchestra of Ann Arbor. And Bob engaged me to come up with my stouter and my microphones to record a full performance of all of the Bach-Brandenburg concertos.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  That was my first Baroque orchestra that I had done. I did the recording, back then, early days of CDs. I was able to burn CDs and I sent the CDs made from the tape to everybody I could think of. And I had heard that there was a Harmonia Mundi, which was a company that I thought was a pinnacle. Because, again, all their recordings were minimally mic'd, beautifully done. And I sent the CD to a woman that I'd heard was going to be opening up the offices for Harmonia Mundi USA. Her name was Robina Young. Two months go by, I never hear... Yeah, I figure, it's nothing, you know. Then finally, the phone rings at the office and... "Is this Peter McGrath?" And I said, "Yes."

• 34:19Speaker 01

  "The one that recorded the Philharmonia Baroque..." You know, the orchestra. Then she went out to say, "I must tell you, it's easily the worst performance of the Brandenburgs I've ever heard, but the most beautifully recorded. Would you work for me?" It was that simple.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Amazing. That was the basis of it. And she had no idea who I was, but like all of us, we make decisions. There's the evidence. That's what I want. Yeah. How can I make that something I could do?

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• 36:28Rick Rubin?

  When you tell the story of David Wilson as a recording engineer and bringing these triangular speakers, historically, in recording studios, the speakers in the recording studios are not good speakers.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Historically not.

• 36:41Rick Rubin?

  And it's understood that they're these Yamaha NS10s.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  With toilet paper on.

• 36:47Rick Rubin?

  Were a standard in every recording studio.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 36:51Rick Rubin?

  And the reason they were the standard was, they don't sound good.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yep, yeah. Well, David's position was, he wanted to know if he was capturing what he heard.

• 37:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. But it's a revolutionary idea because... In the recording industry, it was never about the playback. It was always about the recording.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 37:12Rick Rubin?

  And for a long time, I'd made it a point to only use the same monitors that I would have in a recording studio in my home to be in tune with that.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  To keep in sync.

• 37:21Rick Rubin?

  But it was not a good idea because I never got to hear music sound great.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And where the exception that I found was typically, the one I worked with the most and is closest to, of course, is Bob. I sold him the speakers. As we got to know each other over the years, when I went through my divorce and sold my business to my employees and my former wife, I was ready. I was done. I didn't want retail anymore. And I mentioned photography. One of my mentors was another photographer by the name of William Eggleston. And he had a, or has, a very talented son, who was a fantastic cabinet maker and loudspeaker maker.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  And I actually became a dealer. The old man, "I want you to listen to my son's speakers." I said, "All right, you know, I'll be happy to. You've been such a kind person to me. Any way I can help it." I heard William III's speakers. When I left my business, I joined him. And I have put him on the map. Unfortunately, like many young starting companies, he brought in an investment group, didn't understand, and we both quit. And that's when Dave Wilson reached out to me, said, "Come join me." It was wonderful. And the way he did it was, he had a pair of our best speakers, which was called the Andra, the Eggleston Andra. And he bought a pair, had them set up.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  He flew me up to Utah. And he had just developed the new Watt Puppy 6. Because I was competing directly with that. Because it's the same bill quality same category. And he had those there. And he said, Peter, now you know those speakers probably better than I do. Set them up as best you can, and I'll set mine up as best I can. And now you listen. And as the old saying goes, if you can't beat them, join them. That's how I joined.

• 39:20Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  It really was wonderful. And it was like coming home.

• 39:23Rick Rubin?

  Wilson really stands apart in the hi-fi world. So many of the manufacturers are small mom and pop shops. And they make limited runs of small things. And they're very interesting things.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  And very good things.

• 39:38Rick Rubin?

  And if you go to a hi-fi show, you'll hear hundreds of amazing sounding systems.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:44Rick Rubin?

  But it feels like Wilson is the only one from that world that has transcended that world. And now it's considered, I want to say, the standard of high-end audio.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  It certainly is. And we're 51 years doing it. And I've been fortunate to be involved in at least half of that time, which is great. Actually, longer than half because I knew it before it even started.

• 40:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  And I met and became very close friend of Dave before Daryl was even a twinkle in the father's eye. You know, so that's how long I've been involved. And we're very fortunate. But reality is, is that, yes, it comes from Dave's mind. The singular dedication. And, you know, he stopped recording because he says, I can't do both.

• 40:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  I can't do both. And I've decided that this is what I really want to focus on. And he also jokes, plus I got you around, Peter.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Which is one of the reasons. And he encouraged me to keep doing it. It's what you do well. And you serve my company extremely well as well because of what you do as a recording person.

• 40:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  It's to my benefit as well as yours. And also, the added benefit is that I could still flourish in my own way as a photographer.

• 41:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. A tip-off to me about Wilson was when I first started going to hi-fi shows.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:09Rick Rubin?

  I would go and see, you know, 200 different systems.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 41:14Rick Rubin?

  And in most of the rooms that had the best electronics of all different kinds.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:20Rick Rubin?

  They all chose Wilson speakers to show their equipment with.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were fortunate, and I helped play a role in that, but so did Dave. Because of the credibility that he had as a recording engineer. And a lot of electronic designers felt that this was a standard. I'll also add that we were known, particularly in the early days, for being a complex load to drive. And if you could make our speakers sound good, you're building a damn good amplifier. You're building a good preamp, you're building a good turntable. Because, you know, our speakers will reproduce the rumble, whatever, you know, that we would provide a challenge and a fulfillment at the same time. And therefore, we were a pretty good tool. Plus, we got to be known as essentially neutral. Meaning that we would serve any kind of music.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Whether it be pop, whether it be rock, whether it be a solo violin or whatever. It would reproduce those things. And we could become a very good one vacuum tube manufacturer. He said that we are the ultimate design tool for him. To try and design his amplifier without us was a bigger challenge than it would be with it.

• 42:29Rick Rubin?

  So Wilson is a traditional cone speaker?

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Has been, and for the foreseeable future will likely remain.

• 42:36Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the other types of speakers, strengths and weaknesses.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Sure. My start in audio, I'll tell you. We were living in Chicago and I interviewed for this high-end store. Because he came into another store that I was working at that sold Bose, sold Mac, sold JBL, all of the stuff. And he came into the store with a pair of headphones that he wanted to sell to our manager, Stacks Electrostatic Headphones. And the manager said, play them for that kid. And he'll tell me what he thinks of them. And David brought the headphones over to me. And I had to connect them to an app and I listened to them. I said, these are amazing, but you know, I don't think this store is geared. He said, well, at least you have ears, you can tell.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  And I said, yeah, I aspire to be involved in this business and many other things. He said, well, my offices are about four blocks down the street. Why don't you come in for an interview? Maybe we could use you. Fine, I show up for an interview with my wife. And David is standing there in the hallway at the beginning of the store. He's talking to me about what they do. They're principally an import company. Back then, they were importing products from England, Saks headphones from Japan. We imported the first Linde Sandek turntable in the country and so forth. But he's telling me all of these things that they do and this, that and the other.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  And I'm getting more and more irritated with him because from the other room, someone is playing the sarabade for box suite number three. Excuse me, Mr. Shooks, but can I go see who's playing the cello in the other room? It's, oh, yeah, be my guest. And I walked around into it. It was a pair of quad speakers. It was a Tortellier playing the box suite.

• 44:27Rick Rubin?

  So it's the first time you ever got fooled by speakers, thinking it was a musician in the room?

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Precisely. And it was a come to Jesus moment for me. I mean, at that point, I realized, this is frightening. But this could be my fall from the horse kind of thing. And I pulled up a chair and just continued listening. And probably for the next 10 years of my life, I own those speakers.

• 44:51Rick Rubin?

  Now, how do those speakers work? They're a different design?

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Pure electrostatic.

• 44:54Rick Rubin?

  What does that mean?

• 44:55Speaker 01

  It means that it has, and the speaker, by the way, was designed, it was called the Quad 57, because that was the year that the speaker was designed.

• 45:06Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  And it was the first quad electrostatic.

• 45:11Rick Rubin?

  Where's quad from?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Huntington, England. Unfortunately, no longer. Now they're made in China. But the company still is based in Huntington, I believe. So it's a thin Mylar film. And two larger ones that would produce the lower frequencies. Then another panel in the middle with again Mylar film. With three sections, two of which were mid-range and then the tweeter. Section, but it was a crossover of the speaker that would divide the frequency.

• 45:41Rick Rubin?

  So they're flat, they're not a box?

• 45:43Speaker 01

  No box at all, flat, with no boundary in the back either. And so it radiates out equally both in front and back. And what drives it is, forgive my layman terms, because I don't really know that. There's a high voltage grids on either side of it. And depending on the alternating current coming from the amp. The Mylar diaphragm, which is plated with a chemical. Would be attracted one way or the other. It would vibrate. An almost massless diaphragm. Responding to the electrical impulse of the signal. And to this day, they still remain. The limitation, however, was dynamics. They can't move a lot of air. But for what I experienced that day.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  And for almost a decade beyond. That was music to me. It reproduced the sound of a violin, the sound of a human voice. But with clear limitations, you know, but nothing that I'd ever heard. While speakers could play louder and go lower. Nothing gave me the beauty that was intrinsic to that. Until Dave Wilson came along.

• 46:52Rick Rubin?

  But the surface area. That was producing the music was much larger than a traditional cone speaker.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 46:59Rick Rubin?

  That was the difference.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  It was possibly that, plus, as you said, no box.

• 47:04Rick Rubin?

  No box.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  There was no enclosure. And the enclosures add coloration?

• 47:10Rick Rubin?

  Did Quad invent that electrostatic?

• 47:12Speaker 01

  No, the founder of Quad was a genius by the name of Peter Walker. And like in many industries, his son then carried on to the next generation. I had many stories about that. My teacher, Gary Widdegrad, for example, as I told you, we listened to Mozart arias when I was still working at the store and we were still taking classes. Gary became addicted to the Quads, as was I. You know, he'd come into the store and we'd listen to music together. He was Hungarian Jewish and I remember vividly Gary would, "You know, Peter, you know what's so beautiful about Mozart? Mozart is about singing, singing." You know, the way, the way he pronounced it. And you know, he's right.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Everything beautiful in Mozart is song.

• 47:59Rick Rubin?

  Lyrical.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  And these goddamn Quads make singing more beautiful than anything I've ever heard. You know, so he became, and then time went on and I was still working at the store. And I said, I called him, but I said, "Gary, I got good news, I got bad news." "What's the good news?" "Somebody traded in a Quad system." "Really?" "Yeah." I said, "The bad news, it's mono, it's only one."

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Followed by a long pause. Then Gary said, "You know, Peter, at this point, I'd rather listen to one Quad than two of anything else."

• 48:32Rick Rubin?

  Wow, amazing.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  That was his line, and he bought it.

• 48:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And they're still in production today?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Well, that model, of course, no longer is. The company was acquired by a Chinese company and they're made in China and they make a bigger one now, a brand new one, which is really quite good. And what they have done in their modern design is they use what's called a concentric delay, meaning that the impulse goes to the outer panel.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  And then in concentric delay lines, it resolves to a single point so that it mimics a single point. So that's how they deal with a large panel.

• 49:10Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Radiating sound, but it reduces, it pinpoints the image.

• 49:14Rick Rubin?

  It sounds focused.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Totally, totally focused. Again, though, they're limited. I mean, they can't begin to approach what we do dynamically. I mean, I couldn't play a piano on a quad. At a realistic level, the way I'm used to playing it now. Or even a voice letting loose, or a Mahler symphony, you know, which I love. And that's where, to my knowledge, nothing can beat cone designs.

• 49:38Rick Rubin?

  What are Magnapans?

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Magnapans are similar. But instead of being a thin electrochemically coated, Magnapans are again a Mylar diaphragm with wires attached to them. So kind of like a giant voice coil running up and down the extreme of the Magnapan. And that is purely magnetic. Magna, magnetic panel. And so it's a purely magnetic system. Although Magnapans of recent vintage combine, and it's still magnetic, instead of being a panel for the high frequencies, they will actually have something that approximates what is called a ribbon.

• 50:21Rick Rubin?

  And what is that?

• 50:22Speaker 01

  It's the inverse of a ribbon microphone. I'm sure you've encountered ribbon microphone. You know, which is a corrugated, thin thing in a magnetic field that the acoustical energy vibrates the ribbon. It's the reverse. You put an electrical signal into the ribbon inside of that magnet, and it creates just the inverse, typically used for tweeters.

• 50:43Rick Rubin?

  How do Martin Logans work?

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Martin Logans are electrostatic combined typically with a woofer in a box.

• 50:49Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  What is still unique to the quad, in my view, is again, the idea that it attempts to replicate a point source. Martin Logans, however, are large paddles. Radiating the same sound everywhere, which I couldn't mix on that. I couldn't recreate the image that the mic captured. It would give me a great sound. For the same reason, I've never been able to use MagnaPans in a professional way, you know, to mix on. Wilson's replicate what the microphone captured in a unique way, in much the same way this does, you know. And the idea of imaging and reproduce music isn't artifact,

• 51:35Speaker 01

  but it's one that's treasured. And if you're really good at recording, you want that replicated. Because you're deprived of the visual component. You can't see what they were doing. But if you can, closing your eyes and having the speakers reproduce where this vocalist was relative to that one, where the drum set was behind that and where that is, that's magic that you want. And I love it. And speakers could do that, you know, good ones. Planar speakers do it in a different way, but not to a way that satisfies my sense of expectation.

• 52:11Rick Rubin?

  Not anymore.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Not anymore. Well, actually, the quads, even the early quads did it. Because again, having the bass pedals outside, the mid-range inside, then the tweeter in the middle, it was pretty much time aligned. And there was a speaker version of that that I made in conjunction with Mark Levinson in the late 70s and early 80s, where we took two of those Quad 57s, stacked them, and then in between, we added a ribbon tweeter. And then on the bottom, we added a 24-inch Hartley woofer.

• 52:47Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  We called it the H Q D. Hartley Quad Deca, because the ribbon was made by Deca.

• 52:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  And that was triapplied. And I established a reputation back in the day of selling those. I sold over thirty pairs of those around the world. And I flew all around.

• 53:05Rick Rubin?

  Did they sound good?

• 53:06Speaker 01

  They were spectacular.

• 53:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  To this day, I continue to run into people at events, whether it be in Europe or... They said, "I wandered into your store and I heard the H Q D and that's what got me addicted to music reproduction." I've never forgotten that experience. Today, that experience we convey with a speaker from Wilson called The Wham! And when people hear that, they'll never forget that experience of listening to music through something that does that.

• 53:37Speaker 05

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• 54:21Speaker 05

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• 55:06Speaker 01

  This first thing that I'm gonna play is an excerpt from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. This, I think, was performed in 1992. Florida Philharmonic Orchestra. The conductor was James Judd, who was the music director and remains to this day one of our closest friends. And I recorded it in one of my early recordings in Suroud. You won't be able to experience it, but what James had done was he had put the brass section up in the balcony, part of the brass. Children's chorus on the two sides and the main chorus on the front along with the orchestra and the solist. Wow. And when you hear it on my system at home,

• 55:50Speaker 01

  played back of the way it was recorded in the 4.0, you're in the hall and these things come at you as if you were there, in that sense. But nonetheless, it's a beautiful, beautiful music. I'll just give a few seconds of it.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  So, that was 1992, now we'll jump to 2025.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  The group called Sarafic Fire, which is based in Miami. They've released many commercial recordings, which I've not recorded, I just do their concerts. It's a choral group. Well, they actually mentioned the name of the organization. This is sort of their premiere piece, and it was performed in their 25th anniversary concert. It's just beautiful.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  Beautiful. How many people were onstage? I think there was probably 25. And obviously, the guitarist. Yeah. That was it. This is a lot of fun, what I'm about to play. This is an excerpt from the Copland clarinet concerto. And he studied with Nadia Moulange in France, as many American composers did in that early part of that century. And her advice to him was, "Go back and sort of focus on music of your country and so forth." And specifically, she was advising him to do jazz. So he wrote the clarinet concerto, and it was dedicated to Betty Goodman, who was the "bleeding guy."

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  So I'm just going to go into a little bit where he has this long cadenza. The clarinetist is a fellow by the name of Alex Fitterstein, who is a major musician. And thank God, he stepped up after my friend Julian passed. And he's now become president of the Friends of Chamber Music. And he's going to help us keep it alive. The orchestra in this case is a Russian orchestra.

• 1:01:04Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful. How many people were onstage?

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  I think there was probably 25. And obviously, the guitarist.

• 1:01:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  That was it. This is a lot of fun, what I'm about to play. This is an excerpt from the Copland Clarinet Concerto. And he studied with Nadia Boulogne in France, as many American composers did in that early part of that century. And her advice to him was, go back and sort of focus on music of your country and so forth. And specifically, she was advising him to do jazz. So he wrote the clarinet concerto that was dedicated to Benny Goodman, who was the bleeding guy. So I'm just going to go into a little bit where he has this long cadenza. The clarinetist is a fellow by the name of Alex Fitterstein,

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  who is a major musician. And thank God, he stepped up after my friend Julian passed. And he's now become president of the Friends of Chamber Music. And he's going to help us keep it alive. The orchestra in this case is a Russian orchestra. It was on the tour that he performed this with them.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  The

• 1:08:31Rick Rubin?

  It's an incredible recording.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you. It really does sound beautiful. It's a Russian orchestra.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  An Israeli Jew on the clarinet, doing the music of an American Jew, Copland, reproducing blues, you know, American blues. It is such a coherently beautiful way. I mean, talk about universality of music.

• 1:08:55Rick Rubin?

  So beautiful.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:56Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:58Rick Rubin?

  Breathtaking.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great, great performance.

• 1:09:06Speaker 06

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• 1:09:45Speaker 06

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• 1:09:50Speaker 06

  Emerging in early monastic life, it engages Scripture through four gentle movements: reading, reflection, repetition, and rest.

• 1:10:03Speaker 06

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• 1:10:45Speaker 06

  letting familiar words meet new moments. A modern way to keep biblical wisdom close, quietly present, steady, and alive within everyday life. Lectio 365 is a free resource. Find inspiration there, now and always. Learn more at lectio365.com.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Next is something sort of strange. This is a group led by Michael Tilson-Thomas, small group from the New World Symphony, which is based in Miami. And I recorded them for the first 15 years of their existence. I was on their board. In fact, I was on the committee to help bring MTT to Miami many years ago. But this is recorded in the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Argentina, because I flew down there with them one year to be with a strange piece.

• 1:13:31Rick Rubin?

  So cool.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  The composer is Doherty, I think, Michael Doherty. But the idea that you've got this American orchestra comprised of music students. They're people who completed their graduate studies, but then they come together and join this ensemble in Miami called the New World Symphony. They sign up for three years, and Michael leads them. And he brings in guest conductors, principals from all over the world to teach them. And right now, it's interesting, and I'm proud to be a part of the New World Symphony. I don't know if the statistic, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 40%

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  of all members of American orchestras that are under the age of 50 came from this ensemble.

• 1:14:18Rick Rubin?

  Wow, great lineage.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  So the idea is, is that you go here, you get polished, you've got your doctor, you got your masters, but then you come into this so that you can get a job. So it's really quite a beautiful thing.

• 1:14:31Rick Rubin?

  So beautiful, I love it.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  Here's another thing, very recent. It's just a Psalm by Frank LaRocca. It's just a classic, Psalm 22, just recorded in a beautiful church in Miami.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  My shepherd is the Lord; nothing in thee shall I want. My shepherd is the Lord; nothing in thee shall I want.

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. Fresh and green are the wilds when he gives me rewards. Here restful waters will lead me to rebuke my light, O big spirit. My shepherd is the Lord;

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  nothing is that I want.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Beautiful. There's a famous folk song, I think it's Carrie Fergus, Irish folk song. And Benjamin Britten did a variation on it called "Oh, Wally, Wally." And the singer, Paul Appleby, he's accompanied by Ken Noda as the pianist, but the singer, Paul, after he performed this, he came backstage. I was practically in tears because it brought back memories. When Elizabeth and I were coming together years ago, we'd been listening to a lot of variations on this particular song. And he said, "You know what, Peter? You know why I performed it?" He said, "My wife now, of ten years, I sang this at Juilliard, and she was a cellist,

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  and she walked in while I was singing it, and she started crying, and we're now married." Wow. But his voice is just beautiful. His name is Paul Appleby. He's now part of the Met Opera.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  The water is wide, I cannot get low. And neither have my wings to fly. Give me a point that can carry me to, and both shall roll, I love and I.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Oh, down in the net was the other day, a gathering flowers, both fine and gay. A gathering flowers, both red and blue. I need to thought, but love can do.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  Beautiful. They're lovely. This I recorded thirty, thirty years ago, '90. It was a Christmas concert in Miami in a cathedral. And the brass ensemble was the then Empire Brass, which were, at the time, one of the best in the world. And Rolf Smedvig, the principal trumpet, there are a couple of things that are interesting about this. Rolf, before they started this track, he went down to the audience and he said, "I need a percussionist."

• 1:19:00Rick Rubin?

  From the audience.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  From the audience. I need a percussionist. And there was this beautiful, cute little, maybe eight or 10-year-old girl sitting on the edge of the... "I'll take you." So he brought her up, and he handed her a triangle. So, that was the percussionist. So, the timing is not exactly perfect, but it's just so... The spontaneity of it. And then, in the middle of the piece, he was fairly far back, and then he walked up and stood where the microphone was, and then blew into it. And these speakers could probably handle it, but let it be loud, because it's just amazing, you know, what the consequences of that are. Then it goes into an organ, and then it goes into a chorus. It's really quite a fun adventure.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Percussionist.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  That's Rolf Smedvig, the best trumpetist at the time in the world.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Now, he walks down, stands next to the mic.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  This is fun.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  We're back to the hermitage. Again, it's the same intensity of beauty, especially the cello.

• 1:27:15Rick Rubin?

  That's fabulous.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  Isn't it? There's an interesting story on the next one. Possibly the greatest gamba player in the world is Yorin Saval. And he's the leader of a group called Esperion 21. He was married to a great, great singer. And he came and performed in Miami. And I recorded him two or three times in different concerts. Then he came one time. I had my mic set up and he's going to perform a solo gamba recital. And he saw the mics as he walked in. And he saw me and he walked over to me and said, you know, Peter, I'm so sorry, but there are some things going on in my life.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  I really don't want this concert recorded. I don't want to explain it, but I just don't want this concert recorded. And I said, okay, you know, but he said, please stay. I want you to hear what I have to say in music, but I don't want it recorded. And it was at a new hall that had just been opened in Miami, designed by Frank Gehry. And Michael Tilson Thomas is there, because this is his hall for the New World Symphony. And he was sitting there with his partner. And so Elizabeth and I went up and sat with him. And during the performance, I saw Michael almost crying, again, tears coming down. And when he was finished, he said, it's a pity, Peter, you did record it, because that's some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard in my life.

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  I said, well, next time. And so we're walking out and he's there greeting people. And he turns to me, says, Peter, I promise you, the next time we're together, you will record. Well, two weeks later, his wife passed. She was dying of cancer. So he was going through this. About eight months later, he's back in Miami with his big group, the Esperian 21. And it's a big event, because there's percussionists from Latin America, there's singers, there's all kinds of early music. Andrew Lawrence King was on the harp, is one of the great Baroque harpers in the world. I mean, it was a stellar star event.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  And I'd set up, I'd been setting up for two and a half hours, you know, anticipating where I had to put things. And finally, just as I'm finishing up, the manager comes over and says, who are you? I said, I'm here with the Tropical Baroque Society. I'm commissioned to record. He says, not in our writer, not in our contract. You cannot record. You know, I said, well, I'm here to do that. And at that point, Jordi comes in, carrying his gamba. He sees me, puts gamba down, walks over and embraces me with tears in his eyes. I said, it's so great to see you. And of course, I knew what he'd gone through and everything. And the name of the manager's name is Pedro.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  I said, but Jordi, I have a problem. Pedro says, I cannot record this. He stares at me.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Come with me. Puts his arm around my shoulder and the two of us walk up. Pedro, this is my friend Peter. If he doesn't record, I don't play.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Amazing. There's so many things that I've had happen like that. You know, where it's about the relationship. It's about whatever you can establish. I mean, I recorded a wonderful pianist, Sirkun, Rudolf Sirkun, one of the last recitals he gave in Miami. He came to play the last three Beethoven sonatas. And I went over the previous afternoon while he was rehearsing. Then I introduced myself. I record concert events in Miami. And I said to him, I'd like to record your recital tomorrow night. He said, why? I said, well, I think it should be recorded. He smiled and he said, I do too. Do it.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  That was it. So I'm addicted to that. You know, more so in the past now, because it's a lot of work. But back then, I had a little Stellavox 15 IPS machine and two B and K mics that I got it. And it was really beautiful. I've never done anything with those recordings. They exist. I don't know what to do with them. But it was a spectacular play. One of the great, great Beethoven pianists of all time, doing three of the great sonatas of Beethoven. So anyway, I've been blessed, you know, to capture. Let me give you a little excerpt of Jordi's concert.

• 1:33:36Rick Rubin?

  It sounds like your mics are inside the kick drum.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Actually, it was sort of this flat thing. He was holding it like this and banging it with a...

• 1:33:44Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  It was amazing. This'll get back to Michael Tilson Thomas with a brass ensemble of New World Symphony, also at Teatro Colon. Wonderful.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  In the Teatro Colore, to do that, to bring the kind of a blues thing there.

• 1:35:51Rick Rubin?

  Interesting that those are classical musicians playing jazz.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  Young classical musicians.

• 1:35:56Rick Rubin?

  Whereas in its day, that music was played by people who only played that music.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:36:02Rick Rubin?

  And this is classical musicians interpreting a foreign thing.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  There's so many crazy mixes of it going on.

• 1:36:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, there's this whole world of music going on beyond the mainstream. So much of what we hear in the mainstream is all the same.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's also interesting, and I don't know where to what to attribute this, but as I mentioned, I was involved from the very beginning with an organization called the New World Symphony. And the idea was, is that when we first started, we'd go out and audition people. And again, the groups were anything from people either freshly out of undergraduate or even those that have already just completed their PhDs as trained musicians. And in every field, whether it be violist, pianist, a few pianists, but mostly strings and brass and so forth. In the first year or two, we had to struggle to find enough because we'd have 100 people.

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  And the idea is that they had lived in the institution, a hotel on South Beach, for three years. And every year, a third of them would move on and another third would come in. In the beginning, I can't remember what the number was, but we had to recruit. Today, to audition those thirty-three, I think we have over five thousand applicants.

• 1:37:27Rick Rubin?

  Wow, every year?

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  Every year. And, you know, what that speaks to in the classical world, there is no shortage of qualified, trained musicians who've chosen to make this their profession, irrespective of the reality that, you know, that there isn't music trained in the schools and so forth. Rick, you see this, I'm sure, in every field of music, is that there's more people who desire to make it a profession than there are opportunities to make a living at it, you know? But it's a good thing that despite the fact that it's not a part of the curriculum as much as I would like it to be, it's still a part of life.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  And there's no shortage of people who aspire to it.

• 1:38:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  And that's a great thing. Whether they get jobs doing it or not, they will always have a passion. They will always have a need. And there will always be an audience, at the very least, if not the creators and makers of it.

• 1:38:33Rick Rubin?

  Has the model of that orchestra been adopted by any other places around the world?

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  There are other youth orchestras, but very successful ones. Claudio Obado, my dear friend James Judd, managed that orchestra for many years. And there are music institutions, but none that have quite what the New World Symphony does. Michael has retired from it. He has unfortunately progressive cancer, which may take him any time. And we have a French conductor who's world-class, who is the head of it now. But there has been no one else, anywhere else, that modeled it, to my knowledge. I may be wrong.

• 1:39:17Rick Rubin?

  And it's so interesting, though, because it sounds like it's a new model that's working.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  Yep, it does work. Fortunately, it's also funded well. I think the principle is...

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  Ted Arison, who's a friend of mine, who was the founder of it, he and his wife, Carnival Cruise.

• 1:39:36Rick Rubin?

  Really?

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Which is based in Miami.

• 1:39:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that would have been the kind of sponsor it would have.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it is, and along with a lot of local sponsors in Miami. They have, I'm not on the board anymore because I just don't have the time. And I don't have the money, and board members, you know, what I contributed as a board member was recording.

• 1:39:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Services in kind, which gets me to another stage of my life in terms of what I've been involved in. For 15 years, I recorded the Florida Philharmonic. For 10 years, I recorded the New World Symphony. For the Friends of Chamber Music, I recorded for the last 20. What I'm getting to, Rick, is that I have an archive of digital recordings. All my analogs were lost because they vacated the warehouse where they were stored, which resulted in a lawsuit, which we fought with for years. But the reality is that I now have, and Elizabeth could attest to this, our house is a storage facility.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  But the problem is that all of the recordings that I made were made when you recorded to tape. Whether it was on a DAT, whether it was on an Elisa's ADAT, whether it was on my Nagra, which I recorded for over a decade, more than a decade and a half. I have master tapes, which are on tape. And at my age now, and I'm still working, I don't know when or how I'll ever get them transferred to a file. Because, as you know, tape can only be transferred to a file in real time. Plus, you have to have the working machine that can do it, which Nagra no longer repairs the Nagra D, and mine is aging.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  It's a conundrum, because at my age, I don't know if I'll live long enough. And yet, they represent a legacy of classical music, reasonably well-recorded, in some cases very well-recorded, in some cases not. And not only of the orchestras that I worked with, but, for example, I have a recording I'll play next of Gergiev, the conductor, you know, doing pictures when he brought the orchestra from St. Petersburg to Miami. And those are things that I recorded. I've recorded all of the visiting orchestras, the LSO, the Orchestre National de Paris, all of the visiting orchestras when they came in.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  And if I wasn't traveling and I was in town, I'd record it. In many cases, for National Public Radio, for broadcast. I was kind of the stringer back then. But again, those recordings, of which I have probably a couple of thousand.

• 1:42:19Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:42:20Speaker 01

  And I have no interest in monetizing it in any way. I just want it to continue to be accessible.

• 1:42:25Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  To people who might have interest in experiencing some of what... Almost everything I played there is on a tape that I had personally already done. And they're good. They're good recordings. I mean, I've listened to a lot of the archives that orchestras have had. You know, it is done with two mics and a grubby machine and limiters or whatever, but these are good recordings.

• 1:42:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah. They're probably better than anyone else's recordings of these groups.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  I would say, in all modesty, I'd say you're right.

• 1:42:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  So somehow, I hope someday to find a way to achieve that goal, but...

• 1:42:58Rick Rubin?

  For sure. You said you were gonna play Gergiev?

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  Valery Gergiev.

• 1:43:02Rick Rubin?

  Oh.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  He's a conductor. I was supposed to record him in Palm Beach. Then he's gonna perform in Fort Lauderdale. Then he's gonna perform in Miami at our new concert hall. And I said, NPR has asked me to do just one. "Oh, Peter, can you do all three? I'd love what you do." And I did.

• 1:43:23Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  So it was very interesting because I recorded all three using the same mic technique in surround. So that you have one of the great orchestras in the world performing the same music in three different venues with the same technique. So that what you're hearing is the difference in the hall with the surround. Yeah, I have those files. So this is really a big orchestra.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  Isn't that amazing? Single point mic, that's it.

• 1:45:49Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  You don't need 20 mics to do it. I mean, if you can do it, you can capture it. One of the issues I do have with digital is not the sound, but how the technology is implemented. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

• 1:46:09Rick Rubin?

  So you use it the same way you would record on tape?

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:12Rick Rubin?

  It's a storage device.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  That's all it is to me, a storage. And the techniques that I adopt are what I always did.

• 1:46:19Rick Rubin?

  So no digital manipulation?

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  I honestly find that the minute I engage an equalizer, the minute I engage a compressor, the minute I manipulate the digital data, even reverb destroys it.

• 1:46:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  All I want is ones and zeros, ones and zeros, and everything analogs this end and that end.

• 1:46:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  That's it, nothing else. And that doesn't mean that there aren't, there's good equipment out there. What it probably speaks more to is my ignorance of how to use those tools. But if someone had it-

• 1:46:51Rick Rubin?

  It works in your favor.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  I think so, because if someone had in me, Rick, a compressor or an equalizer, I would know the first thing to do with it.

• 1:46:59Rick Rubin?

  Often the limitations end up being a real benefit.

• 1:47:02Speaker 01

  Well, thank you, and I think, I think that's it. And it allows me to focus on trying to do my best to not feel I need it. If I could correct the problems by not allowing it to occur in the first place, then I think I'm better off. Now, admittedly, there are halls that I'm in that are so dry. I wish that I could sweeten it, but every attempt I've tried with reverb, but it just makes it sound artificial to me.

• 1:47:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  I've never used them in the analog world anyway, so I've found that they work for me in the digital.

• 1:47:33Rick Rubin?

  When did you first come in contact with Anonymous 4?

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  That was with Harmonia Mundi, and we made their first recording. It was called A Lady Mass. And you know what? At the time, I don't know the figures now, but you may remember the Three Tenors album that came out. Our sales of that recording were second only to that recording.

• 1:48:01Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:48:01Speaker 01

  Which had, single-handedly, it sold more than any other classical recording in the history of time. I had the number two record of all time.

• 1:48:09Rick Rubin?

  That's where I first learned of you. I bought that recording when it came out.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:48:12Rick Rubin?

  Absolutely.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Oh, wonderful.

• 1:48:13Rick Rubin?

  I love it.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  That was done again with just the chef's fear, two-channel mic. Another really fabulous recording that I'm so proud of is the Mozart Horn Concertos with Nicholas McGeehan and the Philharmonia Baroque. We did that session and it was in a church in San Francisco. And we had just completed it. Thank God, we got the last takes. When the head priest of the church came rushing in, "Why are you all still here? I've got a mass." "Never am I going to allow you to back in here." That was it. We'd done like four records in that venue over the years. We loved it. So I'm back in my office in Florida.

• 1:48:58Speaker 01

  And I get a phone call. One of my salesmen, who was a deadhead of all things. Answers, "Hi, Sound Components. Who's calling? Mickey Hart? Ah, no. Who are you? Who's really calling?" And the guy said, "My name is Mickey Hart. I'm in Miami. I'm on tour. And I have a vinyl pressing. And I was told to go to Peter's store to hear it so that I get an idea what it sounds like." "Oh, I'll get Peter." So it turns out it was Mickey Hart. So Mickey comes to the store. We played on a turntable. And it was one of his percussion drum things. He saw my studio in the office. "You record?" I said, "Yeah. Let me hear some of your stuff." And so then I played him the...

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  I said, "But we were just chased out of that church. So that's the last thing I'll ever make of that church." "Really?" He said, "You know, I've got this new studio's Lucas Skywalker. And I'm very close to George. Let me put in a good word for you, you know, to see if I can get you in there." And he did, and he followed up. You know, you never believed that's gonna happen. And he called back, and he got us in.

• 1:50:08Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  And Rene and Romina dropped everything. They flew up there to see it. They said, Peter, this is heaven. So we don't need that church anymore. And from then on, we did about 15 recordings at Lucas.

• 1:50:20Rick Rubin?

  Fantastic.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  And we were the first classical group to ever do anything in that place. Thanks to Mickey Hart of all people.

• 1:50:25Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  The world is, you know, so full of these wonderful chances that you get.

• 1:50:31Rick Rubin?

  Tell me a little bit about the changes you've witnessed in audio playback from those days till now.

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  The sound has not improved or changed all that much. The means by which the sound at its best has indeed changed dramatically. I was not involved pre-stereo, so I've always been in the stereo now. And by the way, for the last two decades, I've been recording in 4.0 surround. Because my goal is to capture not just what's in front, but the sense of behind. Not putting instruments behind, but the whole. That's part of the experience of being in it. But the big changes, well, obviously, the technical shift was going from analog to digital.

• 1:51:18Rick Rubin?

  How big of a change is that? And what's good about each?

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  Well, I think up until the early 80s, I was recording with the state-of-the-art analog. And by that, I mean, it was a highly modified Studer tape recorder, 30 inches per second, half-inch, a quarter-inch, two tracks. The machine was designed and developed by the Mark Levinson Company. In fact, Mark trained me in that machine. And he trained me in the microphones that I used. And I actually accompanied him for years on different projects he was doing, and typically two microphones.

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  That's kind of where I got my dogmatic training from him and a lot of other engineers that I've had the privilege of knowing and loving. Anyway, I started, actually, for Harmonia Mundi, when I was still recording in analog, when I worked with them. But I started using digital as backup.

• 1:52:27Speaker 01

  Started carrying around DAT machines. Also, back then, we had recorders that would record straight to a CD. You know, you could bring the analog signal you're feeding to your analog machine, and then straight into that. And clearly, they were not the equal of what I was getting out of the analog machine. But as the technology started to evolve, and the digital started getting better, there were some areas that I felt that the digital recorders, whether it be a Sony PCM F1, or whether it be devices that would allow me to go beyond 16-bit. My first serious digital recorder was a machine made by Nagra. It's called a Nagra D.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  It was a four-track recorder, although you could use two tracks to double the sampling rate. And so you could record up to 2496. And this is in early, I think, 92.

• 1:53:24Rick Rubin?

  Was that mainly used for film originally?

• 1:53:26Speaker 01

  Well, the original analog Nagras were.

• 1:53:29Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  But they came out with a digital recorder, which was for field music recording. And by far, it was the best thing at the time. It was a bit expensive, but I bought one of the very first that came into the US, along with a lot of my people that I knew. My mentor, Jerry Brook, actually brought that one to my attention. He's regarded by many as one of the greatest recording engineers of our time. And Jerry is, thank God, still with us. But I started with the Nagra. And there were trade-offs still with the best of analog. But one of the things that really impressed me,

• 1:54:12Speaker 01

  you know, and back then, what was the end result going to be? Was the end result going to be a record? Or was it going to be a CD? You know, and at that point, I was mastering all my records with Bob Ludwig.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  To this day, we're still very, very close friends. And in fact, a funny story about that is that when I brought my first, in 1980, it might have been 1981, Bob was at Master Disk in Manhattan, and I brought my tapes up, analog tapes, to cut our first records for Audio Phone, my label. And I listened to his Studer playing the tapes back, and I thought, this doesn't sound right. I'm not sure what it was, I can't remember. I said, Bob, what I really want to hear is what my tapes sound like played on my machine, because that's what I heard. And, well, we can't, I said, yes, I'm gonna come back, and I brought my machine up from Florida.

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  And we listened, and indeed, it sounded different through the playback, but how are we gonna cut this? Well, Bob came up with a crazy, insane idea, which is, we'd put the feed reel, my tape, through his machine, and then have it go over to my machine, running continuously. And we'd adjust the variable speed on his machine, so that they were precisely the same. So his machine would provide what's called the preview for the mastering. My machine provided the signal that was actually cutting the record.

• 1:55:50Rick Rubin?

  Had that ever been done before?

• 1:55:51Speaker 01

  Never. Or since, that I'm aware of. So all of my records were actually mastered off of the same machine that was used to make the recording.

• 1:56:00Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  It was unique. And unfortunately, those LPs are, well, people are paying over $200 or $300 a copy for the LPs, you know, if you can find them. And we did them for over 10 years that way. I was a bit difficult to work with, because I was a bit of a fanatic, you know. But what I did note was, and one of the things that helped me transition from analog to digital was that I don't claim to have perfect pitch, but I do think I'm very sensitive to wavering pitches. And I specialized in piano. And one of the things that bothered me, not so much in the tape, but certainly in the LPs, was that LPs were adding a vibrato that didn't exist.

• 1:56:45Speaker 01

  There was wavering in pitch, particularly on long sustained chords, like you hold a list chord where it just drops for 10 seconds down there. Well, that wasn't in the recording. That wasn't the piano doing that.

• 1:56:59Speaker 01

  When you listen to that backup tape on digital, none of that was there. The pitch was right, steady and constant. Number two, Bob, on my recordings on analog, I was recording at 73 dB dynamic range. 73 dB signal to noise ratio referenced to 3% third harmonic distortion. Well, that's great, but you can't cut that. Too dynamic. And so Bob would very graciously sit there with the score with his hand on the level control, you know, riding the game.

• 1:57:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  But when we took those analog tapes and cut CDs from them, none of that was necessary. We had the dynamic range. So arguably, I already started to see the daylight. Of course, there is this world that's still very much infatuated with analog. But the reality for me is that, at best, it's a compromise of the original recording. And I'm finding now that with the quality of digital playback, even the little Dak and that Haygill is spectacular. And the DCS is, I mean, the technology has moved so fast. As a person involved in recording,

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  I would have to say that I do have a big problem with much of what's being done today in terms of digital versus analog. When people say they love vinyl.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  Well, I do too, but only if it's a true analog vinyl. I see no value, no matter how much you spend on a turntable, or a cartridge, or a tone arm, in taking an LP that was cut from a digital master. I see no value in that. I'd rather listen to the file on a really good deck. I haven't been convinced that playing an LP cut, it may sound more pleasurable to somebody, but my brain can't accept it.

• 1:59:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, less accurate.

• 1:59:10Speaker 01

  That's it. Because what gives me pleasure is fulfilling what the microphone captured.

• 1:59:17Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about solid state versus tubes.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  I adore tubes and solid state. At home, I listen with a tube-designed preamplifier. I have solid state amplification, and have had that sort of combination for years. And the reason I love what tubes do is that they are accurate, but the harmonic structure, it just is to be more pleasurable. And what you need, then, is the accuracy of the solid state to provide horsepower to that beauty.

• 1:59:49Rick Rubin?

  What about tube microphones versus...

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  A good question. Again, it comes down to the design of the capsule and the electronics. But by and large, I use solid state. One of the issues that a lot of engineers have told me is that, and it's a valid one. When you have 100 people up on stage, and you're paying for that session, and suddenly the tube microphone starts to develop a hiss because the tube is failing, you're doomed. So that really is one of the justifications of going to FETs and various... It's essentially reliability. I mean, a good case in point is that Neumann offers their vintage tube mics. You can still get the tube, but they make the solid state version, and I like both.

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  The microphones that I use predominantly, though, were made by Joseph Gredo, the fellow that developed cartridges-

• 2:00:45Rick Rubin?

  Headphones.

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  And headphones. And Joseph, in his later years, and... Well, I knew him from the 70s, but in his later years, after he sold the company to his nephew... He moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, I think it was. And he called me and said, I've got a microphone I developed. I want you to hear it. And I went up, I heard it, and I acquired six of them.

• 2:01:09Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  And they account for about ninety percent of what I record today. It's an Omni mic. It just doesn't sound like anything. It just sounds like the sound that's going into it.

• 2:01:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  Period.

• 2:01:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:21Speaker 01

  That's all I want. So I'm wedded to them. And they're Omnis. And using Omnis presents challenges because of the nature of how they gather the sound. I remember there's a wonderful engineer by the name of Tom Jung, one of my heroes. And he also embraced the microphone the same way I did. And I remember setting up for a string quartet using those mics. And my phone is buzzing and I answered, hi, Peter, it's Tom. Calling to tell you that Joe just passed at ninety-one or something like that. And it just hit me like a... And then I was thinking, I couldn't be doing a finer tribute to him than to be using his microphones.

• 2:02:06Rick Rubin?

  In this moment.

• 2:02:07Speaker 01

  In this moment.

• 2:02:08Rick Rubin?

  It was perfect.

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, it was devastating, but it was what I do and what he did. And he enabled me to continue doing what I did, so.

• 2:02:16Rick Rubin?

  Tell me a little bit about mic placement. Does it start with you walking around the space and listening? Or is it more of a mathematical equation?

• 2:02:24Speaker 01

  I'm fortunate in that the halls that I'm privileged to work in, I've been using for decades. So I pretty much know what I want to get out of that and the instrument that's in it. And it's mostly a mechanical formula that I've worked out in terms of spacing of the Omnis. If I'm recording a piano, if I'm recording a string quartet, if I'm recording a choral ensemble. The biggest challenge I'm having and enjoying very much is I'm recording large choral ensembles with orchestra and soloists in different churches. I'm really loving that. That gets a bit more complex.

• 2:03:07Rick Rubin?

  Yes. Going from old analog recordings.

• 2:03:13Rick Rubin?

  To making a high res today, are there any best practices or things that you would do to get the best version of an older recording?

• 2:03:22Speaker 01

  Wow. Now, when you say analog, are you talking about tape?

• 2:03:26Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 2:03:27Speaker 01

  Tape, absolutely, yes. Get a really good, properly calibrated tape recorder and get the very, and play it at line level through, not through a console, the straight out of the machine into the analog input of the very best A to D converter there is, this cleanest possible signal path.

• 2:03:54Rick Rubin?

  What are the choices today?

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Wow, I'd avoid workstations. I just, we're talking two channels, so we don't need anything more complicated than that. There'll be one coming very soon. Fellow by the name of Bob Stewart, he's developing a new A to D converter. He should have it in a few months. And it's chip based.

• 2:04:14Rick Rubin?

  Do they keep getting better and better?

• 2:04:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But he said, and he's right, A to D, people have been pushing the D to As because of the consumer market. But the A to Ds have been pretty much static for years. Right now, I think merging technologies makes some of the better ones, you know, they're very popular. But take as straight a signal path of that, out of the output of the analog to that and do it whatever your poison, whether it be DXD or 192 24 bit.

• 2:04:43Rick Rubin?

  Well, tell me about the different resolutions available in high res.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that the higher the bit rate, obviously, the better it's going to be. So DXD, I used to be a big fan of DSD. But the problem with one bit is, in my view, is it's impossible to work with. You know, if you want to do even splicing, editing, you can't, you can't edit. It has to be converted to PCM and then back again. That's my primitive understanding. I'm not gospel on that. And I've found that PCM with higher bit rates.

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  I've gotten better. I mentioned my friend Jim Clark. You know when he got his PhD and he studied with Tom Stockham, the guy that invented digital recording.

• 2:05:31Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:05:32Speaker 01

  At the University of Utah.

• 2:05:33Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  And Jim maintains to this day that Stockham made a big mistake. He should have gone to one bit. And so Jim will listen to nothing but DSD.

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  But it's crazy. Anyway, no, but I think today, to this day, I think that the high rate PCM is the way to go. It can be processed if you have to.

• 2:05:56Rick Rubin?

  Have you A B'd 88 versus 92 versus 190, whatever the different options are?

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:03Rick Rubin?

  Is more always better?

• 2:06:05Speaker 01

  No. No. Back in the day, I recorded principally at 882 only because the end product would be a CD. And it's easy to do the math. But at 192, it's very complicated.

• 2:06:20Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 2:06:20Speaker 01

  And I thought that the end result might not be as good. But if I'm not making anything that's going to go into that medium, I would prefer either 96 or 192. And the difference between 96 and 192, I honestly, my ears are old. I can't hear that at this point. I think there's a little more fluidity. People that I trust, Morton, who's from 2L Records, he's possibly the best recording engineer alive today. He claims that he can hear all the way up to 356 as a difference. You know, whatever that top sampling rate. And he records everything in D X D. He insists that it sounds better. Who might argue with that? I don't know.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  But in terms of what the tools I have, also given the bandwidth of the mics I use, you know, that presumes you have microphones that have bandwidth of 200 kilohertz.

• 2:07:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  You know, to get a benefit. I don't know. Although the allegation is the higher you get the glassing filters, the more out of the way of the audible, you're better off. But I think for home music lovers, you're hard pressed to hear much beyond 2496. Maybe I'm wrong. It could be sacrilegious, but.

• 2:07:35Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the electronics in speakers.

• 2:07:39Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:07:41Speaker 01

  We as a company, Wilson Audio, all our speakers are passive. But we do make everything that's in the speaker, including we wind our own coils, we wind our own inductors, and most importantly, we fabricate in-house our own capacitors.

• 2:08:00Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  Daryl got a call about six, eight years ago from the company that was making our capacitors in California, and the guy says, "I'm 84 years old. I'm ready to close it out. I'm ready to retire." Daryl said, "Do you mind if I come with a couple of my guys and take a look at your factory?" And he did. We bought it and moved everything to Utah. And we've since developed what they were doing and taken it to levels beyond. So we make all our capacitors in-house.

• 2:08:29Rick Rubin?

  What are first order crossovers?

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  The first order is typically 6 dB slope per octave. Second order, I think, is 12. Third order is 18. I'm not sure. I may have that wrong. But the higher the number of the order, the steeper the slope of the crossover, the means the cutoff, both upgoing and downgoing. First order is considered the easiest to get the phase correctly. At Wilson, we don't have a specific order. I mean, we basically...

• 2:09:04Rick Rubin?

  Whatever's needed for the...

• 2:09:05Speaker 01

  Whatever works. You know, it's all about listening, not just measuring, but actually hearing, because the nature of the slope can alter the timbre of things. And Daryl's view is a continuation of his father. Basically, you know, we refer to our tweeter as a coherent synergy tweeter, meaning it's not what it does as a tweeter, but how well it mates with the driver below it.

• 2:09:31Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 2:09:32Speaker 01

  That's synergy. This is what we're looking for, is the blending of the drivers. And then we can move them in the time domain. We can correct that physically, but it's the timbre we can't change. And that's a big, big thing, is getting that sort of synergy between the drivers and the... I'm really pleased that we do that. And it comes from, you know, I started, like I say, with quad electrostatic panels that had no enclosure, so the enclosure material was irrelevant because it didn't eat it. But that planar diaphragm was about as light as air and it was really quick. And so it's a question of getting pistons connected to paper or plastic or...

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  For example, we still don't use diamond. We don't use beryllium. We don't use any of those things. The reason being is, as David said, I listened to them. And our highest grade technology at the present time is still something that's been around for 30, 40 years, soft dome silk. You know, for example, in tweeter technology, the obsession is, particularly going to diamond or beryllium, is how far up it'll go. But David's concern is, look at the tweeter's dynamic capability at its lowest frequency. How loud can it play at the bottom point? And since we're using essentially one tweeter, it has to be a tweeter.

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  And David always believes, and Daryl continues, that our crossover point from the tweeter is typically in the one kilohertz range, which is usually an octave and a half lower than anybody that would use a diamond or beryllium. Why do we do it? Because it allows us to get a better transition to where the meat of the music is, you know, in the mid-range. Hence the term coherent synergy tweeter. It's not how high it'll go, but how beautifully it blends. And our high-frequency resonance with our current tweeters are around 24, 25 kilohertz. So it's adequate, to say the least. Covers what you...

• 2:11:38Rick Rubin?

  How different do the speakers sound depending on the electronics driving them?

• 2:11:43Speaker 01

  Well, I'll answer that question by saying this. When I was a retailer and I was not involved in manufacturing with loudspeakers, the best advice I always gave to any client was make as big an investment you can in the speaker because it is ultimately the foundation. To the extent you can make the room good, do what you can. But I'm opposed to room treatment in the classical sense. For example, there's not a stitch of it. This room is fabulous. You don't need no sneaking room treatment in here. You've got that bookcase that acts as a diffuser. You've got these beams on the ceiling. You've got solid walls.

• 2:12:25Speaker 01

  Equally important, you have openings that allow the base to not build up. If you went into my living room, it would be more like this one than any so-called sound room would be.

• 2:12:36Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about speaker placement in a room.

• 2:12:40Speaker 01

  That is really a critical component. My mantra to people who sell our product is they're only as good as the guy that installed them. The reality is that when you're dealing with a speaker that has essentially minimal cabinet resonances, is as pure as can be with no coloration in the loudspeaker, then the real big remaining challenge is what is the room doing to it in terms of the resonances of the room?

• 2:13:17Speaker 01

  And you want to find the spot where the speaker engages the very least the gremlins of the room. The room. The room resonances. And that's really the art of it.

• 2:13:30Rick Rubin?

  So typically, further away from any wall?

• 2:13:33Speaker 01

  Sometimes, sometimes though, but sometimes you go into other components of the room where further away from the wall, the room has all kinds of echoing effects. That could be more color, that could be mitigated by moving the speaker closer to the primary boundary. There's no given answer. You know, we have a, not a technology, just a methodology called the WASP, Wilson Audio Speaker Placement, that we've even published. But we train all of our salesmen stringically on how to do it. It's harder for the consumer to use the WASP because they don't know what they're looking for. They don't know the extent to which the speaker can be pure. Someone who knows what the speakers are supposed to sound like

• 2:14:17Speaker 01

  can determine how much the room is affecting and detracting from its purity. And so, we, contractually, Wilson Audio demands that all our dealers deliver and install them. Otherwise, we feel the customer is paying a lot of money for something they're not getting.

• 2:14:37Rick Rubin?

  We talked about planers, we talked about traditional cones, we didn't talk about horn speakers.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:14:45Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about horn speakers.

• 2:14:47Speaker 01

  They can be devastatingly wonderful. They're effortless. Their level of distortion, if properly designed, is a fraction because they're so bloody efficient. So the amplifiers are typically just coasting them. I mean, two watts could drive horn speakers louder than anything we heard today. The issue for horns are usually related to timing. You've got various large things that can't be adjusted. So therefore, there's a time smear in most of them. There's one model out there that does have, apparently, some adjustments made by Avantgard in Germany. There are people who like those a great deal.

• 2:15:31Speaker 01

  I've listened to them, I think, at their best in the best room I know of that exists for music playback. And they're very exciting. I, however, don't feel I could make a recording on them.

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  And the tonality, there is still a signature to that sound. They have a sound that can be very pleasing to people. And certainly, their dynamics are very exciting. But that signature that is there to varying degrees, depending on the brand and the designer or the preferences, that signature is always, to my ear, prevalent.

• 2:16:07Rick Rubin?

  What's the purpose of a rear firing speaker?

• 2:16:12Speaker 01

  That can be a very powerful thing because it just adds more ambience into the room. And most good rear firing speakers should be adjustable to the point where they can be turned off entirely or turned up as much and you just set it as you like it. The idea is just to create more of a sense of space. For example, Bob Ludwig was adamantly opposed to the speakers that I sold him. They were the biggest Egglesons because that was a period between where Joey Wilson and I came up there and he bought the biggest ones. William and I went up there and visited with him. And he had them from the day he opened Gateway to the day he closed it.

• 2:16:53Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:16:54Speaker 01

  But it was considered, in my view, the premium mastering facility in North America.

• 2:17:00Rick Rubin?

  Have you ever heard good sounding omnidirectional speakers?

• 2:17:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:17:05Rick Rubin?

  Can it be done?

• 2:17:08Speaker 01

  The closest I've heard it being done by far are the MBL speakers from Germany. The soundstage can be wonderful, but it lacks specificity. It lacks believability. And I'm cursed by that because when you're involved in making the recording, your expectations are built. And when they're not fulfilled, no matter how beautiful it is, can't say it's bad, you just say it's not for me.

• 2:17:33Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  And they're not for me. They can be very exciting. Regrettably, from what I understand, MBL is, they went into insolvency.

• 2:17:43Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:17:43Speaker 01

  Just recently. I'm going to be a little bit critical, if I could be.

• 2:17:48Rick Rubin?

  Please.

• 2:17:48Speaker 01

  Of what the state of our industry. The industry, by that I don't mean the recording industry because I think the recording industry is doing well. But as a consumer of music, I'd sell a 30, 40, 50,000 dollar hi-fi system in the mid 70s.

• 2:18:08Speaker 01

  The client would then turn to me and say, "All right, now what do I listen to? These five demo discs that you played? What else is there?" And that was a legitimate question. You have to go on an odyssey, trying to find music of quality and performance that would justify the expense. We're living in an era now, in my opinion, where the limitation is time. We're overloaded with incredible access to incredible music. And audiophiles, for the most part, they don't realize how good it actually is. And there's so much that's out there. And my big regret is I just don't have time to explore everything that I'd love to...

• 2:18:52Speaker 01

  Obviously, I don't listen to my request. I listen to everything. Yes. And the world of what's out there to be enjoyed is bigger by a wide margin than it's ever been.

• 2:19:28Speaker 07

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